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One (Last) Chance	By : RotSeele Category: Final Fantasy VIII > Yaoi - Male/Male > Seifer/Squall Views: 3719 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy 8. I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thirty - Squall POV

Seifer didn’t keep us waiting long. I was sure he had started moving the moment we had touched down, not letting anyone or anything get in his way. Bahamut probably gave him pause when he stepped up to the Ragnarok, but the dragon king didn’t bar his way. He let me know Seifer was on his way up, and I in turn told Rinoa. She beamed at me, and as soon as Seifer pushed his way through the door into the room, she was out of her seat and giving him the biggest, hardest hug she had probably given anyone, including me. And Seifer wrapped his arms tightly around her and lifted her up off the floor, probably driving the breath out of her. Then he put her down and strode over to me.
I didn’t get up.
He and I stared at each other, him looking down and I looking up, and then he leaned down, bracing his hands on the armrests of the chair. “You son of a bitch.” he growled.
I smiled.
“Yeah, yeah. Happy to see me too.” Then he kissed me, hard. Our lips met with bruising force, and his hand tangled in my hair, keeping me from going anywhere. His tongue forced its way into my mouth and fought with mine for a while. Then he stepped back from me. “What the fuck were you thinking?!”
I pointed at Rinoa. “I was thinking I was saving her.”
She came to my defense quickly. “Don’t get mad at him! He was saving my life! And he was keeping those Estharian guys from taking me away to this Sorceress Memorial and sealing me away!”
Seifer’s green eyes narrowed and brightened, but he didn’t turn away from me to face her. He kept focused on me. “And that demon out front?”
“He’s playing guard dog. Did he eat anyone?”
Seifer snorted. “Not yet. When I got here, the Estharians had all but retreated. They thought I was crazy for going toward the giant beast the Knight of the Sorceress summoned, but I bet they shit their pants when Bahamut let me walk right on by.”
I smiled again.
Seifer rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Rinoa. “How are you feeling, princess?”
Rinoa grinned. “Better. Much better. I’ve got both my knights now. Though I think Squall’s overextending himself. Since we got in here, all he did was sit there in that chair with his eyes closed. He won’t admit to taking a nap, but I’m pretty sure he did.”
Seifer looked at me. I lifted my shoulders and scoffed silently. Seifer folded his arms over his chest. “Well, I’m here now. I can do some of the heavier lifting.”
I tilted my head back and looked up at him. “Did you wait for the rescue crew, or did you come straight here?”
He sighed. “The impact from the landing knocked me out. When I woke up, Ellone was gone. Figured it happened just like... just after we landed. I convinced the rescue crew to bring me here, though they didn’t get within one hundred feet of Bahamut.”
His voice wavered as he almost slipped. I heard it, but Rinoa, thankfully, didn’t. She frowned, not sure what was going on, but definitely not liking it. “What happened to her?”
“She was probably captured.” Seifer said. “We were defenseless, so it wasn’t hard for someone to do it.”
“That’s terrible! We have to rescue her!”
Before I could say anything else, I heard Bahamut say, They’re here. I held up my hand for silence, and Seifer and Rinoa quickly closed their mouths. Scant few seconds later, Zell and the others ran into the room. They all grinned upon seeing us safe, whole, and healthy.
“S’up Squall!” Zell crowed, grinning broadly. “So glad you’re safe! I hate to tell you this now, but we’ve got major problems down here. Well, here it goes! Some big thing called Lunatic Pandora came out of nowhere. Matron couldn’t achieve what she set out to do because of it. Which is okay. Matron’s not a sorceress anymore. Matron gave her power to someone without realizing it. And, ah... Oh, yeah, the Galbadian military is controlling Lunatic Pandora. They excavated it from the ocean where Esthar sank it years ago. Inside the Lunatic Pandora, there’s this thing called a ‘Crystal Pillar’. It calls monsters from the moon. The monsters came falling from the moon. Total panic down here. It wasn’t just monsters that came falling down. Sorceress Adel came down-“
I held up my hand to stop him. His teeth clicked shut, and he looked sullen. I knew he had more to say, but I didn’t need to hear it. I already knew. “Adel is inside Lunatic Pandora, and that may have been Galbadia’s true intention.”
Zell gaped for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. That’s what Dr. Odine thought, too.”
“What I want to know,” Selphie piped up, “is who received Matron’s powers.”
Rinoa raised her hand then, looking demure and nervous. “I did. It was me. I’m a sorceress now. Esthar wanted to take me to this place called Sorceress Memorial, and seal me up. They were afraid of me.”
“Makes sense.” Quistis said. Everyone looked at her sharply and she tensed under their stares. “Well, it does. All Esthar has ever known is bad sorceresses. And now the rest of the world has too. I know Matron was possessed by Ultimecia, but the world only saw her do evil things.”
“And everyone saw me release Adel.” Rinoa said quietly. “I was possessed by Ultimecia when I did it, but I still did it. It was still... still me.”
“No it wasn’t!” Selphie said, moving to Rinoa and gripping her hands tightly. “It wasn’t your fault, Rinoa!”
Rinoa smiled, but her eyes watered. “Squall told me the same thing.”
“Well, he was right!”
Rinoa looked at me, her gaze drifting back and forth between Seifer and I. Then she looked at Selphie again and smiled. “I want to set things right. I released Adel, whether I was in control of my body or not. We have to stop her from reviving.”
I stood up from my seat then, causing everyone to look at me expectantly. I couldn’t rush things now, so I knew I had to wait for them to make the first move. So I looked at everyone and said, “If you want to back out now, I won’t say a word. I won’t hold it against you. Because from here on out, everything we do is for keeps. Some of us might not come back. We may be SeeD, but that doesn’t mean we have to throw our lives away, especially in a fight that isn’t technically ours. We weren’t hired for this.” I let my words sink in for a minute before I continued. “Esthar demanded I hand Rinoa over to them. I refused. I threatened them. They’re going to come after me to get to her. If you choose to stay, you’ll be drawing the line and daring them to cross it.”
“I think I speak for all of us when I say, we’re with you, Squall. I mean,” Selphie flashed me a bright grin, “Commander Leonheart.”
I looked around the room at the others. Quistis nodded demurely, her face set in a determined mask. Zell grinned and flashed me a thumbs up. Irvine tipped his hat to me. I already knew where Seifer stood and Rinoa had announced her intentions to everyone. I allowed myself to smile and nodded. “Here’s my plan. We can’t launch a full-scale assault, whether it’s preemptive or retaliatory, against Esthar, not without risking Rinoa. So we’re going to concede the field for now and go back to Matron’s.”
“What?” Zell gasped. “Why?”
“Because, chicken-wuss, he’s forcing Esthar to call his bluff.” Seifer said, a lazy grin on his face. Zell only glowered at him. “We’ve got the sorceress they’re so scared of. Squall’s publicly declared himself her knight. There’s a giant dragon waiting to eat people outside, so they’d have to be stupid to try and attack now. But if he retreats, it looks like he’s daring them to chase him, and taking Rinoa with him only will make them more desperate. They’d be idiots to attack us, especially on our home turf. We’d have the advantage of terrain knowledge, even if they came at us, guns blazing.”
I saw understanding fill Zell’s blue eyes then. He looked at me with a healthy dose of awe in his gaze. “I get it! You’re going to force Esthar to admit they need us in order to defeat Ultimecia, who’s the real threat!”
“More or less.” I replied. I had shown Esthar, or more accurately, Kiros, Ward, and Laguna my strength and determination. They could easily access my records and discover my military prowess. I wasn’t really sure how, or why, they had arrived at the decision of hiring SeeD in the Before, but I had hypotheses, and none of them really made me happy. “For now,” I said after a while, “we are going to retreat. Selphie?”
She looked at me a little too eagerly. “Yeah?”
“Would you like to pilot the Ragnarok?”
“WHOO-HOO!” Selphie bolted out of the room a little too quickly, which told me how excited she was to play with the new toy.
I looked at Irvine. “Control her as best you can? And make sure she takes us to Matron’s.”
He grinned. “You got it.” He sauntered out of the room after Selphie. Zell and Quistis followed soon after, out of fear that Selphie might actually kill us all this time.
“Um,” Rinoa started, smiling back and forth between Seifer and I, “I think I’m gonna go sit down somewhere quiet for a while. It’s been a long day, and I’d rather be sitting when Selphie gets the Ragnarok going.”
I didn’t say anything, but Seifer, being the gentleman he was, escorted Rinoa to the door and ushered her out of it. Then he ensured the door was locked after it closed, leaving us trapped in the room together. I didn’t move from my place by the table. Seifer didn’t move from his place by the door. We stared at each other, each unwilling to be the first to break the silence growing between us. I leaned back against the table and folded my arms across my chest, giving Seifer my best SeeD Commander stare. It didn’t have the intended effect of intimidation, which pissed me off a little bit, but the small smile that quirked his lips made me feel relaxed in a way I couldn’t describe.
Squall, Bahamut hissed, do I really have to stand out here until you take off in that tin can?
No, you can come back now. Thank you.
With a grumble, Bahamut settled back in my mind, where he continued to grumble with half-hearted vinegar until he was comfortable again. Not too long after that, I felt the Ragnarok shift as Selphie figured out the controls of the ship and the gravitational engine kicked on as it lifted off. I barely felt anything even though I knew the ship was moving. Seifer quickly schooled his expression into one of nonchalance, but I knew he was a little freaked out by the ship. I had been too, when I first felt it fly under Selphie’s command. Now it was just a little uncomfortable. I was used to the Garden; the Ragnarok was far faster and far more sensitive.
“I can’t believe you let her pilot this,” Seifer grumbled.
I shrugged. “Before, I didn’t give her permission. She just did it. Then we stormed the Sorceress Memorial and rescued Rinoa.”
“Selphie pushed you in that direction, eh?”
I shrugged again. I didn’t particularly want to remember Before. I’d been an emotional wreck, feeling as if my life was spiraling out of control and doing whatever someone else decided, even if it made me feel like crap. I hadn’t been me. Now I was looking at my past with a different sort of clarity, bought with experience and a chance to write a different history. I had been a completely different person at that stage in the fight, lost and confused and terrified that I was going to lose everyone and everything I cared about, and the only thing I could do was feel sorry for myself.
“Talk to me.”
I looked up at Seifer. He’d closed the distance between us and now stood only a few inches away. That I hadn’t heard him move or felt his presence so close told me that I had fallen deeply inward, and my expression must have worried him. His face didn’t show it, of course, but I could see the tenseness to his shoulders. If I was worried now, Seifer was probably scared, and he didn’t handle fear well. I’d prepared him for the future steps we were going to take, but describing wasn’t the same as doing. It held a different flavor, a different anticipation. A different kind of fear. Until you’ve experienced what you’ve been anticipating, you didn’t really know how to feel, and when you’re in a situation that requires fight or flight, feelings and emotions and everything but instinct was shut away until ‘safe’ was a believable thing.
“It’s nothing, really.” I said at last, my voice soft.
He arched a brow at me. “Really?”
“Just remembering.”
“Ah.”
He opened his arms but didn’t move forward. He just looked at me. After a moment, I pushed away from the table and pressed my face into his shoulder. I didn’t wrap my arms around him, but he enclosed me in his. I felt his cheek press against my hair. I didn’t know what he was looking at, or if he was standing with his eyes closed and just holding me. He didn’t let go, though, and I didn’t move back.
Then Seifer said, “You’re a bastard, you know that? For not telling me what you were going to do up there. And for not telling me Sis would get taken by Galbadia.”
I fidgeted. It was a small twitch, but he felt it anyway.
“What now?”
I stayed quiet.
“Oh, no, no.” Seifer pushed me back then and pressed me against the table, one of his legs between mine and his weight bearing down me so I was bent awkwardly backwards with my own weight focused on my elbows. “You talk, Leonhart. No more surprises. You stopped right after you told Ellone you needed her to meld with Rinoa to achieve the Time Compression. There were details you didn’t tell us. You tell me now, or I swear to Hyne, you’re not getting out of this room until you do.”
I focused on his face, on the way his green eyes glinted with anger. I licked my lips, just a little flick of the tongue, and noticed that he noticed the movement. He realized it wasn’t a nervous tick but a diversionary tactic far too quickly for my liking, and he shifted just enough to ensure I wouldn’t get enough leverage to shove him off me. Of course, that meant he was pressed tightly enough against me that I could feel him, and he could feel me. And that wasn’t good for either of us. He pressed against me even harder, and I slowly lost my ability to think as I started to drown in his scent, in his heat.
The only way for me to escape was to get him away from me. So I said, “Rinoa has to inherit Adel’s power. For her to do that Before, you threw her to Adel so Adel could absorb Rinoa’s power.”
He jerked back, releasing me and taking a few steps away. He ran a hand through his hair and said one word that summed up the situation rather nicely, I thought. “Fuck.”
I lowered myself off the table to stand on the floor. I focused on the carpet that covered the Ragnarok’s floor, certain that I hadn’t seen that particular pattern in the fibers before. “That has to be done so that Ultimecia will thrust her consciousness into Rinoa. Then, and only then, can Sis use her powers to send them both far enough into the past for Ultimecia to start the Time Compression. She’ll pull Rinoa back, freeing her of Ultimecia,” I explained, feeling as though I had to speak quickly, “but then we’re going to get into it for real.”
“Before you didn’t have a choice about it, but now you do.” Seifer said. “Are you really going to let Rinoa that close to Adel?”
I nodded.
“And you expect me to let that happen, too?”
I nodded.
He ran his hand through his hair and then over his face. “Fuck, Squall, you don’t make this easy.”
“That’s three times you’ve said that now.”
He gave me an amused, if frustrated, smirk. “And I’m sure I’ll say it again, sooner or later.”
I shrugged. “The point is, Seifer, no matter how much I want to change things I can’t. Besides, something’s occurred to me lately that I didn’t think of before.”
“And what’s that?”
“Ultimecia is a sorceress who has the power over time. She knew a SeeD was going to come to kill her, which turned out to be me. She was running from her death in the only way she knew how - stopping it entirely. She might already know I’m coming. She might have prepared something for me. I’m as unnatural to this timeline as she is. We could destroy each other.”
Seifer was silent for a time, just staring at me. His green eyes were dark, and I could almost see the thoughts working in his mind. Then he stepped closer to me, trapping me against the table and against his body. He lifted his hand and placed it on the back of my head. His fingers closed on my hair and pulled my head back slightly. Then I felt his lips on mine, not making any demands, not doing anything more than pressing down in the most chaste of kisses that he could manage. Then he pulled back just enough so we were looking in each other’s eyes.
“I won’t let that happen.” Seifer said quietly, fiercely. “For once in your life, Squall, you’re going to get what you deserve.”
I closed my eyes and nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. Seifer didn’t follow up his comment either. He just pulled me against him and held on tight.
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One (Last) Chance