fic: imperfect tense ch.7 (ffvii)
Nov. 15th, 2007 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jukeboxhound_backupPast memories or Jenova’s voice.
Thoughts.
Imperfect Tense
Hades’
Betaed by Mad Violinist & artimusdin
7.
“Squally, we totally need to get some of these for Garden. The ones in the conference rooms suck.”
The Commander only spared Selphie a brief glance. The girl was happily spinning in the plush chairs of one of Esthar’s conference rooms with an utter lack of regard for their expensive surroundings. All the SeeDs, as well as Laguna, Kiros, and Strife, were seated around the elliptical mahogany table with Squall opposite the blond stranger, Selphie on Strife’s left. The latter was giving Selphie a wary look and appeared on the verge of backing away very slowly.
“Are you gonna tell us what this is about now?” Zell asked grumpily. The early morning sun coming through the window behind him made him look like a sleepy, irritated chocobo. Squall, however, had his attention focused solely on Strife.
“Tell them what you told me.”
Blue eyes narrowed at him, but after a long moment Strife gave the small group the same brief explanation he’d given Squall, describing the Cetra and the Lifestream and their conflict with Jenova in short, terse sentences.
He did not, Squall observed, mention anything about the gunblader himself or their preemptive meetings.
“Wait, wait—an alien? What the hell?” Zell demanded. “Sounds like one of my sci-fi novels.”
“You read?”
Kiros hummed contemplatively. “If the Lifestream is the source of life for everything on the Planet, why are only the Sorceresses affected?”
“Maybe because they’re women.”
“Only in the loosest sense of the word,” Strife corrected him quietly, looking distant. “Jenova’s female the same way water’s considered a feminine element. Biologically, I don’t think she’s anything that we’d recognize. Maybe it’s because Sorceresses are just more sensitive to the Lifestream, since they’re so powerful.”
“Wait a sec,” Selphie said suddenly, squinting her eyes suspiciously at Strife. “You said you were there when she died and everything, but wasn’t that, like, a long time ago?”
Strife’s left hand, black-gloved and resting on the table, clenched briefly. “…Yes.”
“So you’re an old geezer?” she cried disbelievingly. “But you’re way too cute to be someone’s grandpa!”
He blinked in incomprehension.
Quistis, who’d been noticeably silent, suddenly snapped towards Squall. “You once asked me if I’d ever heard of the Lifestream. If we’re just meeting Strife today, how did you know about it?”
Squall mentally cursed.
“I told you that I’ve been having dreams. According to Strife, I was…connecting to the Lifestream.”
“So were you also in the Lifestream? And that’s how you’ve been kept alive all these years?” she asked of Strife, who nodded his head once. “But if the Lifestream is the ‘life force’ of the planet, then how can you be anything other than a spirit? Wouldn’t you have to be dead to be part of it?”
“The dead, the Cetra, or the broken.”
As Strife was saying evasively, “Yes, technically,” Squall studied him. He did indeed look on the verge of death, skin pale with exhaustion and his eyes shadowed, and something about his expression told the Commander that, mentally, Strife’s wasn’t entirely there. It was like looking at a porcelain doll of the kind Rinoa once owned, where a physical body existed but little else.
It was rather eerie the way those unnaturally brilliant eyes tended to look through people.
“So who are you exactly?” Laguna demanded, looking frustrated. “You come out of nowhere, try to take me hostage in my own office with that honking huge sword, demand to speak with my son, then tell us about this alien thing and that there’s probably another Sorceress running around…”
Strife snorted under his breath. “We are…no, I am—was a mercenary.” He appeared frustrated with himself, making Squall’s stare sharpen.
A mercenary? The blonde’s dark clothing looked like a conglomeration of old uniforms, and it was true that both skill and strength were needed to use the sword strapped to his back. But if he was a mercenary, how far could he be trusted? With his strange dreams and the instinctual sense that something ‘wasn’t right,’ Squall was inclined to believe that Strife was at least telling the truth. But subtlety obviously wasn’t the blond’s strong point—he avoided answering their questions with any details that weren’t strictly necessary.
What would happen if Jenova or whatever Sorceress she was using offered him what he wanted? After all, that kind of thing had worked on Seifer, and once upon a time Squall himself would have done almost anything for Rinoa.
(Shiva’s murmurs, indistinct and inhuman, sent calming waves of cold through Squall’s mind, letting him refocus.)
The goal, then, was to find out what Strife wanted. And if having him as an ally wasn’t worth the potential betrayal, then preemptive measures could be taken.
Strife had obviously noticed the commander’s piqued interest, and returned the unabashed stare without flinching.
“The dead, the Cetra, or the broken.”
What did he mean?
Broken men could be the most dangerous of all.
xxx
Cloud wished desperately that he were anywhere but in a poorly disguised interrogation.
You should’ve seen the conferences that ShinRa forced Sephiroth to attend, kiddo. If Hiedegger droned on too long, all Seph had to do was put his hand on the Masamune and that fat fuck shut up real fast.
“So where’s this Sorceress?” the sniper—Kinneas, Cloud remembered, from the brief introductions—asked the group. “Doesn’t Esthar have something to monitor that kind of thing?”
“Not really,” Laguna replied. “At least nothing scientific or anything. Whenever a new Sorceress is found, we track her, and if she’s too dangerous, well…” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“So she could be anywhere,” Trepe sighed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“We do know one Sorceress,” Tilmitt interjected with what Cloud thought was surprising timidity. She glanced cautiously at their commander. Leonhart, for his part, looked rather bored.
“Do you really think Rinoa would do that?” Dincht was frowning. “I mean, the girl’s got guts, but she hates killing. Don’t you think she would’ve come to us if something was wrong?”
“Look at Edea,” Trepe said softly. “Even she couldn’t stop herself, and she was one of the best people we’ve ever known.”
“Jenova doesn’t require a willing host,” Cloud muttered. “Though it helps.”
There was a moment of silence.
“What’s Jenova after?” Leonhart asked in a monotone.
“Mother is the rightful ruler of this Planet. All life will bow before her as she sails the universe.”
“Domination. Control. Cleansing the Planet.”
“I will be God.”
Cloud’s eyes moved to the window behind Zell, watching the rising sun burn away the early morning fog.
“Don’t you two ever talk?” Zack asked him, watching Cloud sit down on his cot gingerly. “I mean, really talk?”
“Of course,” Cloud said, a little defensively. Zack ran an impatient hand through his dark hair, tugging at the ends as he tried to think of a way to express his concerns without making the cadet withdraw into his mental shell.
“Cloud,” he said quietly after a moment, “I just…worry. Sephiroth isn’t as aware as most people—he might hurt you without realizing it.”
Tension tightened Cloud’s thin shoulders. “You think he’s—“
“No, not like that. I meant emotionally.” Zack hated the note of pleading in his own voice, trying to make Cloud understand without the blond thinking that the SOLDIER was personally attacking him. How could he explain the way Sephiroth seemed to treat him like a possession, or a favored pet, and not a whole and equal person? Cloud’s self-esteem was so low, he probably considered any attention from the General more than he deserved.
Cloud blinked slowly, feeling the slight disorientation that came with memories that weren’t necessarily his own. Most of that had been cleansed by the Lifestream with Tifa’s help, but Zack and Sephiroth—and occasionally Tifa herself as well, and wasn’t that a weird experience—had become too integral a part of him to leave completely.
“As soon as we return to Garden, we’ll need to track down Rinoa and Seifer,” Leonhart told the others in clipped tones.
“Seifer?” Dincht repeated blankly.
“He was controlled by Ultimecia once. He’s a liability if it happens again.”
“But he’s a Knight, not a Sorceress. And if
“He was still once a part of her.”
Idly staring out the glass, Cloud had been listening to their discussion with only half an ear. But Leonhart’s words drew back his attention.
“He was? How?”
“Sorceresses have Knights,” Trepe explained. “They’re like the Sorceress’ right hand, their general of sorts. Though he isn’t as powerful, the Knight can still draw on his mistress’ power.”
It’s going to be the Meteor Crisis all over again.
Cloud stared at her and felt like Zack had landed a heavy blow on his stomach in one of their training sessions.
…Or
“You okay, Cloudy?” Tilmitt asked, leaning close, and Holy, Aeris, she’s just like Yuffie, how am I going to do this?
“How do these men become Knights?” he whispered, and didn’t miss the way everyone’s eyes flickered towards Leonhart.
“We don’t know.” The Commander was icily flat. “I don’t remember the exact circumstances of how I became Rinoa’s Knight.”
“But that’s why you’ve been having those dreams, isn’t it?” Cloud said numbly. He looked down at his left hand, seeing where a tattooed number had once been hidden by the black leather. “And how you were able to reach the Lifestream.”
“What is it, Cloud?” Laguna demanded worriedly. “What’s wrong?”
Were these people blind? At least Cloud now knew what it was about the other man that was so unsettling.
“The man that Jenova used…he was powerful. One of the strongest warriors ever seen. But even he couldn’t resist her because there was a part of her inside him.” He looked at Leonhart from under his spiky, uncut hair. “If what you say about Knights is true, then you’re just as much a liability, Leonhart.”
xxx
Rinoa stared into the tiny mirror over the small bathroom’s sink. Her reflection stared back with a twisted smile.
i’m going mad oh hyne squall help me please
Someone knocked on the door of her apartment. (It was small and rather bare, but she’d earned it herself and it was all her own.)
“Rinoa, you in there? Are you all right? We were all getting worried, you never showed up at the site yesterday…”
It was the blonde girl that had shared lunch with her, kind and quiet with her heart in the right place, but her voice made the magic beneath Rinoa’s skin shiver.
go away go away go away
“Go away!” she cried around the lump in her throat through the open bathroom door.
“Rinoa, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Go away!”
Then there was silence and she was alone. She’d skipped work yesterday because now when she saw someone her heart throbbed with hatred and her head swam with disgust. Last night a bird landed on her open windowsill, and without thought her magic had lashed out and slaughtered the little animal. There were still feathers there, stuck to the wood with bits of dried blood.
She was afraid of what she could do to an actual person.
Rinoa turned back to the small mirror. Her dark eyes were bloodshot, her silky hair tangled in a two-day-old braid, and old tears had left trails down her face. She looked, and felt, like hell.
Let it go.
Was this the voice that, in the end, had turned all Sorceresses dark? Had driven Ultimecia to desperation, Adel to madness?
I won’t let myself become that…all I wanted was to show everyone that Sorceresses didn’t have to be cruel, that their magic could be used to heal…
Why waste divine power on the unworthy?
There’s no such thing as being unworthy—everyone is equal. I have no right to judge others!
Your strength gives you the right to do what you will, for those that are weaker have no choice but to follow you, and to love you, and perform to your will. It is the natural order of the universe.
There was something in her reflection’s gaze that made Rinoa lean closer to the mirror—
—Squall lay on the floor, unmoving, blood spattered over his pale beautiful face, his lips blue, his eyes half-lidded and staring staring staring—
She jerked back with a cry. Her own eyes had lightened to poisonous green.
The
They have left you. Take your vengeance.
They’re SeeDs, it’s not like they don’t work every once in a while, she snarled at the voice in her head. The headache that had been plaguing her since the explosion of her spell at the construction site suddenly flared into a debilitating agony, sending her to her knees as her fingers dug into her skull. A certain group of eco-terrorists long ago would’ve instantly recognized what was happening.
It will be worse if you fight, child.
xxx
Squall’s typical expression of neutrality perfectly covered his urge to lash out with LionHeart. He was aware of the room’s temperature starting to drop and the ice tendrils lacing his chair and the table in front of him.
It wasn’t that Squall took Strife’s blunt, almost challenging statement personally—he’d learned as a child to ignore other people’s often misinformed opinions. No, it was two things; one, that he hadn’t realized something so obvious himself, and two, it was the implication of weakness on his part.
(that he could be so like Seifer)
And why hadn’t his own Knighthood occurred to him as an issue?
Denial. Shiva whispered to him, You’re afraid they will leave you.
“Sis! Come back!” What did I do wrong?
The SeeDs and Laguna had been upset at the insinuation of Squall changing loyalties; Kiros was more concerned with the sudden temperature change. Strife appeared entirely unaffected, and just as cold.
“And what about you?” the young commander murmured pointedly.
The blond’s hand resting on the table tightened. Squall allowed a humorless smile to twist his lips, knowing that he’d struck a nerve, however accidentally. Thinking of Jenova and her mind games made him think of Seifer and several thousand bolts of electricity.
If I can’t control myself…
“I’m sure you’ll know what to do if the time comes, Strife.” He met the other’s glowing eyes without flinching, and saw the understanding there.
xxx
“So this Sephiroth guy was taken over by a space alien named Jenova and tried to destroy the world, yanno?”
Vincent could see why Raijin might be incredulous.
But when one realizes the full ramifications of the Meteor Crisis and
So he replied, “Yes.”
“And you think this bitch is the reason these monsters are so hard to kill.”
Vincent just looked at him.
Seifer snorted, flopping back against the sofa cushions with a wince as his wrapped shoulder was jostled. “And now I’ve got the same fuck who tried to take over the world in my head.” There was a strange note in his voice that Vincent couldn’t place.
The former Turk had told them, in terse words, of Jenova and Sephiroth. He’d figured that this Seifer was the sort of man who preferred to know why he was inevitably going to die, rather than go to the grave in ignorance.
“So what’s this ‘cloud’ he was talking about?”
Vincent shrugged smoothly. No one else needed to be dragged into the business between Cloud and Sephiroth.
The woman turned to look at him. “STAY?”
“Wait, what? Fu, what the hell?” Seifer demanded in a low voice.
“Maybe she’s got it right, yanno,” Raijin interjected. “He seems to know what’s going on, and if those monsters come back… Besides, he’s already seen your—uh, you know. Er, dreams. Not like there’s anything else to hide, yanno.”
Fujin smirked in amusement when Seifer muttered, “Yeah, whatever.”
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