Fic FFVIII; Little Boy Lost 1/?
Title: Little Boy Lost
Pairing: Seifer/Squall
Rating: G
Summary: Seifer returned to Balamb after the war, but acceptance is something not easily returned once lost
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Square
Little Boy Lost
Chapter 1
Streams of white light shone through the glass windows illuminating the hallways of BalambGarden in a pleasant warm glow. Voices filled the air with the familiarity of daily routines as the people moved about their daily business.
Garden wasn’t necessarily a dull place, Seifer Almasy thought as he registered with tired annoyance the students moving with grate effort to avoid him around the halls. The many mercenaries and students were always in motion giving him the impression that Garden was like some living organism, yet no matter how hard he tried to fit back in, to re-find his lost past life, he didn’t think he would ever succeed at feeling at home here again.
It was like he was swimming in the wrong directions and everyone else - the swarm, as he referred to them now - was making room in order not to collide with him.
No one spoke to him unless it was strictly needed, though it wasn’t like he was searching for conversation or friendship on his part either. He was the parasite the organism couldn’t get rid off no matter how hard it tried, because frankly he was too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely, yet at the same time he was not going to be allowed to become a part of the whole once more. It was a wistful desire that would remain unfulfilled like most of his life had been. He should have gotten used to this by now, but acceptance was always hard to come by, it simply wasn’t in his nature.
Seifer had known from the moment the thought of returning here had first occurred to him that nothing would be the same; then again he had never truly fitted in with the rest of the student body to begin with, so he wasn’t overly surprised at how little things had changed in that sense.
The blond came to a halt at the classroom door and waited a moment for it to slide open. Warily he scanned the room and almost startled back at the image of a battlefield before him. The loud sounds of clinging swords against each other and the burning smell of fire and the screaming voices of the fight surrounded him. Harsh wind hit his face and the intoxicating scent of death caused his nostril to flare in disgust. Loud cries and exhausting breathing rushed exasperatedly through Seifer’s ears, almost causing him to reach up with his hands in order to block off the sounds.
The ground trembled beneath him and he felt the sudden presence of large flapping wings over him. Magic stirred all around him and the tremendous body of a dragon sucked the wind along him when it passed above the blond’s head. He felt strongly disturbed when Bahamut’s fierce growl reverberated through the air directly into his body.
Fear gripped at him and only sheer willpower allowed Seifer to move forward through the masses of dead corpses and towards the place he knew his seat to be. He reached out and felt something cold and metallic come in contact with his skin. With deliberate concentration he forced himself to lower his body on the seat, while he tried to ignore the blood spilled against his face and clothing, and the red fire that headed his way when Bahamut attacked.
Flames and heat erupted around him, his skin was burning, the need to scream out in pain was almost overwhelming, yet Seifer remained unmoved, restrained by his own will to his current position.
Dizziness washed over him, and he could barely suppress the cold shudder of relief that ran over him, when everything morphed slowly back to the classroom filled with students and the instructor frowning angrily at him
“Mr. Almasy, are you actually paying attention?” the instructor asked in a harsh voice.
Seifer waved absently at him. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard this all before.” He said trying to sound annoyed rather than tense.
The man’s expression darkened. “Yes, well, it apparently didn’t do you any good, or you wouldn’t be still here, now would you?”
The class erupted in muffled tense laughter and murmurs. Seifer had to control his temper from physically leashing out at the instructor. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. He was still on probation and he suspected that everyone was just waiting for him to break a rule so that he would be expelled and consequently put into prison for his war crimes.
He snorted mentally. There was no way he would give any of them the satisfaction to see him further humiliated.
“I merely here because the Commander demanded it, not because I actually need these lessons.” He replied while inclining his head a little to the side, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back to make himself as comfortable as possible on the hard chair.
It was clear that this was not the reply the man had wanted to hear by the way he huffed irritated at the blond before addressing the rest of the class again. Thankfully the instructor dropped the matter temporarily, but he was sure that during the course of the next days he would be called to the Chief instructor’s office to be reprimanded about his behaviour or rather lack of.
Voices whispered to the blond in urgency, but Seifer knew better than to listen to them. Well, to be precise, he wasn’t even sure if they were real to begin with, which left him constantly in the dilemma if he should act upon them.
The classroom shifted again. The change was subtle and almost real, but Seifer had learned over the course of the last months to ignore whatever madness Time Compression had linked to him. Time slipped forth and back in his mind; the changes were real to him, because a part of him was truly there present at some point of time, but his physical body remained bound to this present time in which he was forced to live with the constant hate of his fellow cadets and superiors.
He could feel the changes of temperature; the scents that accompanied the variety of ages and the voices of the living that were never quiet.
He was never completely sure if what he was experiencing was the now in which he lived, or if it was something occurring to the part of him that was still wandering aimlessly through the labyrinth of time.
The madness never left, it grew, and Seifer was aware that soon he would loose the battle to identify which was real and which was a figment of a time that wasn’t his.
Someone spoke to him and Seifer looked up tempted to reply but he was plagued by doubts if it was his time at all from which the young woman spoke to him from.
Like flowing liquid the image of the woman started to blur and the blond found himself in an empty room, with empty seat all around him. The silence was thick and heavy, almost unnatural, yet this held a certain truth to the present. His inner clock admitting that his last class was finished and that he had once again been left behind to brood in silence.
Nowadays no one dared to speak to him about simple matters. Seifer was an outcast, thanks to the image the sorceress had left him marked with. He was an oddity among the brave that had faced the wrath of a woman, who had been denied her will. He couldn’t really blame them…
With a heavy sigh he pushed his seat back from the small desk and got to his feet, but he almost stumbled back on the chair when his legs gave out in a sudden trembling. The fear of Bahamut’s encounter earlier was still strong in his body, Seifer concluded warily.
He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, urging his emotions to sooth and loosen the tension, but his body was taunt, ready for battle. Tension screamed in his joints and muscles and he desperately wished to hold his weapon in his hand to find some sort of anchor to steady himself. But instead Seifer was forced to whisper words of calmness to himself over and over, like a mantra, to find the needed solace in his mind in order to get some sort of control over himself again.
Fear slowly receded only to be replaced by the constant wariness to which he had gotten accustomed to, and though his body never lost the tension, he was glad that at least he could finally leave for his dorm, where he wouldn’t have to hide and pretend behind a façade.
Only in the safety of his room could and would Seifer allow the madness to reign for the night, but once come morning everything would simply start all over again. It was like being trapped in a loop, he figured. There was simply no escape for him.
His stomach grumbled causing the blond to come to a halt. Maybe it would be better if he made a detour to the cafeteria first before retiring to his quarter, he decided.
Time waved itself anew around the blond. By now he could almost tell when the shift would happen, he could almost differentiate the perspectives that came and went. But almost wasn’t enough, Seifer figured, because it was still to some part real.
Waves crashed around him, and the salty air of the ocean brushed through his hair as he made his way to the eating area of Garden. He could feel the warmth of the sun suppress the cool that was brought by the air-conditioning of the building. It would only be a matter of time before the warmth would cause him to sweat in his thick black uniform, which he had been ordered to wear since his return after the war.
He could recall clearly the order to make sure to fit in, yet what no one seemed to realize was that words and actions were two different things to go by. There were no allowances for Seifer, the Headmistress and the Commander of Garden had been very clear on that. His admittance was only granted because Leonhart had obviously felt inclined to pity him.
He felt like throwing up each time he remembered that confrontation and the looks Trepe and Leonhart had given him. He didn’t want their pity, he wanted acceptance. That had always been so, even when he had been received at the orphanage all those years back.
The sea water tickled his feet as it came and went. It was cold yet calming, while the sun burned above him with its ever present heat.
Rules had been made specifically for the blond, because they feared what he might do should they grant him too much leverage, and of course there was the public view that had to be preserved. Seifer couldn’t even memorize all the restrictions Trepe had demanded he’d be put under, only the ones Leonhart had enforced upon him at the beginning.
The loss of his trench coat and his necklace were things that he could live with, he had thought when he had handed them to Leonheart. The fact that he was to wear Garden’s uniform at all times wasn’t something that had bothered him much to begin with, but when Trepe had demanded of Seifer to relinquish his beloved Hyperion, he had felt torn and panicked.
Obviously the Commander had noticed his hesitance, and to Seifer’s surprise and relieve the brunet had declared that such a thing would not be necessary since he was to be readmitted back and thus would need a weapon for missions and training. Seifer could still recall the thankfulness he had felt at those words, though he hadn’t showed it, because if he was honest with himself, he didn’t even know how to express proper gratitude.
He had always been strong spirited, the need to be able to survive at all cost was engrained to him since his early childhood. Struggling for survival in the street waiting anxiously for Hyne to finally show mercy had been a harsh and cruel master to him. Granted, he had been saved and given once again a home far away from the battles that Adel had wrought upon the lands, but the scars had already been soul deep. He had to learn to depend only on himself, and it had been quite the struggle to lower his defences and open up a little to the other children in the orphanage.
He hadn’t fared much better as a teen nor as an adult. Emotions were not something he trusted, because in truth they scared him. They were so strong to process, so strong to live by, that he rather remained behind his walls of arrogance so that no one, even those he wanted to, would see the true him.
Hyperion was like an extension of himself. She represented all those things that were important to Seifer. Strength… power… safety…
No one would take her from him and Leonheart had instantly understood it. Probably because the man was similar to Seifer in that sense…
Though the brunet had made it clear that outside of training and missions - the few simply ones they dare to assign him to- that Seifer was not to have his gunblade on him. This wasn’t particularly a rule he had like, because Hyperion was his anchor, the source by which he found his strength for all those walls he kept around him. She made the madness seem less real, less lonesome…
In that sense that was the hardest rule that he considered placed upon him. His dependence on his weapon was like a drug, and junkies didn’t like to be kept without their needed dose.
A child’s voice brought him out of his stupor. The boy’s presence as strong as any other living next to him and when a small hand reached for his hands, Seifer came to a sudden halt and focused his sight on a pair of familiar blue-grey eyes. The child gave him a tug at the hand and Seifer was inclined to follow, but the rational part of his mind, the part of him that knew that this was not his time he was experiencing, reminded him that it would be useless to indulge in this false realism… even if these experiences were real in some strange way.
And so with reluctance he let go of the small hand, watching as the image turned transparent and became less focused until it vanished altogether.
It was then that Seifer allowed himself a moment of weakness; the same weakness by which he had to join a cruel sorceress and allow her to fuck him over in every sense of the word.
With a strange and desolated feeling of melancholy his emotions shifted between sulky anger and blank surprise, when he suddenly found himself standing before the tall woman looking down at him as he lay in his own coagulated blood before her. Like a silk caress, her voice washed over him only to drive with brutal force into his skull and have it turn into an never ending painful ache.
Her long dress sweeps over the ground in a silent motion while Seifer watched with dread as she approached him. Her face contorted into a cruel expression and through a pain dulled vision the blond saw her lay her long and thin finger against her cheek in a thoughtful manner.
“My boy, you have once again failed me.” Her voice seemed to be magnified by her magic to resonate around the room.
Cold grew in him while she continued to speak in that calm but horribly manner, his blood still dripping from the wound she had inflicted upon him, though most had already turned into a sticky substance around his upper torso and arms.
Metallic was the taste of the red liquid in his mouth, but he couldn’t complain. The consequence would only be worse. He couldn’t risk her ire in his current state.
Heavy and fast, he could feel his heart trying to make up for the loss of blood of his body, while it pulsed in his chest next to the spear that pierced him. He wasn’t even sure if the cold was due to the spear of ice or the lack of blood.
And then thankfully her presence vanished again from his sight and Seifer found himself looking at the doors of the cafeteria, though the bitter taste of blood in his mouth remained.
Suppressing a shudder, he suddenly didn’t feel like eating anymore and he redirected his steps to head on to his dorm.
Like a whirlwind his emotion flickered in exasperation through his body and he felt compelled to go to the infirmary to ask for something to help him sleep, but that would only arise questions to which he didn’t think he could give answers.
This time Seifer allowed himself to sigh out loud.
Nowadays he could only regard things like an outsider while his emotions swept from one extreme to another with virtually nothing in between, leaving him longing for a time when he could still remember having had thousands degrees of anger and shades of other emotions.
Everything was loosing impact now, his interests, his dreams. Only his duty remained. The admirably single-minded thought to keep protecting, to continue to breathe until his duty was fulfilled; that was all that was left… for that was the only purpose to the life of a knight, even a fallen one like him.
He wished in sudden desperation that they would confine him to quarters for several days, weeks, even months, just so he could indulge into the call of Time Compression and he could wallow in the seas of times.
At least it would be better than this twilight state he had to go on living by.
But like his dreams, his wishes had been vanquished by his stupid need for acceptance. It had been a mistake on his part to allow himself to open up to people. He couldn’t entirely lay the blame on everyone else for his own moment of weakness and his stupidity. It wasn’t their fault that he was trapped here.
No, it wouldn’t help anyway, for the oath still held and Seifer Almasy would keep his word until the end.
TBC