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jukeboxhound_backupPast memories and Jenova’s voice.
Thoughts.
_______________________________________________________
Imperfect Tense
By Hades’
(Unbetaed)
22.
“Hyne,” one of the SeeD cadets panted harshly, “what the hell did we do in a past life to piss her off this much?”
“Fuck if I know,” another breathed, leaning heavily against a tree trunk. “She’s supposed to be subbing for a theory class, not a practical one. This isn’t fair, man.”
They glowered at the small figure of their instructor standing in front of the class in the Training Room. Her chakram was oozing with grat blood, but she didn’t appear nearly as tired as her students; if anything, she was looking more composed than ever and ready for battle. For whatever reason, she had stalked into class that morning, declared a practical pop quiz, and proceeded to put them all through their paces. The SeeD cadets were thinking that they were going to ache for the rest of their natural lives.
To top it all off, Instructor Raijin wasn’t there to act as a buffer and translator. Something about having to cover for Officer Dincht in security detail.
“SMITH. LEE. AGAIN.”
The two cadets groaned and pulled themselves fully upright as best they could, facing one another and trying desperately to hold their weapons steady with weary arms. Despite all appearances, Fujin wasn’t doing this because she was sadistic. Well, mostly. No, instead of watching inexperienced students hack away at each other, she was thinking of Seifer and cursing both his stupidity and her own unwavering loyalty, and it was making her a harder taskmaster than usual.
Trailing Seifer back to her quarters, it having apparently become their new unofficial meeting place, Fujin watched carefully as the Knight fell back onto the bed with forced casualness.
“PLOTTING,” she accused him immediately, and was rewarded with a surprised, slightly chagrined, expression.
“Would you believe me if I said it was for saving orphaned children and world peace?”
Raijin snorted. Running a hand over his face, Seifer sat up and put his feet on the floor, elbows on his knees.
“I want you two to stay here,” he said seriously.
Her temper wasn’t helped by the fact that most of these students were so young. Maybe not in years—she was hardly older than they were—but in skill. Knowledge. She’d gotten so used to being around people like Seifer and fighting the ones like Leonhart that she felt she was teaching a kindergarten class how not to stab themselves with pointy objects.
“STOP,” she barked, not missing the relief on the students’ faces as they pulled apart. Keeping half an ear tuned for the approach of any grats or T-rexaurs, she growled, “SLOPPY. NOT CLUB.” She pointed to Smith’s broadsword. Judging from his larger build and his tendency to swing it like a baseball bat, he’d likely chosen that weapon just because it looked cool.
“What are you talking about, yanno?” Raijin gaped, at the same time Fujin demanded, “WHY?”
“Because I don’t trust Quistis and the others.”
Bullshit.
“But you want to leave with them, without us, yanno? What’s going on?”
“Quistis got access to Esthar’s info, and I don’t think she’s telling us shit. While we’re gone, I want you two to go through it and see what you can find.”
Like a solution to his uncontrolled mental time-travel, no doubt, especially since he refused to tell anyone else, especially Kadowaki, about it. And that might very well be one of his real reasons, but Fujin wasn’t buying it as the whole story.
Without warning, Fujin snapped out, “NO MORE. DISMISSED,” and stalked deeper into the Training Room without waiting to see if the students listened. It was rare for her to feel such emotional extremes, but when they did happen, she couldn’t focus on something as mundane as keeping moronic cadets from killing each other. And, yes, beneath the anger was a little bit of hurt, even though she had a feeling that Seifer’s motives weren’t because of her or Raijin.
She spun her chakram idly with one hand as she looked for something to kill. Too bad there weren’t any Seifer-shaped grats.
There had been demands for an explanation. An argument resulting in a broken table. A long, icy silence on her part. And sure, it made sense to leave behind more experienced SeeDs when Jenova was at large and could very likely attack Garden within the hour, and especially since no one except their motley little group even had a clue what was going on—but why couldn’t, say, Quistis and Zell have stayed behind? Leonhart might be their commander, but Seifer was hers and Raijin’s too.
Not once did Fujin think this isn’t fair, however. It wasn’t, but that was how life operated, she knew, successfully repressing the urge to touch her eye-patch. Besides, even though she was used to following Seifer’s lead, she was perfectly capable of being independent; she would look at that information of Quistis’, and find a solution if it killed her.
No irony intended. Fujin smiled thinly, and raised her weapon when she heard the scraping of an approaching grat.
xxx
Leaving the chocobos outside, free to run in case the birds needed to get away quickly, Cloud led the way into the
Shivers were racing down his spine when they entered the cool, dim entryway. He was half-expecting to see Tseng slumped against the altar, or to hear Cait Sith’s unusually cool tones explaining his betrayal, and he had to shake his head roughly to clear away the phantoms. Zell and Quistis were looking around them without bothering to disguise their awe at the high marble ceilings and grand white archways, wound about in rich green vines left to grow freely by the caretakers, with sunlight pouring in through jagged holes in the roof. It truly was a beautiful place, resonating with something deep in a person’s chest like the sanctuary of an empty church, but Cloud had seen too much happen here to appreciate that anymore. He reached casually over his shoulder to rest a hand on the reassuring hilt of Ultima.
I can’t save anyone.
Their footsteps echoed off the stone corridors, emphasizing how lonely the place felt. No matter how he strained, Cloud couldn’t even hear the ghostly nyum-nyum whispers of the
Now there’s a pleasant thought.
“So how do we find Jenova?” Zell asked.
“We don’t,” Cloud replied, just before Sephiroth murmured, “She’ll find us.”
They glanced uncomfortably at one another.
The group continued through the maze of hallways—at one point Cloud had to explain how the clock-shaped bridge worked when Seifer threatened to blow the damn thing to hell—but they found nothing except cobwebs and a few moldering skeletons. Not even the smallest dragonfly tried to harass them, and it was making them all edgy.
At one point, Seifer gave Sephiroth a sardonic look and drawled, “I hope you aren’t gonna be helpless without that fucking long pig-sticker of yours.”
Entirely unruffled, Sephiroth calmly answered, “Don’t worry, Almasy. Even without the Masamune, I am quite capable of saving you should you get into trouble.”
Safely walking in front and unobserved, Cloud allowed himself a small flicker of amusement through the building tension. They entered yet another large, cavernous room, one in a long series of large rooms connecting several corridors.
Traitors.
Cloud immediately froze at the sensation of a cold wind sweeping across his thoughts. He was dimly aware that, behind him, Sephiroth and Seifer had done the same.
Liars.
It was Jenova, but at the same time he could hear another voice speaking, a masculine one, and it was one he recognized.
“Where the fuck are you, princess?” Seifer snarled. Most people might have been afraid, might have panicked, but he radiated only fury.
Cloud had nearly forgotten that Zell and Quistis didn’t have the unnatural connections that he, Sephiroth, and Seifer did, nor the same demonic influences as Vincent. The two SeeDs held themselves in readiness, knowing better than to question their teammates just before battle, but they were looking to Cloud and not their surroundings.
“Left!” Sephiroth suddenly barked, ducking to one side. The others were forced to scatter when a long purple tentacle shot towards them, missing the top of Zell’s spikes by centimeters. Almost simultaneously finding his feet and unsheathing Ultima, Cloud sliced cleanly through the monstrosity, leaving one end wiggling on the ground like a particularly gruesome worm. The other half whipped back to its source—something towering, gelatinous, growing out of the floor like a malignant tumor. Beside the mass of Jenova’s flesh (that was all it could be, and she’d proven many times before that she didn’t need to be whole to be lethal) was Squall.
He still wore his leather pants, the white sleeveless shirt, and Griever; his bomber jacket had disappeared. An enormous bloodstain was visible on his shirt, still crimson and fresh even though Vincent had shot him days ago, and the copper tang of it was sharp in Cloud’s nose. In fact it seemed the only difference to this new Squall Leonhart was the pair of lovely feathered wings arching over his shoulders, as snowy white as Sephiroth’s was pitch-dark.
He looked like one of the fallen angels that Aeris had once told him about.
The
Then Squall was moving, blindingly fast and deadlier, and Cloud only just managed to bring up Ultima to block LionHeart with a grunt. But Squall wasn’t there anymore, he was dropping low to get under the broadsword’s guard.
“Shit!” he dimly heard Zell yell. It seemed neither Jenova nor her new son were going to waste time on gloating, and several of the monsters that had been missing before were beginning to swarm into the cavern, squishing or screeching or roaring. Unlike in Dollet or the Balamb plains, however, the confines of the room were in the mercenaries’ favor, restricting the entrance of the beasts, and they were far fewer in number, most likely because Jenova had been centralizing her power and focusing on Squall.
Death Penalty echoed loudly with the strange sounds of the mutated monsters. Vincent aimed unerringly at the entrances where the corridors led into the room, picking them off before they could drag themselves closer. The way they moved jerkily, almost as if they’d been Confused, told him that they’d probably been little more than an afterthought of the alien’s—just a distraction for the SeeDs so that the real fun would be saved for her children.
xxx
Squall knew exactly what he was doing. He knew it was Quistis and Zell and even Seifer, but he could see them more clearly than he ever could before. He could look back on their pasts and see when they stumbled and fell at the times he most needed them; now, he could see their tiny, unremarkable thoughts, their evanescent hates and fears and prejudices. He knew their futures were going to be just as unremarkable, just as fleeting and meaningless.
The sound of battle was echoing around the stone room, turning itself into a ringing cacophony. But Squall was above the confusion of his physical senses—the world was cast into a landscape as cold and still as Shiva’s, muffled by a pane of translucent ice that sharply divided light from shadow. There was no confusion of right from wrong, no hurtful entanglements of things like love and betrayal. When he struck with LionHeart, there was no question that it would find its target. When he moved, there was no possibility that his body would succumb to the same human flaws that had made life so difficult before. Before Her. Before Her arms reached for him and held him close, taught him the Truth.
They cannot hurt you anymore.
Fighting against the Puppet would have been impossible without the crystal clarity that Her presence gave Squall. The mako in his failed brother’s body gave him away to the brunet’s new understanding; She thrived on mako, was made stronger, and thus Squall could see the flickers of the other’s thoughts that gave him a fraction of a second’s advantage. Ages ago, the Puppet had been given a choice and refused, and so there was no need for pity or mercy—LionHeart fought for death.
Twist, slash, duck, and it was taking all of Squall’s speed to stay on his toes, to keep one step ahead of the Puppet but oh, it felt real. Behind the cold of Her touch, it was a glorious sensation to know that every turn and flex of his body was on the edge of mortal capability. It was glorious—to feel the subtle power of the wings She’d given him as a mark of Her favor. He felt no anger or pain, just the distant satisfaction of knowing that he was fulfilling his purpose, and it made him hyperaware of the moment.
He was living (dying) for the first time in his short, cold, lonely (by choice) existence.
Her song thrummed in his heart, twined around his nerves and reached out like the branches of a tree to the others. Two of the humans were a flittering sound in his senses, weak, easily ignored. Chaos’ host sang in several tones of varying darkness. But the other three, they were like him—they rang with power, moved to Her heartbeat, each one beautifully (tragically) broken in some way and letting Her fill in the cracks.
I will protect you, my son, my love (my puppet).
The Puppet’s sword slipped past LionHeart’s defenses and opened a wound across his chest, not deep but bloody, and it would have been agonizing if Squall had been able to feel anything outside Her ice, Her arms. But She kept him free from the limits of mortal pain, and he was Her son, a God.
She betrays her children.
The thought wasn’t his own, wasn’t Hers, was it the Puppet’s? Perhaps the Puppet had learned to use the gifts he’d received from Her; but no, though his eyes glowed with the blood of the Planet, and he moved almost as perfectly as a true God, it wasn’t him.
She’s lying, Squall.
Squall jerked, narrowly missing Ultima’s tip passing close, too close, to his throat. He felt the muscles along his spine and scapulae tightening almost painfully, still not quite used to the strangeness of limbs that hadn’t been there before, as his wings instinctively flared outwards.
The Traitor, he thought as his eyes fell on Sephiroth, it must be the son that had forsaken Her. But when he tried to move towards him, the Puppet got in his way like an annoying little gnat that he couldn’t quite crush, and he reached out for his brother’s heartstrings and twisted.
The Puppet screamed, turned away, She was crying Stop him! so loudly that Squall’s eardrums would have burst if he’d been a mere human. He flew past the tortured figure of his failed brother, the whole of his mind suddenly narrowed to the single point of knowledge that She’s in danger.
He didn’t want to know what would happen if he should lose Her like he lost everything else. Friends were like circles coming-and-going but She was the eternal constant (she’s lying, Squall, she’s a false god).
Sephiroth’s sword, the Traitor’s sword, appeared in the other’s hands like a strange sort of Summons, a Guardian Force; lesser enemies might have been distracted by that impossibility but Squall knew it was just one of the remaining gifts She’d once given Her original son. The first emotion to break that wall of ice in his head was a slowly growing horror as he watched the Masamune strike Her—Her scream resounded in the physical confines of his skull, nearly throwing him into the dark of unconsciousness. But he had lost everyone he loved and fuck Hyne if he was going to just stand by as it happened again.
(You haven’t lost them, not everyone, Squall, just open your eyes.)
“Yo, princess!”
That cry managed to separate itself from the madness of battle and Her voice and the wiggling minds of the monsters that were distracting the rest of the rebellious group. The split second of hesitation cost him, because before he could reach Sephiroth LionHeart was having to fend off both Ultima and Hyperion.
Squall! She screamed again, and reaching deep into Her power—as wide as the cosmos and more—he cast an ice spell powerful enough to freeze Hyperion’s firearm mechanics and crack one of the materia in Ultima’s hilt. Perhaps it was the element he used, practically second nature to him, that made the rebellious little voice in his mind grow stronger.
She’s lying, the voice whispered. It sounded so familiar but he didn’t know why, it wasn’t Hers, She was all he knew, but he still couldn’t block it out. You don’t need her, she’s using you and she’ll throw you away when she’s done.
LIAR, he snapped back coldly, but this voice was even colder for its sense of brutal honesty. Ice freezes the heart and cracks open the lies.
“Fucking Hyne, Leonhart, get a grip on yourself! I know she’s got great tits but they’re not worth it, I learned that the fucking hard way!”
…What?
You’ve fallen so far you can’t even see the cage she has you locked in.
That wasn’t true, She had shown him freedom—freedom from the mundane responsibilities, from emotional torment, from being tied down by the natural limitations of humanity. There were no duplicitous circles or love triangles or other complicated forms of geometry, because She had shown him the Truth of rebirth from death.
But Squall, the icy voice, Shiva’s voice, murmured, snaking through his thoughts, you’ve tried this before. You know that this is an impossible dream.
No, he snarled, his reply underscored by the ringing of LionHeart against other blades. She was still screaming for him to come, to stop the Traitor, but the Puppet and the Knight were in the way.
You’ve tried freezing your heart, you’ve tried to justify it, but all you do is hide behind cowardice.
Through the ice that separated him from reality, which turned the world into stark light-and-shadow, he felt the fury at those words and the terrible doubt wondering if they weren’t correct after all.
Time stood still for a long, breathless moment.
Then Her song, woven around his thoughts and through his soul, erupted into a storm of hatepanicrage and the sudden shock and horror of the others tore at his veins like needles. He couldn’t remember the sensation of physical pain at first, but he finally realized that the burning agony in his body came from Her limbs—no longer wrapped safely around him, but protruding through his chest and abdomen like swords. Gagging on the blood welling up in his throat, Squall’s wings twitched unwillingly around the tentacles that held him up like a marionette. The Puppet and the Knight had backed away, weapons lowered guardedly, but he could still sense their horror.
Why—
Because children cannot be trusted.
Poison seeped from Her body into his. A fleeting glimpse of random memory (but that was wrong, there shouldn’t be anything before Her) let him recognize this particular agony of mako, drawn from the Planet through Her and into his body. Arteries were simultaneously ruptured and healed, muscle and bone reshaped unnaturally, and Shiva’s cold voice of mutiny was abruptly silenced. Rebirth through destruction.
“Oh fuck,” Seifer muttered without consideration, essentially giving form to what everyone else was thinking. He ached all over because damn Squall had never hit so hard in a fight.
At first Squall had fought like a man…well, possessed; devilishly fast and powerful, his expression as inhumanly blank as a marble slab. But there had been a moment, just after Seifer had left the monster-killing to Zell and thrown himself forward to keep the brunet away from Sephiroth and Jenova, when LionHeart faltered slightly and something disturbed flickered through the young man’s eyes.
Then Jenova had howled, hurling a wave of magic against Sephiroth that left the general’s skin feeling filthy, and suddenly turned on her newest pet. Two of the purple tentacles harassing Quistis were now skewering Squall, who choked on the blood oozing over his lips, and oh shit, not even the fastest Curaga could handle that, and with their luck, a Phoenix Down would heal Jenova as well.
Seifer forgot to breathe, forgot to think, and what the fuck were they supposed to do now?
Squall let out a horrible piercing scream that was turned wet and choking by the blood in his throat, the kind that would join Seifer’s nightmares about what he’d done in the D-District prison for a long time. It was clear that those tentacles were the only things keeping Squall from crumpling into a heap on the
What the fuck—
The bare skin of Squall’s face and arms was rippling strangely, as though something were crawling beneath his flesh, and silver was stealing outwards from the roots of his hair…
Cloud was the first to react, knowing exactly what was happening. “Zell, Quistis!” he bellowed, shocking them out of their horrified stupor, “The monsters! Vincent, cover us! Sephiroth, fucking take down Jenova!”
Without waiting for any replies Cloud moved so quickly behind Squall it was almost like he teleported, and brought Ultima down against the tentacles. They parted with a damp smacking sound and another inhuman cry from Jenova. Squall staggered forward a few steps before falling to his hands and knees, LionHeart clattering to the stone beside him and the ends of the tentacles shriveling away.
“Help Sephiroth!” Seifer barked, bringing Hyperion back up into an offensive position, and when Cloud started to argue with what was probably going to be good sense, he snarled, “You don’t know Leonhart like I do, now get the fuck over there and fucking help Sephiroth!”
There was something knowing in Cloud’s weird eyes that Seifer didn’t like, but then he smiled tightly and disappeared, reappearing at Sephiroth’s side. Seifer took a moment to grouse that he hadn’t gotten that kind of speed as Ultimecia’s Knight, but then Squall was pulling himself to his feet and he forgot all about it.
“Hey, princess,” he said, the intensity of his gaze belying the casual words. “You know, we’ve really got to stop meeting like this.”
Squall was staring at him blankly, and how the hell was he alive? Spattered with blood and having two gaping holes in his body wasn’t exactly conducive to a long life, but with the red-smeared wings arched behind him, he looked more some great avenging deity than a teenager.
Hyne’s sake, they were still teenagers. The thought nearly made Seifer laugh, but he swallowed it because if he started now, he wouldn’t stop. Having once been in a position similar to Squall’s, Seifer was well aware that there wasn’t a fucking thing he could say right now that would make a difference. He hadn’t lied to Quistis about that—so far as the brunet was concerned, Her word was Law. (He almost wished he didn’t know it for a fact, that he might still have some tenuous hope of having both of them walk out of this alive.)
Hyperion very nearly missed blocking LionHeart. The blades of both weapons sparked when they clashed, no doubt denting the metal with the sheer force of Squall’s swing and Seifer’s sudden block. He smiled bitterly at Squall over the crossed gunblades.
“Damn it, Squall!” Zell shouted from halfway the room, ripping the wings from an oversized dragonfly. “What the hell is so great about a fucking space alien, man!”
“Don’t you remember the orphanage? Matron? Us?” Quistis yelled, then cursed when she nearly tripped over a tentacle.
“We weren’t friends, princess,” Seifer growled seriously, “but fuck me if you weren’t the only person I ever gave a shit about.”
Squall’s eyes widened.
Part 1 | Part 2
