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 Two - ... and the One Who Doesn't

By Devi Dee

Happiness is just a word to me
And it might have meant a thing or two
If I’d had known the difference

-- Mai Yamane, "Gotta Knock a Little Harder"

Seifer Almasy was not having a very good year. No, fuck that, Seifer Almasy was not having a very good life. He wasn’t exactly sure when everything began going to hell in a neatly-packed hand basket, but suspected that it was probably around the time he was born. He had a suspicious feeling that someone - fate, the gods, whomever - really, really hated him. The latest and greatest even in the great Cosmic Cock-Up that was his pathetic excuse for an existence had been this whole Sorceress’ Knight deal. God, there was one of those things you look back on and cringe over. He would have been the first to admit that, well, when you looked at it, it wasn’t really his fault that he had a tendency to fall for crazy chicks with bad fashion-sense. I mean, it was kind of... but... aw, hell. Okay, so maybe it was his fault. But what were you gonna do? You choose a side and if it looses, you just learn to deal with it.

Of course, the one problem being that Seifer Almasy didn’t like to loose. Practically detested it, in fact; and you could quote him on that one. He especially didn’t like to loose to that stupid, smug little brown-haired bastard and all his equally stupid little friends. And just what, exactly, had said bastard gotten in reward? Why, everything; money, power, fame... a dad who was the fucking president of fucking Esthar for Hyne’s sake. And Rinoa, of course. Can’t forget the lovely little Princess now, can we? Fate’s prize for a job well done. And what was left over for the loser? Why, a run-down orphanage miles from anywhere and miles from anyone, that’s what. Asides from the odd visit from Fujin and Raijin, Seifer hadn’t seen another human being since... well, in a long time. There were a couple of other things he hadn’t done in a long time, either. Like get a haircut, for example; his blonde bangs now hanging down past his shoulders in a way which, had he been in possession of a mirror in which to look at them, he would have agreed looked very, very silly. But it didn’t really matter because, hell, it wasn’t like there was anyone out here to see him.

Deep down past the alcoholic stupor he seemed to permanently inhabit, Seifer was vaguely aware of a large pit of self-loathing which sulked in the corner of his mind along with various other anthropomorphised character traits like his Pride and Self-Respect. Every now and again, when he wasn’t sleeping or vomiting - both of which he seemed to do a lot of - one would yell at him to pull himself together, get a fucking haircut and take it like a man, goddamnit. A quick bash over the head with some good, cheap whiskey usually shut those voices up. He was not going back out there; into the Really Real World. Where people would gawk and stare and heckle him or throw things. He was not a very well-liked man. Not liked at all, as far as he could tell. Well, except for Fujin and Raijin, of course, but that was more or less a given. In the early days other people used to come looking for him too. Well, not people, exactly. More like Squall Leonhart with his fucking Garden or in the Ragnarok. Every now and again it would stop and a few people would pile out and search around. They obviously weren’t looking very hard because they never did find him. Eventually, they stopped coming. Just like Fujin and Raijin would, one day, stop coming.

All things considered, it was kind of a shithouse existence. And yet, suicide was never an option. That would be too much like defeat. As long as he was still alive he could allow himself the luxury of one small victory; that at least he still had himself, and it was the one thing he wasn’t about to let Leonhart and his stupid little friends take away.

Sometimes, when he was really out of it, he’d see them all. Little kids playing on the beach or running through the house, Matron hot in pursuit. Sometimes, the ghost of a young boy with a silly orange jumper and shaggy brown hair would sit and talk to him. He could never remember the conversations afterwards, only that they were important somehow. Very slowly it began to dawn on Seifer that he might be going slightly crazy. Only slightly, mind you.

Then, one day, about a week after Fujin and Raijin’s last visit, the ghost of Squall Leonhart appeared before him one last time.

Except he was taller. And angrier-looking. And wearing this really stupid vest thing.

And, of course, not really a ghost at all.

He had long hair.

That was probably about the first thing I noticed, mostly because I’d never seen him with it before. It made him look kind of stupid, actually, and I may have been tempted to point this out had he not been sitting on the crumbled steps like he was, hugging his knees and rocking backwards and forwards, muttering slightly to himself. There were empty bottles of whiskey - many, many empty bottles of whiskey - lining the porch around him. He didn’t look like he’d either shaved or showered in a few days, nor did he appear to notice me when I approached. Well, he seemed to notice something at around my knee-level, to which he muttered something incomprehensible.

"Seifer?" I said, finally.

It took him a while, but eventually he looked up. His eyes took a few seconds to focus, but when they did, he frowned. "What the... how’d you get so damn tall all of a sudden?"

"Huh?" Maybe he had gone crazy. Or crazier, depending on who you asked.

He lurched to his feet shakily, putting a hand against the wall to steady himself.

"You look like shit," I commented.

"Fuck off, Leonhart." Aah, that was more like it.

"Seifer..."

He narrowed his eyes, and something like his old self flared down in their empty depths. "I said fuck off."

"No. I’ve come to take you home."

"I am home, now fuckin’ leave me alone."

"No. I’ve come to take you home," I repeated. "Back to Garden."

"Why, so you can shoot me? Throw me in prison? Torture me some more?"

"No," I said.

"Then why?"

About a million things flashed through my head, most of which weren’t true,

(we’re worried about you)

and many of which I wasn’t about to say to his face.

(I need you)

Eventually I shrugged. "Because it’s where you belong."

He laughed, but it was a dangerously hollow sound. "That’s a pretty fuckin’ weak excuse. Try again."

I didn’t come all this way to be beaten by a crazy drunk with girly hair. "No. That’s my reason. It is where you belong."

"What makes you think they’d have me back, even if I did go with you?"

"I’ve talked to the Headmaster, and he’s agreed."

"Oh really? What did he say?"

"He said, ‘Get on the fucking ship you asshole before I throw you on it’."

He glared at me; a really good, hard glare. I hadn’t been so thoroughly glared at in a very, very long time. It felt kind of nice. Zell had been right, I really did need someone to disagree with me. It made me feel alive.

Eventually, he grinned. Ah, there we go. There’s that charming Almasy smile; the kind he gives when he’s about to mash your head into something hard and preferably spiky. "Oh did he now?"

"Yeah," I said.

He nodded. "Fine then, I guess we wouldn’t want to keep His Highness waiting, would we?"

"I certainly wouldn’t if I were you."

"Which you’re not, and thank Hyne for that. Wait here," he ordered, and disappeared into the remains of the orphanage. Eventually he returned with his gunblade slung over his shoulder. I noticed that while he was very much the worse for wear, his weapon wasn’t. Of course, as if it would be any other way.

"Where did His Highness park his ship then, I wonder?" Seifer asked breezily, brushing past me roughly on the stairs. I led him around the hill a little to where it was waiting, just slightly out of sight. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of the small craft, sort of like a flying motorcycle.

"Esthar design," I offered. "Laguna got it for me for my birthday."

"What a lucky little boy you are to have such a nice daddy to take care of you."

I scowled at him, but it was only superficial, and slung my leg over the small runabout, motioning for him to sit behind me, which he did, wrapping his arms around my waist in lieu of anything else to hold onto. Neither of us said anything as I sped us overland to where I’d parked the Ragnarok out of sight of the orphanage. Neither of us ever said anything at times like these; it would have been... wrong somehow to break up the contact with any of the usual jibes and retorts.

I suppose I’ve forgotten to mention one fact during this narrative which you may, assuming you’re slightly more astute than your average sack of roof tiles, have already picked up on your own. That fact being that, no matter how fucked up we all think Seifer may be, I’m just as bad. Especially when it comes to said blonde-haired asshole. I don’t exactly know what it is I feel about him - well, maybe I do really, if I think about it, which I tend not to - but needless to say I’ve had more fun in the last five minutes arguing with him, not to mention the last two minutes he’s spent curled up against my back, than I have in the entire time I’ve spent with Rinoa. When your arch-nemesis and sworn rival turns you on more than your girlfriend does, you just know you’ve got problems. And the thing is, I’m almost a hundred percent sure the feeling is entirely mutual, and has been for our entire lives. Otherwise why would we hate each other so much? We want to be each other; everything one does, the other has to do as well, only ten times better. Which is another reason why I had to bring him back to Garden.

I felt him nuzzle his lips against the nape of my neck as the Ragnarok appeared on the horizon. Experience let him find the spot just under my hairline where he knows I like to be touched, and he gently began caressing it with his mouth; teasing me, seeing how much I’d take before I turned around and started beating the shit through him. Just like old times then, but I’m not about the crash the bike just because he’s feeling frisky.

I waited until I’d parked in the cargo hold of the Ragnarok before I spun around and threw him bodily off me. He landed against the wall with a sickening thud, blood trickling down his forehead, and fixed me with this absolutely wicked grin. "Still the frigid bitch, I see," he teased, pulling himself to his feet. "Funny, I though Rinoa would’ve warmed you up a little for me; she is a good fuck, don’t you agree? Or don’t you know?"

Head games; he must be feeling better already, which was a relief. I felt the long-forgotten and not unwelcome twist in the pit of my stomach. He was testing me on Rinoa, seeing how I’d react; finding out just what my relationship with her was. "Get fucked," I told him, dismounting from the bike.

He jeered at me. "So, still the virgin then?" He was better at reading between my lines than even Zell was, but I also knew how to read between his. I could practically taste the relief in the air, and I realised that all this time he must have thought I was sleeping with Rinoa. Maybe he really didn’t know me as well as he thought he did.

I ignored him pointedly and instead made for the cockpit, settling myself into the pilot’s chair and flipping switches on the console. Seifer appeared a few moments later, wiping the blood off his forehead and flopped down in the chair beside me, putting disgustingly muddy boots up on the console though not - I noticed - in a place where the dirt peeling off them would get into anything important. He only acts callous, but is really quite considerate.

Well, sometimes.

"So you gonna fly this hunk of shit all by yourself, are you?"

"Yes."

He snorted, but didn’t say anything, waiting for the next line. Obviously it belonged to me, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. Then I remembered his boots.

"But I’m not going to do it with you sitting there smelling like shit. There’s a shower out back and I brought you a change of clothes from the stuff you left at Garden. You can fix your hair when we get there; you look like a fucking girl."

He growled, but went; hiding gratitude behind a string of unflattering curses about my own hair and girl-like status. I listened to him go, and narrowed my eyes - put on my Thinking Face, as it were. Well, that had been fairly easy, and Seifer certainly seemed fine - would have to anyone else on the planet, perhaps - but...

There was something... flat about him. I hoped it was nothing more than the mother of all hangovers and the side-effects of spending so much time alone, but...

Things in my life are never that easy. Sure, precedent is good for a Happily Ever After at the end of the day, but the road is far from smooth. If I thought it was going to be this easy to get Seifer Almasy to fit back at Garden I knew I had another thing coming. The absolute knowledge of this began to gnaw in the pit of my stomach, displacing any of the excitement I may have still had left over from earlier. Damn damn and double damn.

I threw the Ragnarok onto it’s autopilot course back to Garden and clunked my way into what could loosely be termed the living quarters of the big ship. I heard the shower as I walked past and allowed myself a nod of grim satisfaction. At least there was that; if I was going to drag Seifer back to Garden I was at least going to have him look like he always had. People might not like it - wouldn’t like it, in fact - but they could all just go to hell, because pride was important here.

Still, there was no way in hell this was going to be easy...

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