Author's Note: Evil Bitch-Queen From Hell alert! No-oo-oo-oo! Zell being insightful? OOC? Not really; there’s no-one else for the words to come out of. Besides, if there’s one person who understands Squall, it’d be Zell. Also nasty present-tense writing; yuck!

Feedback: This is my first major fanfic (I’m not really a fanfic writin’ kinda gal) and the longest single coherent piece I’ve ever wirtten, so be nice...

DISCLAIMER: Characters of Final Fantasy VIII are the property of Squaresoft. Please don’t sue me.

Futureloop

Chapter One - For the Guy Who Has Everything...

By Devi Dee

So I’m sitting there, just like I’ve been sitting there for the last 20 minutes, and it occurs to me; I’m not listening to a goddamn word she’s saying. Not only that, but I haven’t been listening to a goddamn word she’s been saying, not just for today’s 20 minute marathon of human endurance, but for the last six months. Six goddamn months. She’s babbling again, telling me about her day, the things she saw on her last trip back home; trying to engage me in Small Talk like she does, trying to socialise me. It’s not working, and now - as every other time - I just ignore her, staring off into the middle distance and retreating into the lonely headspace I’ve created for myself to use in such situations. Even still, every now and again snippets of her rambling will get past my carefully honed walls; "... and then she said ..." "... well, we walked straight into there and look what I found ..." "... he was just so-oo-oo cute (not as cute as you, of course) ..." "... said they’d last seen him in ..." "... like that time we ..." Blah blah blah and so on and so on, ad infinitum. And I’m sitting there, realising this, and wondering Why the hell am I still here then?

It’s not like I ever asked to be here in the first place. Sometimes events have a way of sneaking up on you. Quite often, in fact, if you happen to be me. It wasn’t as if I ever asked her to be my girlfriend; the title just seemed to get osmosed into "common knowledge" with no help at all from yours truly, and by the time I’d figured it out enough to protest everyone just assumed I was being antisocial and pushed it harder. If people tell you something long enough and often enough, you’ll start buying into it yourself. Rinoa was the Prize, after all. The reward for the Hero at the end of the day for a Job Well Done; save the world, get the girl, be reunited with family, live happily ever after, rah rah rah and all that. And, okay, it’s not all bad, being the Great Hero of the Third Sorceress War - I get discounts at shops, for example - but then the time of day will roll around when it’s time to spend some Quality Time With Rinoa and I’ll begin to remember why I never really liked people that much.

Well, not people. Girls, maybe.

And I have to sit very still and try very hard not to think about what she’s blathering about or a tiny part of my brain will snap and I’ll jump up, grab her by the shoulders and scream at her to just stop running her mouth for five seconds and let me mull in silence. And she’ll look stunned for an instant, and then smile at me in that guileless way and say, "Now now, don’t be like that, just sit right back down and let me tell you about..." and I will, because I’m an idiot, and then I’ll feel guilty for yelling at her but all the time I’ll be thinking What the hell am I still doing here?

It’s not that I don’t like Rinoa, exactly. When you go through so many things with someone you get attached to them regardless of whether you get on with them or not. And, if you tied me down and threatened me with death or castration, I might even admit to having a certain love for her... but not in the way everyone seems to think. Rinoa is like the doting younger sister, she can be irritating to the point of insanity, but she’s family and you’d protect her with your life if it came down to that. Of course, I’d do that for any of them, and yet - strangely - nobody expects me to father Zell’s children. Not that I’m anywhere on the way to fathering Rinoa’s, either; It’s hard to get aroused by someone you think of as the irritating little sister you never had.

Finally, there’s a gap in the endless babble of utterances, and I hear her say, "Oh, hey Squall, don’t you, like, have training to run off to now? It’s like, four o’clock..." she trails off with a pout which says, But of course you could still stay here with me if you wanted...

It’s my one-and-only ray of hope and - had I not spent years cultivating such a sullen and stoic exterior - one which would have made me leap three feet into the air and yell with the profound relief I always felt at these moments of escape. Who says you stop fighting once you leave the battlefield? Dealing with half and hour of Quality Time With Rinoa is harder than any battle I’ve ever fought in my entire life.

She gives a gasp as I free myself from her clutches a little too quickly. "Can’t keep Zell waiting." A weak excuse to leave, but I really don’t care. The social coward in me lives in constant hope that one day she’ll just get the message and leave me alone. She doesn’t, of course, and just thinks it’s cute when I act coldly. It just makes her try harder. Ah, the downsides of a lifetime of being antisocial.

I practically run off to the Training Centre where I know Zell will be waiting for me. He is, and without a word we set off to battling grats like it’s the most exciting thing either of us can think of. For me, it’s a welcome sort of change, and I throw myself into it with everything I’ve got; bits of grat flying out all over the place. It’s overkill, but a great big bloody fragfest is exactly what I need right now.

As usual, Zell waits until we get deep into the Centre and as far away from anyone else as possible before quizzing me. "So, what’s up."

"What? Nothing?" Slash, hack and another grat goes flying.

"Right, so you’re tellin’ me you’re using Ultima on grats just because you enjoy overkill."

Normally, I’m a very efficient fighter. Zell has lost enough blood with me to know this.

"..." I say. Most people mistake it for silence, once again, Zell knows better.

"Ri-ii-ight," he replies, sending another grat flying with a vicious uppercut. "Boyfriendal duties getting to you again?"

I nod once over the death-scream of yet another of the weak monsters. Sometimes I wonder if this is technically genocide, after all, it’s not the grats’ fault they make good cannon-fodder.

"You gotta tell her, man," he says. "Stop just stringin’ her along; it’s really cruel, even for you."

"..." I say again, as we find a small clearing. Zell flops himself down in the middle of it, and I fold myself up across from him a little.

"I don’t get you, man. I mean, you got yourself a fine woman, tight friends, good career prospects, you’ve found your family again... most guys in your position wouldn’t be so down on themselves all the time. What is it with you?"

"Friends, future and family I can deal with," I say. "It’s the other that bothers me."

"Rinoa’s a fine girl, man..."

Ah, now that’s the rub, isn’t it? ‘Fine girl’ she may be, but...

"... you don’t think of her like that, do you?" Zell finishes for me. Over time he’s learnt to read a lot into my silences. Either that or he has some kind of ESP he hasn’t told me about. Oh gods, I hope not. How embarrassing...

"Well then what kind of girl do you like, man? You know you can have your pick of the chicks, so just name someone."

"That’s just it; there isn’t anybody."

"What, nobody?" he sounds dubious, emphasising the genderless sentence. Zell wouldn’t be the first person to have suspicions that maybe I swung a bit left of centre. I dunno, maybe it's the jacket; it is kind of girly.

"..."

"Ah hah!" he sounds, practically elated. "There is somebody! I knew it, man! Nobody is as undersexed as you pretend to be; it’s unnatural."

I leave a long pause which, for once, Zell doesn’t know how to fill in. Eventually, I say, "Close, but you’re only half right."

He narrows his eyes. "Which half?"

I sigh, and don’t know what to say to him. I don’t even know what to say to myself, for that matter. ‘Which half’ indeed.

We sit for a little while long, enjoying the silence and occasional screams of wayward students. Zell fidgets, because I think he’d actually die if you made him keep still for longer than a minute, but he doesn’t try to fill in the holes with any kind of chatter. Eventually it becomes apparent that he wants to tell me something.

"What?" I ask.

He fidgets a little longer. "I heard from Fujin and Raijin the other day," he replies.

I narrow my eyes, not because I’m angry, but because I’m thinking. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who think I’m angry at them when all I’m doing is making a decision. "I have vague memories of Rinoa going on and on about it for ten or fifteen minutes," I say.

"Ten or fifteen minutes and you still only have vague memories? Man, you really aren’t listening to her," he shakes his head. "Anyway, they’ve finally come out and told us where Seifer is."

I frown. None of us had heard from Seifer since after the battle with Ultimecia, which for a long time suggested that he may have died, or at least dropped off the planet somewhere since keeping quietly to himself was not one of the boy’s strong points. Finally we’d located Fujin and Raijin, who’d confirmed that he was indeed still alive, but in a sort of self-imposed exile and no amount of bribing, cajoling, pleading or threats could extract his location from them. For them to finally come out with it must mean...

"They’re really worried about him, man. They say he’s, like, gone full-on mental. And, I mean, this is a guy who wasn’t exactly best friends with Mr. Sanity in the first place."

"‘Mental’ how?"

"Mental like suicidal mental, or so they seem to think."

Disturbing. Very, very disturbing.

"So where is he?"

Zell gives a hollow laugh. "Oh man, I mean we must have looked there about a dozen times without seeing him, but he’s back at the orphanage."

Of course he was. It was also the first place we looked for him. And the fifth and seventh and countless other times after even that.

"Guess he really didn’t want to be found, hey?"

And I say nothing; not nothing as in my usual ‘fill in the blanks for me’ nothing, but full on nothing. And Zell fidgets some more.

"What is it?"

This time I’m more helpful; "..."

Thank Hyne for Zell’s weird ESP. "Then go get him, man."

"What?" I sound surprised. I am surprised. It was exactly what I’d been thinking, but exactly not what I’d been thinking loud enough for it to be reflected in my expression. I didn’t think Zell would pick that one up - didn’t really want him to, either. I guess he knew me better than I thought.

"Go get him, bring him back to Garden if you have to. Hell, I’m prepared to be called Chicken Wuss again if it’ll get you out of your self-indulgent little stupor."

I must look surprised, because he adds; "What? Can’t I make an observation once in a while too? Look, everyone around here loves you. When was the last time anyone ever disagreed with you, hey? Like, never. You’re the great big Hero of the moment, and it really shits you, man. It’s so fuckin’ obvious. You need something to challenge you, something to fight against you and beat the crap out of you so you can gather yourself back together and return it blow for blow. So get off your bloody ass and go find him."

I make to protest but he shuts me up. "No! I don’t wanna hear it! And I don’t wanna see you again unless you’re haulin’ Almasy’s ugly ass behind you." His expression is determined, his ever-present shit-eating grin firmly in place.

My eyes narrow, and his widen in a ‘go on’ expression. Finally, I give in, nod once, and leave, reassuring myself that - even if I don’t find him - then at least this little impromptu vacation will get me away from Rinoa for a few days.

Suddenly, things are looking up.

Return to Archive | next | Author's Foreword