FFVIII: Origins (9)

[edenbound]

Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Pairing: Irvine/Selphie, Quistis/Rinoa, developing Seifer/Squall
Warnings: Angst, sap
Chapter: Nine
Rating: PG13
Summary: Seifer finds out what he so desperately wants to know.

Seifer fidgets a little while Quistis offers the visitor coffee. He’s grateful for the man’s time, of course, and doesn’t want to be impolite, but he’s dying to know all the things that this man – an ex-soldier, from the Estharian army – can apparently tell him. He’s surprised at how quickly Laguna found him – how quickly everything was sorted out for the man to visit. He was prepared to be patient. But now, with the answers seemingly sat right there, he’s not sure how patient he can be.

“No, thank you,” the man says to what has to be Quistis’ third offer of tea. “I’d rather just talk about what I’m here to talk about. No offence intended. I just heard that this young man really needed to know about his family, and he looks about to explode from impatience, so…”

“No offence taken,” Quistis says, in an amused tone of voice, while Seifer isn’t quite sure whether to blush that this guy reads his eagerness so well, or glare at him for the audacity to do so and say what he sees.

Squall gets up, at that, but Seifer shakes his head, reaching up to catch Squall’s hand without even thinking. “You guys can stay.”

He says you guys, but mostly he means Squall, and he’s pleased to see Squall hesitate for just the tiniest flicker of a moment and then nod, even though Quistis shakes her head and leaves and the others already left. He sits down again and Seifer realises that he hasn’t let go of his hand and that Squall hasn’t yet shaken him off. Carefully, he tightens his grip a little. Squall squeezes back, apparently happy with holding his hand for reassurance. Not that he needs reassurance, but he’s happy to pretend he does if it’ll keep Squall holding his hand like that.

“Well…” the man – Darren, his name is, but Seifer can’t help wanting to call him sir somehow – says, looking somewhat amused. “I know most of your family’s history, up until the point where Abigail sent you to an orphanage, and I know most of your history from the beginning of the war – sorry if that’s a sensitive topic. I’d be interested to know, sometime, what happened in between.”

Seifer snorts softly. “I grew up, I was bullied, I had friends, I bullied people, I trained, I failed to pass my practical exam. That’s about all there is to it.”

“In more detail, sometime, perhaps,” Darren says, hopefully.

“Perhaps,” he replies, somewhat reluctantly. It’s not that he wasn’t happy back then. He was. He was happy and ambitious and full to the brim of dreams. Romantic dreams. Dreams that came straight out of fairytales, dreams that his brief time with Rinoa had only nurtured because of her pretty, naïve beliefs – even though he quickly realised that there was going to be no beautiful fairy princess in his bed.

A beautiful fairy prince was always an option, though, he thinks, somewhat wryly.

“I knew both your parents very well,” the man says, quietly. There’s something about the way he’s sitting – upright, straight-backed, straight-faced – that makes Seifer feel almost like standing to attention. A military air, even though Laguna informed them that he hasn’t been in service for a long time. He doesn’t look like such an old man. “I was very sad to hear of their deaths. I didn’t serve in the same company as James at that time, though.”

“They died at the same time?” Seifer asks, frowning. “What the hell happened?”

“It’d be better to start this story at the beginning, really,” Darren says, sighing softly. “And you’d learn more about your parents that way, of course.”

He tries not to be too impatient, or too rude, kept in check partly by his own need to learn whatever this guy knows about his parents, partly by the way Squall gives his hand just a tiny, tiny, reassuring squeeze. “Please, start from the beginning, then.”

“At the time you were born, the Estharian army was conscripting. You had a choice but, well, not much of one. Your father wasn’t in one of the villages really affected by this, but there wasn’t much other work they could do. You were about to be born, he was to marry Abigail after you were born, and then… he always said that he did it just so he could send Abigail and his son money. But I wonder if he knew the kinds of things the army was doing… at that time, they weren’t very well led and only partially under the control of Esthar, you see.”

Seifer nods slightly. “So my father joined the army?”

“He left the day you were born. For a while, all was well. James and Abigail would see each other now and again, and send letters every day. He used to be so faithful about that. A letter every day, a package when he could, and whatever money he had spare on pay days. ‘Kisses for you and a hug for my baby boy’, he’d say.”

Squall looks up at Seifer’s face, biting his lip at his expression. Longing, mostly, and pain and longing as well as a kind of joy in knowing that there was such sweetness once in his parents' life – in his own life, if only he’d been old enough to remember. “When… why did that stop?”

Darren shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “James found out in advance that his company would attack the village where you and your mother lived, looking for people with power – you know, sorceresses, mages, people with innate abilities. He’d been on such a raid once before. I was with him, the first time – not the time when his home village was attacked. It was… horrible, even to see it happening to somebody else’s home, somebody else’s livelihood. We didn’t take part in any of it, really, but sometimes you couldn’t help it. I probably don’t need to tell you what kind of thing went on. So many men together, some of them a little drunk, some of them a little antagonised from all the forced marching… things happened.”

“He sent advance warning?”

“He felt it would be dishonourable to do anything else. Most of the time, we didn’t find out in advance. We found out, I can’t remember how, and James... he always had notions like that. Romantic notions, I guess. He always felt that he could and should change the world.”

Squall squeezes Seifer’s hand gently again.

“I guess that’s where I got it from,” Seifer mutters. “What happened then?”

“Abigail sent you to safety, although she didn’t really believe you were in any danger. She sent you to Edea Kramer’s orphanage – not far away, but James was pretty confident that there would be no attacks there. She refused to leave herself, of course.” Darren laughs – not as if he finds it funny, but as if he finds it too naïve for words. It’s a bitter kind of laugh. “She wanted to see James, hoped that if she could say he is my fiancé that everything would somehow be alright.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No,” he says, sadly, “it wasn’t. James and Abigail both died during that raid – James couldn’t keep his cool when it was a place he knew and loved they were attacking. Maybe if more had been brave like him, but… I never realised that the matron of the orphanage didn’t know about what had happened. If I’d known that you didn’t know about what happened to your parents…”

The look on Seifer’s face is much more like the expression he used to wear, back in Garden. Blank, careful, mocking. Squall squeezes his hand gently, looking up to see the flicker of emotion in his eyes.

“I’m just glad I know at all. Thank you for coming to tell me.”

Darren shakes his head. “It’s been good to talk to you. Actually, I can’t stay much longer, I have somewhere to go. I do want to talk to you again. I think James and Abigail would be proud of you.”

“After all I’ve done?”

“I thought we discussed this,” Squall mutters, squeezing Seifer’s hand again – suddenly painfully – and then letting go.

“It’s the truth.”

“You didn’t want or consent to any of it,” Squall snaps.

Darren looks between the two of them, a smile twisting its way onto his lips. “I can imagine how you feel, young Almasy, but I wouldn’t think too much on it. We’re all allowed one big mistake in our lifetimes, and we’d be very lucky if we never made more.”

“Thank you, sir,” he says, awkwardly, and the man shakes his head.

“We’ve already covered this. I hope to see you again soon. I can find my own way out.”

Before Seifer says anything else, Darren is, indeed, making his own way out. Seifer half moves to follow and then stops, looking at Squall and biting his lip hard. “My parents loved me.”

Squall smiles. “I knew that they would’ve done.”

---

“It’s weird to think the whole quest thing is over,” Selphie says, thoughtfully. For once, instead of being perched on Irvine, she’s snuggled up to him. He, despite the fact that Selphie really doesn’t weigh very much, looks rather glad for that. Quistis and Rinoa are rather more subtle, but close enough for Squall to think that Rinoa probably has something to tell him next time she catches him alone.

“I thought you were looking forward to the end of the quest, Selphie,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her. “Since now apparently we’ll be heading to the beach for a few days.”

“Yes, but... I didn’t think we’d be this successful. I didn’t really think anyone would find anything but Zell, Quistis and Seifer all found out about their parents. Only me and Irvine didn’t.”

“I’d happily trade and not know,” Zell mutters, but not very loudly.

Edea gives Zell a sympathetic smile and then looks round at them all, taking in the way they’re sat, comparing it with other evenings. Selphie and Irvine seem closer, steadier, somehow. Quistis and Rinoa are closer, Quistis’ expression relaxed, happy – Edea thinks that she has what she wants now, and it makes her smile. And Seifer and Squall... it’s obvious even to sceptical Quistis how close they’ve become, and there’s still the potential for more. They’re sat together – not quite touching, but close. It makes Edea smile again, not sure if she’s happy or sad to see them all like this, all grown up, and more or less whole now.

“Did it turn out the way you wanted it to?” she asks.

Squall shrugs slightly, carefully avoiding Seifer’s eyes when he speaks. “I think it’s turned out as well as I could’ve expected. It’s... nice, I think, for them to know exactly what happened, why their parents aren’t here. And I’m really glad that Quistis actually found her father.”

“I’m happy knowing that my parents were, well, everything I imagined them to be,” Seifer says. The look on his face that came while he was talking to Darren and stayed for a while has gone now – that bittersweet, longing look in his eyes that’d lasted far too long for Squall’s comfort. “I wasn’t expecting them to be alive, so I wasn’t disappointed. I’m just glad to know about them. Though I do kind of want to hunt down whoever was involved in their deaths, but I think that trail is long cold.”

“I doubt they’d really want you to do that, anyway,” Rinoa says, smiling a little. “They’d probably rather you just settle down happy. They’d rather you not know at all than you spend ages trying to track down some murderers.”
“I suppose so.”

“I hated meeting my father, but,” Zell grins, “it does make me feel kinda good about myself. My dad was an asshole and my mom was kind of a bitch, but I’m a million times better.”

“In your dreams,” Seifer says, teasingly. Squall reflects that it’s probably a mark that they’ve grown, that they aren’t suddenly at each other’s throats over this exchange. Although it’s probably more a sign of comfortable laziness on Zell’s part.

“What about you, Quistis?” Edea asks, raising an eyebrow at her.

Quistis bites her lip. “It’s good to know about it, like Seifer said. And it’s... it’s hard to say how I feel about knowing what happened to my mother. But I’m very glad to know my father and be in touch with him properly. Selphie? How do you really feel about it? I know it was all your idea in the first place, and you haven’t found anything.”

“Actually, it was Irvy’s idea,” Selphie says, glancing at him. “I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t find anything, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up. It’s been good to have a vacation and, well, if the quest worked at all then it’s all to the good, right?”

“You thought of it?” Squall asks Irvine, looking a little confused.

He shrugs. “I suggested it. It’s Selphie here that made it into a big quest. I wasn’t expecting to find anything and I wasn’t horribly disappointed by finding nothing. I had a feeling some would be easier to track than others, so...”

“Maybe we should do this again sometime, look for your parents,” Rinoa says, laughing a little. Squall can’t help but notice that Quistis’ arm is around her waist – subtly, of course, but there. That accounts for the high spirits, he thinks, smiling wryly to himself. “It’s a good excuse for a holiday and it’s been fun.”

Irvine smirks. “Although we haven’t gotten Squall into a bar.”

“I think he’d be cute when drunk,” Selphie says, thoughtfully.

Seifer looks just about to agree, though he – perhaps wisely – keeps his mouth shut. Squall glares at Irvine and Selphie half-heartedly. “We already agreed that you’re not ever getting me drunk.”

“I thought you’d mind more, about not finding anything, since you thought of the idea, Irvine,” Edea says, softly.

Irvine looks up, smiling a little in his most disarming way. He tips his hat back a little as well, stretching his legs out – the picture of laziness and contentment. “I don’t mind at all. It’s all well and good finding out where we came from, but it’s not the be all and end all. The people we are now... that’s more important. And for us, since we were in an orphanage since we were very young, our parents... they aren’t all that important. The most important people is you, I guess, Matron.”

“Irvine...”

“And we love you,” Seifer says, unexpectedly. “We love you for it. You’re all the mother we really need.”

Squall nods, slightly. To Edea, that nod really is something precious. Some real sign of emotion from Squall, who’d never smile no matter how long she’d coax him. From Squall, who has a father and a life that she really has no part in. One by one, the others agree as well, Rinoa looking round at them and smiling approval. Zell is the last to nod, and when he does he looks a little shamed.

“I love Ma and all, but when I really think about it, most of my early memories revolve around you, Matron. They’re all fuzzy now, but they’re still somehow really important.”

“Thank you,” is all she can say, looking round at them and feeling almost as if she wants to cry. She wants to tell them that she does love them. That having them is better than having children of her own. But the words get lost somewhere and she thinks they understand anyway. And if they don’t, well, she’ll have to tell them someday. Show them, somehow.

“We’ll be leaving tomorrow, or more likely the day after,” Selphie says, changing the subject when she notices that she doesn’t know what to say, how to say it. “Not that we’re rushing to leave, but...”

Edea shakes her head, laughing a little. “You deserve to have some vacation time on the beach. You all work far too hard.”

“Except Irvine,” Seifer says, smirking a little. “He just charms everyone else into doing the work.”

“I’ll have you know that I pull my weight.”

“At your own pace.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking things slow.”

Seifer smirks a little more. “I am not in the slightest bit interested in what you and Selphie do in bed, Kinneas. We’re talking about work here.”

Selphie makes a face at him, even going as far as to stick her tongue out. “At least we’re having sex. Nobody would want to have sex with you.”

Squall colours noticeably, but only Edea and Rinoa actually do notice. Seifer just smirks at Selphie, completely unaffected, giving her the most insolent look in his repertoire – a look perfected by years of standing there with his hands in his pocket, rolling his eyes at the lectures of the Garden Faculties. Edea shakes her head slightly. “I don’t think we need to discuss sex and who is or isn’t having it.”

Squall nods hasty agreement, quickly changing the subject – half wishing, all the same, that Seifer would’ve noticed that he blushed when Selphie said that nobody would want to have sex with him.

---

“I noticed you and Seifer were pretty close just then.”

Squall looks up, not entirely surprised to see Rinoa sneaking into the boys’ room, shutting the door behind her. She has a smile on her face and he finds himself smiling back without thinking about it. Something about that smile has always pulled reactions from him, he realises, even though his feelings for her are brotherly at best. “Maybe.”

She snorts softly. “Just maybe? You were practically cuddling.”

“I could say the same for you and Quistis.”

“We have the excuse of actually being together,” she says. She tries to keep her tone light, but she can’t help but sound a little proud and a little embarrassed, blushing just a little. Squall raises an eyebrow at her and she makes a face at him, going to sit down on his bed. “Nothing big. Just, yeah. We’re together now.”

“I thought so.”

“She’s good at kissing,” Rinoa says, musingly, just to needle Squall a little, knowing quite well what his reaction will be.

“Whatever.”

“Quistis was quite reassured to find out you’re gay, you know.” Rinoa grins a little. “She was sort of wondering, since you never did seem to find her at all attractive. I don’t understand why, either, but there you go. Sorry if you didn’t want anyone to know, but it was kind of obvious anyway. Seifer told me – back in the summer I first met him – that there was a betting pool going on at Garden about whether you were gay.”

Squall frowns slightly. “How did that come up in conversation?”

Rinoa spreads her hands in a gesture of exasperation and almost-defeat. “He talked about you a lot. It was one of the first things that tipped me off to his raging crush on you, but it’s really quite obvious. I mean, apart from the whole staring at you thing, he checks out your ass more times a day than Irvine sneaks in a groping session with Selphie, and you know what they’re like.”

“I’d really rather not know,” he mutters, in lieu of an actual response to the idea of Seifer having a crush on him. He’s been starting to suspect a little – if he’s honest, more than a little – that Seifer has certain feelings for him, but he’s also been suspecting that that’s just wishful thinking. If you look for signs hard enough, you find them. But if Rinoa says it, she’s slightly less biased than him – though she is rather obsessed with the idea of playing Cupid for them, which does tend to bias a person a bit.

Rinoa shrugs. “It’s a fact of life. Irvine and Selphie indulge in regular groping sessions.”

“You’re doing that on purpose.”

“Probably,” she says, cheerfully. “Not a law against it.”

“If I drop dead, they might be able to make a case for murder, since it’d be entirely your fault. I really do not want to think of Selphie in that way. She’s like… my little sister.”

“Isn’t she older than you?”

“Like my big sister, then. There’s not much difference. Whatever, she’s almost like my sibling and I do not like thinking about my sibling in any kind of sexual way.”

“Do you feel like all of them are your brothers and sisters?” Rinoa asks, frowning a little. “Like, Irvine too? Because that has to be… kind of weird. Your sort of brother and your sort of sister together.”

“Not really. I just try not to think about them having sex.”

“Do you keep refusing to just go for it and kiss Seifer for similar reasons?”

Squall sighs, trying to sound as aggravated and not in the mood for this kind of conversation as possible. He doesn’t really mind talking about Quistis and Rinoa’s relationship, but Rinoa prying into his love life – at least when he isn’t volunteering the information – doesn’t seem fair to him.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Rinoa.”

“Oh, Squall…” Rinoa sighs, shaking her head at him. “I know you find emotional stuff hard, but you’ve managed to make friends and so on. Why can’t you just let yourself fall for Seifer? He loves you, I can see it. There’s no chance of you getting hurt, so why can’t you just… try and get what you want for once? Don’t you trust him?”

“I trust him with my life,” he says, frowning a little. “Why wouldn’t I trust him? What’s that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know! Why are you making yourself – and him – unhappy by refusing to take any chances?”

Squall takes a deep breath. The way she just said it – he loves you, I can see it – made him feel like a fourteen year old again, except he never felt like this when he was fourteen. His heart never beat quite so fast and he never felt quite as nervous and touched and eager. She’s certainly hit a nerve, but… but…

“I don’t want to ruin what I have with him, okay?” he says, sighing heavily.

“Why would you?”

“We’ve just... we’ve just made friends, for god’s sake, and we’ve known each other for years. I don’t want to fuck that up – and I know I will if I try to date him or whatever. It’s better this way. I’m happy this way. He doesn’t seem unhappy. I don’t… I like things the way they are.”

Rinoa grabs his sleeve and tugs him over to sit next to her on the bed, shaking her head at him in exasperation. “Squall, you’re such an idiot sometimes. He wants you, you want him. He loves you, and I think you love him. You’re both gay. So what exactly is wrong with that equation adding up to you making a move?”

“I know he’s gay.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“I’m… waiting for the right time.”

“And with you, the right time just never comes!” Rinoa rolls her eyes at him, giving up to almost pouting to try and get a proper response from him. “Come on, Squall. Think about it.”

“I am thinking about it! Entirely too much!”

He takes a deep breath, annoyed more by the amused look on her face at his emphatic response than by anything else. He doesn’t mind her trying to help him out. Not really. What he minds is her acting like she knows exactly what he wants and needs – and the fact that she’s so damn likely to be right.

“Keep thinking about it,” she says, more softly.

“I don’t know how to stop,” he says, sounding almost miserable.

She laughs and hugs him quickly, getting up again to leave the room – leaving him alone with his more private thoughts which, treacherously, seem to echo what Rinoa’s been saying.

He’s just not… ready.