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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-One - Seifer POV

Squall’s words bothered me. They bothered me more than I figured they would. We were SeeD (he was, anyway) and death was something that went along with the job. The luxury, though, was you never knew when it would come, and if it did, it more than likely came fast and would hurt for only a few seconds. But Squall... Squall knew he could very well die before we got close to finishing what should’ve been finished in his Before. If Ultimecia was screwing with time, and already knew what her fate would be, then it really wasn’t that all far-fetched that she knew Squall was an anomaly too. I’d seen the wisdom of his decision to hold to the line time wanted us to take - even though it pissed me off sometimes - and trying to keep his knowledge of the future on the down-low, but now I was glad I’d followed his lead. If he had gone all out from the beginning, it wasn’t likely that Ultimecia would have allowed him to live. There was still a chance that he wouldn’t make it to the end. Once we went into the Time Compression, we were in Ultimecia’s world. All we had would be what we brought with us.
We landed at the old orphanage in less time than I thought we would, and I followed Squall out of the office and the Ragnarok entirely. So did everyone else. We were hiding, and we didn’t care. We camouflaged the Ragnarok so it wouldn’t be spotted by anyone looking for it, then entered the orphanage. Edea immediately went to try and make something to eat for us and to try and clean the place up, and we pitched in to help. It was something to do, and for me, it took my mind off the very real situation I was facing. It let me put my nervous energy to good use, rather than something more destructive, like forcing Squall into a fight or picking on Zell. Edea wouldn’t have approved of either.
We had dinner and were quiet through the entire meal. We were all thinking about the same thing - what were we going to do now? Yeah, we were waiting for Esthar to contact us, but what if they didn’t? If they didn’t invite us back in, we would essentially be a seven-man army invading a country in order to rescue a girl who was special to us all and then use her to get at our real enemy. We’d be under siege from all sides until we actually went into the Time Compression, and then all the rules would be changed. We’d be on our own. After we finished the meal, we all went our own ways, cleaning up or trying to get some sleep, or in Rinoa’s case, getting some pointers on being a sorceress from Matron. Squall walked out the back of the house to the beach.
I found Squall where he sat with his back to the house, completely alone, but looking more relaxed and composed than I’d ever seen him before. He didn’t even react to my approach, but I knew he’d heard me coming. I couldn’t help the lazy smile that spread over my face. That right there was a measure of his trust for me, that he didn’t react to my approach. I sat down beside him but didn’t say anything. I stared out at the water that I used to play in as a kid and listened to the sound of the waves crashing against the sands. Then Squall settled his head against my shoulder and sighed.
“Waiting sucks.” I said at last.
I felt him twitch, about the closest thing to a laugh that I was going to get out of him. He shifted, looking up at me. “Deal with it.” he said softly.
I scoffed. “Your dad should know better than to keep people waiting.”
Now Squall really did laugh. It was a nice sound, one I’d rarely heard before. It was deep and from the chest, barely matching the normal tenor he spoke with. Finally, he sobered, though the shadow of a grin still played on his face. “That’s all he ever does.” he said. “Keep people waiting.”
“Tch.” I rolled my eyes. “So what’s the deal with you and him, anyway? Does he even know about you?”
“Sis has told him. She was there, when I was born.”
“But he didn’t come looking for you?”
“I don’t think I was really on his priority list. Ellone had been taken, so he went hunting for her. By the time he rescued her and got back to my mother, it was too late. He knew Edea, so I guess he checked in on me, took care of me in his own way. I mean, Edea got the money to care for us somehow.”
“Huh.” I hadn’t thought about that part. Neither Cid nor Edea really had jobs outside taking care of us. Back then, I hadn’t been old enough to appreciate that. The clothes on my back came from somewhere. The food I put in my belly came from somewhere. All of that needed money. “You think your dad sent money to them to care for you?”
“I think. I don’t know. Probably.”
“You think he feels guilty for not being around when your mom needed him, and for not being around for you?”
He nodded, then shrugged. He said nothing.
So I took the time and used the silence to put together a working theory of my own, based on what I knew about Squall’s dad, Laguna. It took me a while to put together something that I could believe, but Squall was ever quiet, just resting his head against my shoulder. Finally, I sucked in a breath and let it out in a long sigh. “I think your dad wanted to be there for you. I mean, shit, he was in the middle of a war and trying to save Ellone at the same time. Yeah, I bet he felt like a douchebag for leaving your mom to deal with a pregnancy all on her own, and then dumped a little girl on her in order to go back and get the country he fucked up back to rights, and then not being there when she died and you and Sis got put in Matron’s care. By the time he got around to coming back to your mom, it was too late.”
Squall shifted away from me in order to look at my face. I didn’t glance at him, didn’t even acknowledge the movement. I was afraid that if I did, I’d stop talking.
“By then, he was the President of Esthar. I doubt it was an easy time either. So he did the only thing he could think of to protect you and Ellone. He left you with Matron. By the time everything calmed down, you were five. If he just swooped in and said ‘I am your father’, you’d probably freak out. Back then, you didn’t react well to change. There’s one time I remember, you started crying because something had happened. We’d come back from a field trip with Matron, and just stepped into the front room. No one else knew what was different, because we couldn’t see it and everything looked the same to us, but you did. I still don’t know what happened, and I was right there next to you. It took Sis forever to get you to shut up.”
Squall frowned, an unsure look. Some measure of understanding filled his grey-blue eyes. “Cid rearranged the furniture while we were out to make room for something... I don’t remember what. But it was enough that I noticed it, and I thought something bad had happened. Because Cid wasn’t there when we arrived and everything looked different.”
I gave a slight nod. I licked my lips to continue talking. “So he left you there, where it was safe. Could you imagine what would happen if the world found out the President of Esthar had a kid? If his enemies found out? I’m sure not everyone was happy that he took out Adel and imprisoned her in space for seventeen years. If they knew about you, they’d try to kill you to break him. He’d already lost your mom; he didn’t want to lose you, too. Then shit started going down again, and Matron and Cid went to hide Sis, probably at Laguna’s request, and they probably would’ve hid you too, if Matron hadn’t been a sorceress by that point. Sis was more important because of her powers, which kinda sucks, because you relied on her so much. She was the only constant in your life, since she’d been there since the beginning.”
Squall’s expression changed. It became blank. I knew it wasn’t that way because he hated what I was saying. It was that way because, on some level, he’d figured the same thing, only he hadn’t admitted it to himself by putting it into words. He turned away from me and focused on the water. His knees came up and his arms wrapped around them. The position was one he’d assumed before, when we were younger. It was his attempt to protect himself, physically and mentally. He hadn’t taken that position at any time before now, which told me how sensitive a subject this was to him.
So I continued, “My guess is that, and this is going to make me sound like a total bastard, but my guess is that you looked so much like your mom that your dad couldn’t stand it. You brought forward all the guilt he couldn’t deal with. It was easier for him to watch you grow up from afar, to get letters about you from Matron, and to let you go with the knowledge you would never know your parents, you would never know him, and you would have an independent life, not overshadowed by him. I think meeting you for the first time since seeing you as a little kid threw him. Brought back all the memories and the guilt and everything else. He couldn’t tell you. I doubt he wanted to tell you anything. You were going to go face the most dangerous sorceress in the world. If he told you right then that, oh, yeah, by the way, guess who I am, you’d probably have lost all your resolve. And I’m not saying the resolve to kill the bitch, but the resolve to come back alive. Could you live with yourself knowing that you were essentially abandoned by your only living family, that you were cast aside in favor for a girl with magic powers, and now after all that, said only living family was basically sending you off to die?”
His arms tightened around his knees. Yeah, I felt like a bastard for saying this out loud, as if he hadn’t thought of all this already. He hadn’t known any of this Before, but he did now. And he was still moving forward anyway. I ran a hand through my hair, then leaned back on my hands and felt the rough sand press into my flesh. “If you’re this badass now, then you were just as badass then.” I said. “You could’ve taken that power of yours, plus all those demons who are loyal to you, and destroyed everything. Took over.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” He sounded defensive.
“I know you wouldn’t. But you could have.”
He turned slightly to glower at me, about as much of a reproach as I would get from him.
I gave him a mild look back.
He sighed.
“Squall, the one thing you have to realize is that you’re fucking scary when you’re pissed off. Especially now. And you’re stable. I bet Before, when all this was going down with Rinoa and shit like you said, you weren’t exactly the sanest person and you were walking around with giant ass monsters who would like nothing more than to make you happy.”
His lips twitched. I could only imagine what Bahamut was saying to him. The Guardian Forces in my mind certainly were agreeing with my assessment. They loved Squall - far be it from me to know why - and they would do anything for him, including destroying anything that brought him pain.
“Now,” I said, “you’re still walking around with giant ass monsters who would like nothing more to make you happy, but you know everything that’s going to happen. You know your relationship with your dad sucks. I mean, for Hyne’s sake, you can’t even decide what you want to call him. I’ve heard you call him ‘Dad’ and ‘Laguna’ and ‘idiot’, and you’ve probably called him other things that I won’t repeat in polite company.” Squall’s shoulders shook as he tried to laugh silently. I grinned. “So what if you’re not on good terms with him? He’s your father, twenty-five percent of your DNA. That’s all he is. Besides a very fat paycheck.”
“Twenty-five?”
“I’m assuming seventy-five is your mother’s donation.”
Squall hid his face in his folded arms and shook. When he was finished with his fit, he turned to face me, eyes bright and a small smirk twisting his lips. He pushed me back onto the sands, then straddled my lap, which certainly enjoyed his presence there. He arched an eyebrow at me, to which I responded with a grin and a shrug. I wasn’t going to be ashamed of him being astride me now, not after all the cock-teasing and cock-blocking he’d done lately. He leaned down and kissed me, gently. After a moment, he allowed the kiss to become hotter, slipping his tongue into my mouth. I shook the sand off my hands to be able to cup the back of his head and make the kiss even deeper, and then risked my life by squeezing his ass. His head came up from the kiss, breaking it, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
“Hey,” I said with a grin, “you’re the one on top of me.”
His eyes narrowed even more.
“And you started it.”
He grumbled, “I suppose you want me to finish it.”
I grinned wider. “Of course I do. But we’re on the beach, out in the open, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to share what you look like naked with anyone else. Besides, I don’t want to get sand in places sand doesn’t belong. You can kiss me again. We might even have enough time for a repeat performance of our little night at Fisherman’s Hori-mmph!”
He sealed his mouth over mine a little forcefully, his way of telling me to shut up. I obliged him this time, giving his ass another squeeze as his tongue tangled with mine. His hips ground down against mine, sending lightning searing through my blood and up into my brain. Screw everything I just said. I wanted him now, and I didn’t care who saw. My hand slid up from his ass to his back, under his jacket and shirt, to stroke the bare skin of his shoulders and the line of his spine. He arched into my touch, breaking the kiss only to breathe, then we rejoined, tongues battling. Somewhere in the back of my mind, and I was sure the same thought was in the back of his mind, I knew we were going to get caught. We wouldn’t be able to get much further. Yet with each passing minute that we weren’t interrupted made us bolder. Our touches became hotter and more insistent. Our bodies reacted accordingly, and I could feel his hardness pressing into my stomach. I started to fumble with the belt buckles to try and get them open, just to wrap my hand around his flesh and feel its heat and weight in my hand, like before.
Then Squall froze. I opened my eyes and stared up at his face. His eyes were bright and feral, and there was a look on his face that said he was going to kill whoever was approaching. But he rolled off me faster than I thought he could move, and with envious speed put himself back to rights. I took a little longer in calming myself down, grumbling the entire time and cursing each progressively louder footstep.
Then Zell appeared from behind the giant rocks that had shielded us. He looked shocked at seeing me there with Squall rather than Rinoa, and judging by the faint splash of red on his face, he’d probably seen a little more than I would’ve liked. Or maybe it was just my imagination, since he kept looking back and forth between Squall and I like he was a fat, meaty sheep and we were the wolves.
“Uh,” he started, “sorry to interrupt! But it’s an emergency. We got radio contact from Esthar’s Presidential Palace. They have a plan to defeat Ultimecia. They want to hire SeeD to execute it, just like you said they would.”
“Anything else?” Squall asked, his voice perfectly calm and quiet as if I hadn’t just been feeling him up and getting him excited.
“Oh, yeah, ah... The guy we spoke to, his name’s Kiros. Could he be... that Kiros?”
Squall’s shoulders lifted then dropped. He got to his feet and I followed suit. “Either way, it really doesn’t matter. We’re going to go and see what they want.”
Zell nodded and quickly turned to run back to the orphanage. Squall started back up the hill and I followed, watching his measured step. There was a hint of tenseness to it, which was probably partly my fault for bringing up and out all these emotions in him. And probably because we were interrupted before things got really, really interesting. I reached to grab his wrist to stop him, and he paused, looking up at me. He didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We just exchanged a look. Then we headed through the orphanage and to the Ragnarok. Just before we entered the ship, Edea came running out of the building, breathless.
“Squall!” she yelled, straining to be heard over the firing engines. “There is something I must tell you. It is about me... Yes... I believe it was thirteen years ago... This is where my story begins. I first became a sorceress when I was a child. And once again... thirteen years ago. That day... right here, I encountered a sorceress on the verge of death. I received her powers of my own will. That sorceress was an entity of fear for my children. I could not let her get to them. But... This turned out to be the beginning of my painful story. At this very minute, my bitter story has ended. I now understand that there is an end, no matter how painful it may be. Therefore... Squall? You must fight to the end! Even though it may bring tragedy to others!”
I glanced at Squall, noting how he stared at Matron with a tight, almost wild gaze. He nodded rather than respond, and headed up and into the Ragnarok. I looked back at Matron, saw her eyes filled with tears, her hands clasped tight enough that her knuckles were white. She met my gaze and the tears started to fall.
“Don’t worry, Matron,” I yelled down to her, “I’ll bring them all back. I promise you that!” I’ll bring Squall back, definitely.
I turned my back on her and headed into the ship, soon enclosed in darkness as the gangway closed behind me. The Ragnarok was quickly airborne, and we were once again on our way to Esthar.
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One (Last) Chance