Final Fantasy VIII Still

**a/n** Found this on my hard drive and thought, why didn't I publish this? I'm sure if there was a real reason ya'll will let me know. Dedicated (this and any ff8 story I write, really) to all of the awesome ff8 fanfic writers, you keep this universe somewhere I still want to rediscover over and over again. Hope you enjoy.

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**Still**

Sometimes she lies awake at night wondering if she is going to die.

The whole thought of it sends spasms through her body and she retches uncontrollably even though nothing ever comes out. For months this has been happening, since the expulsion of what made her the witch (_this was a mistake, oh god)_, and she can't count the number of times Cid has rushed her down to Dr. Kadowaki's room in the middle of the night, begging for her to tell him what is wrong with his wife. Of course she can never find anything. The only think that is wrong with Edea is that her body is rotting from the inside out.

.

A mother named her porcelain baby Edea. She was painfully beautiful. She grew up knowing cruelty and jealousy and hatred because of this.

But she _intrigued_ him. Cid Kramer was a budding historian, who now spent his time reading books in coffeehouses and dreaming about picket fences and teaching in some small classroom in Galbadia. He couldn't keep his eyes off her. His vanity was of no question, he did not hate her for her beauty, or ever compliment her on it; he revered her for her mind. They were both physically and intellectually attracted towards one another, yet she found herself lusting more over his mind rather than his body.

The Sorceress War came and went and she was more than happy to stay away from it. She had married Cid the year before the war, and together they had hastily decided to make their tiny seaside cottage into an orphanage, as the war was to make too many orphans and not enough mothers. It grew on her – mothering - like a parasite stuck to the side of her neck. These children were beautiful, and smart, and she really did love them, but her instinct to be a mother was one formed and not something innate. She did the best she could, under the circumstances. She even got some of them adopted out. Others, however, were too problematic or introverted and they were unwanted, unneeded and ultimately useless in the world they were born into.

During her time being matron of the orphanage, she vaguely remembers that at one point in time things became slow and liquid, and she remembered scenes with vacant eyes and faces and_ who was she looking for?_ When she awoke the next day her body ached and she knew something was _wrong. _Her skin had become too smooth and her eyes too bright and when she went to sleep at night she dreamt of horrors she could never have imagined in her waking hours. She was never too warm and she was never too cold. She would bite her nails and they would grow back as if new and her body had stopped forming altogether and even seemed to digress, her skin as supple and smooth as it had been in her teenage years. Everything aged around her while she stayed immobile on her biological timeline, a ticking clock stalled.

She knew what had happened, her _ascension_, but her acceptance did not come with time but with effort and struggle. But she knew what she was capable of – or so she thought – and she wanted something _more_, for herself and for these children. They did not have to be unwanted and useless; they could be used for something. Cid did not want more. He was a man of thoughts and not so much of action, but in his desperation he would do anything to keep her happy. So he built her a Garden, and after years of pondering what these children could be used for (_expendable, broken, bastards; make them soldiers)_ she planted her SeeDs and watched them grow. Despite everything, she wanted them to know how to destroy what had destroyed them, their lives, their families and their identities; even if that meant her. She wanted them to know that they had a reason to be alive. Things don't always turn out the way we plan.

Darkness. She remembered unrelenting, inky darkness. She thought she was dying. Maybe she was. When her sight came back it was an explosion of light and sound, winding and spiraling together and her simple bedroom looked like a palace. The back of her head felt as if a giant tick had attached itself and was feeding on her mind as it flowed, liquid, out of her skull. Things were both clearer and fuzzier than before.

She had left that night. She thinks the minute Cid woke up he knew exactly what was happening, because he did not try to find her. He knew this day would come. When it was time to do something about it, he had issued the orders and left the dirty work up to children she had raised herself because he couldn't do it, it was too hard even if they had grown apart. She had spoken to Cid about this before, and she did not feel his actions were callous. He did what he was told. _SeeDs are trained to kill the sorceress _is all she had said to him when she told him the training for the students at Balamb Garden. Maybe he hadn't understood what that meant at the time, but she certainly had. She encouraged the use of guardian forces to rob them of their memories so they would never know what they had done. It was a small price to pay, she thought.

She had always had an affinity for the blonde one, the one who would chase his surrogate brothers and sisters around, pulling their hair and tripping them. He spent his days like this, but at night she saw him dreaming of being something _more._ She gave him old books of chivalry and watched his eyes light up as he imagined himself a knight.

Above all, she was responsible for the happiness of these children. The world is not perfect but a child does not need to know that. She had wanted for them to have purpose but in the process had changed real life human beings, children, into something dangerous and cruel. These SeeDs, where was their childhood? It was washed away like so many drawings she had made with them, in the sand by the sea. With only memories of Garden they would know nothing else. Perfect soldiers.

But _he_ wouldn't forget. Romantic dreams are what he would call them, those idle thoughts he couldn't stop thinking about when he shut his eyes. Maybe when he went to sleep, he remembered that once upon a time he had dreams past being that perfect soldier. In a television station in a foreign land, she tried her best to make this dream come true.

No one really understands what it is like to have another time inside of you. When Ultimecia wanted to speak, when she wanted to act, Edea felt as if her mind melted. Maybe she could have fought against her, maybe she couldn't have. She didn't know because she didn't try. She didn't have the energy or the desire.

Beauty. What was an inherent part of her had become something that no one would speak of. She had long stopped counting the years that she had sat and stared at that perfect, ageless face. What should have delighted her horrified and disgusted her. Why shouldn't it? How many lifetimes does one have to live before being too beautiful is no longer a source of hurt and shame? Cid had felt she had lost her beauty a long time ago. She was no longer of interest to him. As much as he loved her, he hated her just as much as the rest of them now, now that she shoved his mortality in his face every time she was near him.

She had known that day would come. It was absolutely inevitable. She and he both knew that by the time he was old and grey she would have barely aged a year. Edea knew that part of Cid's distance from her was that he felt like he was making love to a ghost, something from the past, something older than him yet younger than he had ever been. As he began to resent her beauty he inevitably began to resent the rest of her.

_I did nothing wrong._

If she had the power, she would have sliced her cheeks and clawed out her eyes. She would have ripped her own heart out if she had known what would happen when it stopped beating, but no, she wasn't capable of that. Instead she gave it all away to some poor girl who didn't know what she had got herself into and now she felt those regrets, those ones that you feel after you've done something you can never undo, and you accept that it was the right thing to do but in the back of your mind you know it was the biggest mistake of your life. She did this after she had changed herself into something she barely recognized, however, so the damage was almost too much to bear. Now she had nothing.

Her capabilities as a sorceress were unknown to her until the possession. Simple procedures did not require magic. She learned that it took two hands to break a man's legs and only one to snap his neck. Magic came in second. Demi and the time spells were essential in psychological warfare. Fire spells worked wonderfully to get an execution over quickly, but the _real_ killer – perfect for interrogation - was a combination of ice and thunder. The cold made them talk and the combination of the two was truly brilliant. With such beautiful conduction they would spasm like fish on a frying pan.

Death scared her. Mortality scared her. All she had wanted to do was change but the thought of aging and dying and the reality that was her future now made bile rise in her throat. The thought of these soldiers and civilians flailing like fish made her ill as well, but she did it anyway. How can someone be such a _fucking_ hypocrite.

She had no will of her own. That would explain the murder and the rage of the possession. Even in her weakest times of possession she could not escape the voice and the anger and her _will_, her will was not strong enough to stand against the will of Ultimecia so she did it, she did it all and she didn't question and she felt the blood and the bones and the bile.

Her eyes water and her stomach retches, so she holds her breath and the night is still.

.

Memory. It's a funny thing.

**Under new Garden rules, in the course of guardian force training, SeeDs are warned that they will, without doubt, incur a large amount of memory loss, which may or may not cease to occur after the de-junction process (which may or may not succeed). This is a known side effect and guardian force training should be considered a permanent life decision.**

_(memories of seashores and books and i want to be a knight i _will_ protect you)_

**During the process of possession, the possessed is rendered numb and blind to the world around them, and their actions are not their own. Under no circumstances should a possessed be held liable for their actions, and any case of possession must be tried and decided under the appropriate Garden court of law.**

_(i want more and maybe i could stop myself if i wanted to but i don't i don't want it to stop)_

Her possession waned in and out. Sometimes she couldn't remember anything, but these were brief moments when things had just begun. After the destruction of Trabia Garden, she rarely did not _see_ what was happening, and very often, she would become more and more lucid to the world around her. Blood spurting onto her cheek; yes, she could feel that. The feeling of bones cracking under her fingertips; yes. Salt and skin and desire on her tongue and under her hands and throughout her body; yes, she was aware. It was like a nightmarish intoxication.

It wasn't an immediate lucidity. She could very well lie and say that her actions were not her own. They weren't. In the back of her mind, a voice of overwhelming comfort told her that everything was going to be alright. She was doing well but they were coming to _kill_ her and she had done nothing, nothing, nothing. She could rarely sleep from the constant throb of paranoia gnawing at her gut. _You can't stop now what are you thinking! They will kill you and for what? What have you done that is worth dying for?_ _**Nothing**_.

She remembered the first time she realized that she had some control over her actions. Picture this: a man, bruised, beaten and spitting up blood all over Edea's beautiful hands. She clenches her fist around his neck and, before the break, she remembers letting go, ever so slightly. The man looks up at her with such sympathy that she knows she will never be able to live with herself again. The back of her mind begins to pulse and his neck snaps with such force that she isn't sure who she is anymore.

Her knight - he told her she was beautiful. Every day he would kneel at her feet and kiss her hands and tell her that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. _I would die for you if you just gave me the chance._ He only expected her to be beautiful and powerful and that was enough for him. After all, he was beautiful too.

He had come to her in the middle of the night. She was wide awake, as always, sitting in her chambers within Galbadia Garden. At night the possession was the weakest and manifested itself in paranoid delusions and schizophrenic conversation. Apart from that, she had the slightest bit of control over her mind and her body, but in all honesty she wish she hadn't been given the option. Control is a terrible word. Control implied willpower and we've already established that she didn't want to admit that she had any of that. It waned in and out and when the possession broke, even if just for a moment, the guilt was absolutely suffocating.

At her feet he kneeled. His hands were shaking and were red from being rubbed raw by cheap soap and hard water. Things needed to be done but she would much rather use him than herself. The blood may have rubbed his hands raw but hers were covered with layers that couldn't be washed away.

_Above all, she was responsible for the happiness of these childr-_ Shut up.

He stood up and without looking at her eyes he fell into her arms, tugging at her dress urgently and pushing her headdress to the floor, resonating throughout the hall. She could feel him hard against her and she realized how sad and pitiful he really was.

_Stupid, stupid boy…_

_I know but I need this, I need you to possess me and own me and control me, I can't be your knight if I can feel my heart because it's breaking my conscience into pieces._

Was it wrong? At the moment the confusion and the anger that lacquered them both made them slick and new and she could _feel_ his humanity and it killed her inside and she needed that to remind her that somewhere within her shell she was still human.

_Above all, she was responsible for the happiness –_

He would grab at her hair and she would latch onto him with such force that his back looked at if he had been whipped and beaten; the trails her fingernails left were deep and layered. When he kissed her she felt like he wanted to swallow her whole and maybe he did. She tried her best to swallow his guilt and shame but in the end she succeeded only in causing more. When he came he would whimper like a lost dog and break down, his body racked with sobs. She never came, and he knew it, but he would stay with her until she forced him to leave, wrapped around her body like a tourniquet. He wanted her to protect him from himself, but she couldn't even protect her own soul from damnation, so what could she do for him?

_- of these children. _Children.

He was just a boy.

She had never wanted to be a mother.

.

Dreaming. Dreaming she was a monster and a thief and a murderer. Dreaming that, when she woke up, she would be just as bad but with a conscience, with a soul and really, which one was worse? Parades and battles and defeats were thrown together and rearranged and played like a movie, and she knew she was a monster then too but she could blame someone else. Nights of depraved passion and depression so deep you could swim within it, this made her a monster too, but she didn't have excuses except the same ones he had as well. _Control me, make me not myself._ You could kill a thousand men and be a monster but it was another thing entirely to raise a man only to destroy him and leave him for dead, _that_ was a true monster and that was _exactly_ what she was.

Her breath chokes her and she lies awake at night, wondering when she is going to die.

**&&**

Chewing his fingernails until they bleed reminds him of blood coated hands and the sound a bone makes when it breaks.

Seifer doesn't like to lie. If there is one redeeming factor about him, it is his brutal honesty. It may have won him a less than stellar reputation at Garden but not a _single goddamn person_ in the entire place could look into his eyes and call him a liar. That's why he chews his fingernails and drinks to fall asleep at night.

.

When he was growing up - blurry memories and sights and smells rolled into one – he had wanted to be something _more_. Knights and chivalry seemed a good enough patch to mend the wound his broken identity and gaping loneliness had left him. Even as a child he knew things weren't going to be easy.

When they start you on GF training they shoot you up with all kinds of strange things, to keep your mind from rejecting the toxic effects of a mental possession. No one ever remembers, of course, because the first junction is so intense that the rumors around Garden were that it took 5 years of your life away from both the past _and _the future. He hardly thought of them as rumors. He knows these things because he saw it happen, once, in the back of Kadowaki's office. Seeing it made his head ache and he wondered if the monster inside was working diligently so he would forget this too. But he hadn't.

He had been one of the lucky ones. Despite his training with GFs in his cadet years, his lack of admission into SeeD and his general distaste for them made his experience with them short lived. He never recovered true memories, more like ideas and feelings, and a few childhood nicknames. He remembered more than the others, but he still could not remember _why_ he remembered certain things, and with all of his thoughts blurring together he had difficulties figuring out if any of it was real. He wondered if the GFs made it easier for the sorceresses to control him, his mind already mired with accepted possession.

.

Black hair and white skin. If he had a type, that would be it. He remembered his life from about the age of 14, though he knew as he aged he would start forgetting even more.

(_Maybe one day, I'll forget all of it)_

Rinoa had been a sweet and fun diversion for his summer. They had met in a smelly Deling bar (cliché, he knows, but it's true), smoke choking the air and the fumes from the alcohol so pungent that it was a wonder that the place wasn't in flames. It was the kind of place frequented by old drunks and young kids who didn't know what a real bar was. Seifer never put himself in either category but the women in the latter were generally the best conquests.

She'd smiled, coyly, but he knew her game just like he knew everyone else's. She talked about dreams and politics and how she was going to do something _big,_ change the world, help Timber. Her drive and passion for what seemed so futile absolutely fascinated him. He was beside himself, really. Inevitably, lunch dates turned to passionate, fast, dominating struggles in the back seat of Zone's shitty car or in the pretty pretty princess room they built up just for her. He would see Watts and Zone standing outside of the docked train, see their jealousy as Seifer walked in and out and in again with their "princess," their little ambassador for the cause. He could see them now, cringing when he made her moan and wishing it was one of them instead. Seifer had gotten into the habit of buying Zone a dirty magazine when he came back with Rinoa and telling him to go "distract himself" elsewhere. Zone would flush and Rinoa would elbow Seifer in the ribs. _Meanie._

He liked her because she _didn't_ take his shit. She wasn't shy about what she wanted and how she wanted it. She was so terribly intoxicating to be around that, despite her frustrating nature, he was completely smitten with her. He'd only been a little scared when she'd mentioned her father, as he tended to bed the bastards of the world back at Garden. But an army general, well, it would probably be best he didn't know too much about Seifer so when he inevitably fucked his daughter over he wouldn't wake up with some Galbadia assassin standing over his bed with a gun to his temple.

Strange that it ended up the other way around, her fucking _him_ over. Strange that Squall's bed got warmer before his even got cold. _Really fucking strange_.

It was inevitable, of course, that something like this would happen, but with _him? _If Rinoa had been bored with Seifer then she was in for a real surprise. He remembered one night in the Garden, the same summer he was with Rinoa, barging in on Squall awkwardly messing around with some cadet in their class in the hallway outside the quad, far after closing time. _Pathetic. _He had walked quietly enough as to not arouse suspicion, but after painfully watching Squall fumble around with her for a few minutes, he decided the situation was far past salvage and walked into the scene, his laugh splitting the silence. Squall had jumped so high that Seifer gained even more pleasure than he was expecting, seeing him scared like that. The girl's hand had flown to her mouth and she had hit Squall on the shoulder, yelling that she _knew_ they should have gone somewhere else. Seifer had walked by and, in true bastard fashion, had winked at the girl and said if she actually wanted to get anywhere she should visit _him._ He'd then given Squall two emasculating taps on the cheek as if to say _better luck next time_, and the look on Squall's face was nothing less than a pleasing mixture of embarrassment and rage.

Seifer had begun to think that he deserved most of what he got. It wasn't that he was inherently a bad person, at least he didn't think so. But he was fucking honest and well, lies go over so much better in Garden, don't they?

He had tried so hard for Rinoa though, he really had. He wasn't used to this _love,_ or whatever it was, but he did whatever he could so that she would see that he wasn't just some loser who couldn't pass his SeeD exam unless if he wore a fucking Leonheart suit. But that was another matter entirely. He didn't trust the SeeDs, as it was obviously not based on merit, so why should he trust them to protect her? But when you see her, the _one_ that you thought you could spend some time with, maybe not forever but at least until tomorrow, and see her on _his_ fucking side and hearing all of the shit she said to him, seeing her dance with him when _you_ brought her here to save her little fucking country and goddamnit, _what did he have to do_? He kept giving and she kept taking until he was done giving. She'd taken the last remnant in him that was somewhat decent and taught him that being nice doesn't get you jack shit, at least if you're Seifer Almasy.

Then _she_ came.

Her. She embodied the beauty of Rinoa and the seduction of power. At the time she was a mystery, a flowing enigma offering him power and glory in the form of his loyal servitude, to be her knight. He'd given everything already with Rinoa and gotten nothing in return, so how could this be any worse?

When he walked with her and disappeared, she had turned and she grabbed him, her hand gripping the back of his neck like a vice and her eyes; glowing, terrifying eyes staring right into his, and he felt his mind become woozy and he had stumbled into her arms, drunk, ensnared_, _imprisoned.

Conscience. He had pondered many times if he had even been born with one. Maybe he had, a long time ago, but Garden made sure you got rid of that pretty soon. Their altered consciences allowed them to cry over lost girlfriends, but watching a man choke on his own vomit and bleed to death was just another day at the office. Even Squall felt like that, so he knew he wasn't crazy, but thinking about it too long would most surely drive him mad.

He remembered training at Garden, remembered the first time holding a gunblade in his hands, the first swings, the first duels, the first kill. They say after the first one it's easier, but it had taken a while for Seifer to get used to it, though he would never admit it. Getting used to killing. It sounded so absurd but it was true, after a while you lose a little bit of your self and your pity and you figure, what's the difference between 1 and 100? You're still going to hell. Besides, he held a little jealousy in his heart for every death at his hands, because he sure as hell wasn't capable of killing himself and it seemed like no one but time was gonna do it for him.

Hyperion. God, she was beautiful. He remembered the first time he picked her up. She was light and fast, nothing like Squall's steel monster he had to grab with two hands to even stand. Hyperion was smooth and sharp and dangerous and she _lit up_ the battlefield like nothing else. She was the only thing he could count on. When he had held her smooth blade to his face, the barrel of her pressed against his head, he knew that _she_ would have fired and she would have helped him. She had pity but that was the thing, he was just too pitiful and he couldn't do it. So he picked up smoking instead, the only way he found that he could kill himself.

Life under the sorceress had been different than his life before and was most definitely different than his life now. He had been a little glad, after all was said and done, that they hadn't won. Just because he believed in himself, even a little, doesn't mean he couldn't open his eyes and realize he'd been on the wrong side. But that didn't matter, he was a traitor and a coward and more recently a drunk (_i wonder what caused that)_, and nothing was going to change anyone's opinion but time.

Time. Everything was controlled by time and he was started to grow weary of it.

His queen, his sorceress, he had done everything for her too. He had tried so damn hard to please her, but it was never enough. He had constant thoughts of just leaving, but what would that say about him? He wasn't sure that, if he had left, things would have been any better. It probably would have been worse. That would have shown some sort of self control and he wouldn't have been able to use his apparent mind control to get himself out of execution, something else he wasn't sure was the right decision or not. They had felt sorry for him, so they let him go, but this pathetic existence was far worse the death, he was sure. It was sad, really, to want to die so desperately but to be too terrified to do anything about it.

While he was with Edea or Ultimecia or whoever it was, he had this strange feeling throughout him, like he had just finished drinking and he felt woozy and warm. If he doubted himself or her, which he did more often than most would think, she would grab him by the hand and stroke his hair and he would feel that inebriating, toxic warmness run through his body and he wouldn't be able to pull himself from her side. She was suffocating and exhilarating at the same time, and he felt himself daring to be closer to her, doing absolutely _anything_. It was so much comfort, more than he had ever felt in his entire life, and when her scent started to arouse him he wondered what it would take to conquer her too.

He couldn't quite remember if he knew she was "matron" before or after he slept with her, his chapped, calloused hands running across her flawless skin so roughly that it was obscene. She had eventually told him – at least, Ultimecia had – but it made no difference. Killing was one thing, but torturing and killing a man for hours on end, he found out, wasn't his style and no matter how often he did it, he had to run to the bathroom and rub his hands raw before he was satisfied with himself. At night it was harder to stay focused, and he could tell it was the same with her as well. Perhaps Ultimecia didn't care to soothe Edea's mind at night so he would watch her, his witch queen, as she went whole nights without sleep, sitting in Galbadia Garden's auditorium quietly and pensively.

Tears and insistence was really all it took for her to succumb to him, her body crumbling into his. He didn't have to be upset to cry for her, he knew what it would get him and that was enough to make the lying okay. Sex was really the only way Seifer had known how to express affection. He'd never really had a mother, one he could remember anyway, and he never had real brothers or sisters or anyone he felt close to. His ability to express simple platonic affection was stunted. He wasn't sure _how_ to tell someone he cared for them or respected them or even loved them, so he either used anger or passion to express and comfort himself. It was really the only way he knew, as the though of sitting and talking about feelings or being comforted in any traditional way made him uneasy. Ultimately, whatever guise you put it behind, sex is still sex and well, he could think of few people that didn't enjoy it. Just because he didn't think it was something inherently personal didn't make him a bad person. In Garden most people knew he was like this, knew he was passionate but ultimately cruel (he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually spent the _entire_ night with someone except Rinoa), but they still came to him anyways, hungry for whatever he had to give them and he was more than happy to oblige.

He wasn't gentle with Rinoa, either, now that he thought about it. Looking back, he hadn't been very nice, but he did stay the night and he did talk to her otherwise. She didn't seem to mind, anyway. He would even let her run her mouth, keeping him awake at night, talking about her future and her dreams and whatever, but he usually didn't respond to her questions. She had always said it was strange, asking him why he would spout his opinion loudly in a bar but after sex he would clam up like they were strangers. He never answered those questions either.

But Edea or Ultimecia or whoever it was that he came to at night, she was different. In all of his years he had never felt so completely soothed that afterwards she would have to brutally push him away and send him out. She had nearly broken his jaw once when he had protested. Maybe he deserved it, all things considered, but it didn't make it any easier. She was toxic and cold but being away was far worse, and he knew that she had him, soul and body, in those spiny, curved hands.

Seifer had always had an addictive personality, and he had never been able to shake his vices. His favorite comforts were generally depraved. He had become addicted to her face and when she left him for Squall he became addicted to _her_ power, and when _she_ had fallen he followed the one inside until she cast him off as well. In the end he wasn't sure who he was following, but coming off that high was the worst withdrawal he had ever felt in his life. And now the one that Squall had taken from him – his Rinoa - carried the power and that made him feel even more sick than anything else, she was _his_ a long time agoand now she was Squall's and now he had nothing.

.

Luck. He had been lucky, they had said, to survive all of that as well as to receive such a pardon from Garden. _We won't kill you but we'll make you wish you were dead_. Sure he was alive, but when you feast on human interaction, however vapid it may be, isn't complete and utter isolation just as bad? He was _lucky_, and his luck got him a run down flat and a head full of busted dreams and memories and lies. As the lies and the guilt and the humiliation sank in he wondered if his luck would ever run out and he could finally find some goddamn peace.

Yet here he sits, drinking himself to sleep and biting at his fingers as if he hasn't eaten in weeks. In his confusion and rage he has spun so many lies (_it was never me I was possessed I never wanted to be a knight. i didn't know it was wrong please forgive me. i can't take it anymore make me not myself save me please my queen) _that it makes him feel ill. Seifer does not like to lie and as the lies piled on his chest it became almost too much to bear. Lying for himself and lying for her, though he wasn't even sure what she was anymore. He could see her in his mind and her gaze was too strong and her skin was too cold and she was too _vicious_ and sometimes he wondered if she was alive at all.

_She was a monster. But maybe I am too._

No, _he was_ alive and _he was _human. He had two lungs and a heart and, maybe he didn't use them sometimes, but he did have a brain and some trace of a conscience, he was _not_ an animal, he was _not_ a monster. Not like her. She was just a monster in a fairy tale and the knight had fucked up and instead of slaying the dragon he stood by her side. Late at night he would dream of her, whoever she was, but he would wake up from them every time because they overpowered him. But when he woke up he found the same nightmare, but this one was real, and no matter how much he drank or smoked or how long he held Hyperion to his head he could never wake himself up.

Chewing his fingernails and raising a trembling cigarette to his lips, he wonders if he is going to live forever.

--

Author's Note: There is a huge debate on what exactly happened with Edea and Seifer, and while I recognize there is little in the game (if any) to support such a relationship, I find it intriguing so I wanted to write about it regardless of its legitimacy. If it makes you feel better to think of it as an AU, then so be it. I just hope you enjoyed the story.


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Final Fantasy VIII