Final Fantasy VIII Walk the Line

There's knowing Time is going to (kompress) compress in front of you, and then there's seeing it actually happen.

There's also knowing that the path you took because it was supposed to lead you to your dream is a sham, and then there's seeing the life you were supposed to lead being carried out by someone else.

And there's anger. Jealousy. Rage. Hopelessness. Helplessness.

And there's all of this, against your life being shattered into puzzle pieces that scatter around you; memories you want to reach out and pull close, and the things you don't remember, not until you see them, and you wish you never had.

There is being caught in the kaleidoscope. Your life never fully forms before it has turned into something else, something other, something you love and something you fear and something you'll never know because the motion, the _motion, _is the only thing you'll ever truly know for certain.

.

She is there. _They_ are there. His hand is still hot from the place he held her by the shoulder even though it has been minutes, _hours. _

He clings to this heat because the only other thing he might ever feel is the guilt he refuses to give in to, because _she deserved it._

_(Right?)_

His hand is hot, and he nurses this heat from the corner he will forever be painted into, when it starts.

_It's different for everyone._

That's what she told him, when he had the presence of mind to ask. When she had the clarity to answer questions asked by mortals, in a way that could be understood by mortals. Before _her,_ before her dream reached that point where it might be realized.

It's different for everyone, and for him, it is the shattering of glass into so many shards of a life he never wanted and cares nothing about, and he is not prepared.

.

It starts with the immediate present. With them combined, as he willed it, as he ensured would happen. It starts with the _stupid_ expression on Leonhart's face, and all he can think is _if you cared enough it never would have gotten this far,_ even though he knows it isn't true, because _he_ cared. He cared more than he'll ever be able to say, and look at where he ended up, and if that isn't proof that caring isn't enough then what is, and if he can't hear her shaking her head and chiding him for assuming that caring is something that can be measured in actions, in outcomes, then, then,

_Fuck._

It starts with Adel pushing him away, and him staring, that heat on his hands, while someone else, someone who could do something _does something._

And then it turns into everything.

Pandora. G-Garden. The Parade. The graduation ball. The Dollet mission. The Duel. Thousands of days and battles and tests and nights spent promising himself he would be more, each a separate piece in the air around him, and he himself is contained in one of those shards of glass.

Some go to fight.

He goes to sleep. What he hopes is a long sleep, and one that will erase everything he wishes he could change.

.

When he wakes he is in a valley and he thinks it might be Centra, but for the trees. Red, orange, yellow, and he is certain that when he went to sleep it was summer, and Centra was nothing but rock and clay.

Across the valley the mountain range shifts, as a man might stretch and settle while in slumber. Seifer stares, and sees two black birds take flight from what might be the head. They fly closer and closer, and when he tries to step aside he is unable to move. They cover his vision with black feathers and the sound of all the life that ever was, and he closes his eyes and wishes he could scream, and he is again asleep.

.

When he wakes the second time the air is thinner and he is at the edge of a lotus pond. He is alone, save for the low sound of a flute that might be coming from the lake, or his mind, or the air itself.

"Is this it?" he says out loud, and jumps when he hears movement in response.

_"That's up to you." _

He can't make out the figure that emerges from the tress across the pond. He is at once an old man and as young as himself, as much woman as he is man, animal as he is human, and Seifer knows immediately who it is that stands before him.

"You."

The figure dissolves into laughter; literally, _dissolves._ A burst of dandelion puffs scatter and carry the laughter of men and women, young and old, of children, of the crying of a bird, and a _bark_, and Seifer tries to place exactly what creature he knows belongs to that sound of mirth and mockery and mayhem.

_"Me." _

The dandelion puffs form into the head of some form of dog and reach towards Seifer and snap against him. He flinches, but they leave only the impression of chaos, and he has known enough of that in such a short span of years.

The low piping of the flute grows stronger and forms a melody he knows he has heard sometime before.

.

The mountains are gone, along with the lotus pond, but not the song or the impression of a God. In front of him is an endless stretch of grey sky and cracked earth, and he is _angry._

"Where are you going?"

The question comes from all around him and the feeling of futility it ignites is enough to make his pulse run hot, and Seifer wills himself to explode, to self-destruct here in the plains of eternity, before he has the chance to wither away as the pawn he has allowed himself to be cast as.

_That's not an option._

He draws in a breath and heads in the direction he faces, because standing still will not make him anything but angrier and in movement he can tell himself he has a purpose.

The song grows louder, and mixes with drums, and in time, a low chanting. Ever present are the whispers in the air that he is not alone, and they are anything but a comfort.

Shadows walk beside him. A face marred by a stupid tattoo that shines of confidence he almost envies. Long blond hair clipped severely again a head that wears a tight-lipped smile he simultaneously wants to break, and to heal. A black coat lined in fur. Never, though, the shadow he sent into the arms of her enemy. Never the gentle wings he wishes he had never helped to create.

And laughter. Always the barking laughter. And always his own impotence.

There is no end in sight for him. No desperate corner of blackened earth where he can collapse in resignation, no edge he might leap from in a last attempt towards escape.

It is only this: the way, the long road, and the laughter that is a reminder that he chose this path.

_No. I didn't._

.

He can control the melody now, and he turns it into something familiar, almost whimsical, if not unhappy.

_walkthelinewalkthelinewalkthe-_

"Stay here," the laughing-voice says, and Seifer holds his hand up to the particles of dust that form the dog's head, only his middle finger extended from his fist.

"Fuck you," he says.

_"Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha."_

For a creature that is organic to such a high degree, the laughter comes across as layered, mechanical. Seifer bends down and picks up a handful of dust and throws it at the dog-head for good measure.

All it does is give the form a greater shape. The head reaches into the body of a human, as formless as the figure at the lotus pond.

_Fuck you,_ he thinks again, and clenches his fists. When he starts to walk, the figure walks beside him.

_"She could have saved you."_

He says nothing in response.

_"Not _her_,"_ it says, amused. _"Her. Would you like to watch her die?"_

There is no favor she could have offered him he now would like to receive, including the pleasure of watching her die, but he sees it anyway, sees the explosion of light from black and red feathers, and feels the severing of ancient magic within him.

It leaves deep scars, as a burn, but in places no one will ever see, and he walks on.

_"What is it that you want?"_ the dog-man says, and Seifer thinks of the flashing of a lighthouse, of the sound of crashing waves, of the feeling of arms surrounding him to give him a hug goodnight, and hears in his head before he hears the voice say out loud,_ "Well it's too late for that."_

"I want you to leave," he says, after minutes of silence. "And if you won't do that, have the decency to kill me."

Another mechanical bark of a laugh, and the figure is gone, along with light and sound, except for the low, distant tone of a flute.

.

The music fades, and the sun rises on the mountain range and Seifer is aware this time of how_ new_ it is. There are trees and grass and green things on Centra, because this is Centra as it began, before the Cry, before thousands of years of history. Birds cry and the wind is gentle on his cheek, and Seifer knows this is a trap and doesn't care.

He will stay here. What waits for him, back in the present, anyway?

It is hard to grasp a Centra where there is so much life, and Seifer imagines he is somewhere near Winhill, and it works, as long as he isn't able to see the mountains.

He sets to work. There is a cove of trees and he heads towards it, and in the dim green light of the forest he first seeks water, and finds it in a small pond that is not, _not_ familiar.

But it is cold, and it tastes cleaner and purer than any water he remembers before his death. There are reeds along the banks that whistle in the wind, and he turns away and resolutely ignores any possibility of a melody, and manages until it is just something in the background, something he can almost enjoy.

He turns now to shelter, and thinks it will be easy to survive in this place, and if this is his afterlife then he wasn't quite the villain he was painted as after all.

What Seifer does not account for, is _absence._

It's not there at first. First, there is survival. And then there is peace. And just before, comes boredom.

And then, there it is. And at once the silence moves from gentle to deafening, and he cannot take the feeling of his own skin at night.

_"__Had enough?" _The voice comes from the reeds, and Seifer shouts and runs towards them, and his voice echoes in the moonlight, until it fills every space between the trees. In the sound he hears Quistis, laughing at a stupid joke a student told because she can't help herself, even if she doesn't think the joke was funny. He hears Rinoa, her laughter drifting into the wind over the cliffs of Roshfall where they used to spend their afternoons, where she believed his stories of rebellion and added her own dreams and wishes and turned their days into moments of hope.

He hears a child, and knows it is himself.

He stops, ankle deep in the pond with reeds brushing at his calves, and listens.

And _listens._

"No," he whispers.

His child-voice shrieks with joy before it twists into something painful he is glad he cannot remember.

_"__Now?"_

The shrieking continues. Seifer stares down, the water black and the reeds a ghostly white, and he knows.

_I deserve this._

_"__What about her?"_ the voice asks, and his voice becomes hers, crying, pleading, screaming his name while he watches her arms fuse to Adel's and he does nothing. _"Didn't she deserve it?"_

"What do you want?"

_"__Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha."_

The laughter, the screams, the constant whispering of music in the reeds dies, and Seifer is standing in the dry bed of a pond, the moon, the sun, and the stars all hanging over him in the sky, and the man-dog is shades and shadows before him, reflecting the ages, and every form he has ever had.

"What do you _want?_" Seifer asks again.

The silence that follows is absolute.

When the answer finally comes, it breaks through the air and brings with it the movement of everything Seifer has missed, and everything he will never truly know.

_"__Nothing I don't already have." _

.

He wakes now on the docks of Balamb. The smell of sewage and exhaust brings him into the present before he has a chance to look around, and he lays, and _listens, _and is disappointed when everything continues to point him towards the world he should have left behind.

This is the world where he is a traitor.

This is the world where he would have seen her killed.

This is the world that he threw to the void because he couldn't bear to admit that he was wrong, and here he is…

_(wrong)_

wrong.

"Seifer?"

"Seifer!"

The voices are harsh and feminine, and utterly lacking in pretension, and _familiar._ They are friends. They are home. They are the only part of the world he has left he still wants to see, and they are here.

_Here._

"Hey." He opens his eyes and his friends are there beside him. He cracks a joke he can't remember that he is certain isn't funny, but he knows they laugh. Not the echoing laugh of an instructor he ridiculed or a friend he cast to the shadows, but they _laugh,_ and he laughs with them, and the world takes on a shape he wasn't sure it still had left to take.

.

The world takes shape.

Until he dreams.

And in his dreams, there is a _shape_. Half-man, half-dog, and all knowing. His intentions will never matter and his results will never be enough, and Seifer can spend the rest of his life trying to repent, but he knows, he will always have this shadow of the God he tried to best, and the double voices of the lives he thought he could live under his own control, and he will always have the sounds of reed-pipes and flutes, and the coyote laugher, echoing just off the surface.

_walktheline._

_walk the line._

_walk._

_the._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_line._

* * *

><p><em>When stories start out as facebook conversations... I have Emerald Latias, Ronin-Ai, Roarke Q. Stratton, Twin-Lance, Bebedora, SissyHIYAH, and I'm pretty certain Ashbear and irishais to blame for this. (And now you have a full list of my co-conspirators...) And of course, my husband Victor (or so he calls himself around here), since even though he avoids FB as much as possible, he can't help but inspire me, whether he means to or not.<em>

_I except I'll do something else with this concept eventually. This was supposed to be my Halloween fic, and if you note the timestamp you'll see how miserably I failed at meeting that deadline. But I have latched onto a theme that has only previously been explored in the joint account I have with irishias - lechevalierdelalune - and there is so much more I want to do here. _


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