the hollow | Drowning in Her

He woke again in his office. It had become a habit lately. Dragging out of sticky sleep, the lingering ash-taste of a dream on his lips. Not even a nightmare, just a stupid, silly little dream that she was alive. That it had all been a mistake and they were sitting on their old couch with Irvine and everybody and complaining over some social gaffe in the cafeteria, probably his. And it wasn’t even perfect, it was just normal, like nothing had happened, like none of it had happened and she was okay. And he blinked up into the dimness of the room, everything hurting because he remembered.

He wasn’t crying. He pulled himself up slowly, feeling a dull ache where pain had curled his stomach. There wasn’t really that much to be done. Just the funeral. Irvine was right, her father should. He squeezed his eyes shut, touched one temple unsteadily. Breathe. He should talk to Laguna. Irvine would want him to. Paper crinkled beneath his fist, and he looked down at the personnel files. He’d been looking for patterns. (If that mattered, if anything could matter when she’d torn herself apart on his (Squall’s) bed while they slept side by side not waking in the night as he had alone, if an apparent pattern in certain ages or deaths could matter when they’d been curled secure beneath blood-soaked sheets.) He blinked at the wavering dot-matrixed paper, spun in the desk chair and shoved to his feet.

This restless vibrating tension wasn’t new. He was stopped by the window, hands crumpling in the opaque paper screen, fingers lost in the soft-rustling folds. The light pressed only dimly through the screen, a soft glow against the harsh fluorescents. His fingers tightened their hold, convulsing on an emotion he couldn’t admit. Paper tore. Not now. His lips lifted in a silent snarl, and he closed violent fingers around the pull-cord, jerking it fist over fist with his head bowed against the in-streaming light.

The sky was bluer than it really needed to be. The grass greener. At another time this would have been a comfort. Looking at it his heart hurt. Squinting into the sunlight that blazed through the flawless glass, threw his shadow black over the office that suddenly seemed dingy by comparison, somehow unreal. It was all so beautiful. It didn’t have any right to be so beautiful. Focused on the distant blue snowcapped mountains he spread out his arms, palms pushing against the glass, fingers wide outflung in a posture of wings. His head dropped, heavy on his straining neck like a memory, shoulder blades pushing sharp against the thin fabric of the T-shirt he’d stolen from Irvine. He shivered, pressed his forehead to the glass.

Oh, Hyne.

Nothing was right anymore.

“You’ll have to be careful,” Irvine said. “He’s had a rough time of it, but I don’t know what to do for him anymore,” Irvine said. “If anyone can shake him out of this mood, it’s you,” Irvine said, hand firm on his shoulder and smile fixed and strange as he guided him (Seifer) into and out of the elevator. “Just be careful,” Irvine said, eyes too bright, fingers digging into muscle now and Seifer just staring at him peripherally with most of his fear focused on the opening elevator doors. “It’ll be okay,” Irvine said, brightly, something broken hiding beneath the words. Seifer nodded, started down the short hall. The elevator doors slid closed, and he was alone in the plush anteroom, maybe three seconds left to plan this out and not an inspiration in sight.

Seifer stepped into the Headmaster’s office hesitantly, his former brashness broken by time and experience. It was all familiar, an echo of never graduating, reprimands and detentions and his appointment to the Committee, the one good memory he had of this place. The door began to slide shut behind him, and sunlight shafted down from the high windows to dazzle his eyes before he could get his arm up as a shade. (And this was on purpose, he knew, deliberate, part of the architectural power-play of upper management to make him squint into brilliance while giving his report/explanation/apology.) He peered into the light, glancing back at the sealed door, wishing the cowboy hadn’t sent him in alone. A step forward, and his eyes began adjusting to the light; he blinked rapidly, moved toward the desk, paused in a defensive stance.

“Hello?” he rasped.

The figure at the desk, dark against the window, lifted its head; storm-gray eyes speared Seifer in place, and suddenly Seifer flashed on a memory of Squall at fifteen, so much younger, heartbreakingly younger, cheeks still fleshed out with the last of his baby fat, still beautiful but also a still a shadow of the man he’d wanted to be. A man like Seifer, or Irvine, tall and strong and broad with muscle. The man he would never become. The man utterly lost to the War and to GFs and to his refusal to eat during times of stress. That boy was only a memory in this man’s glass-sharp cheekbones, the thin arms that were nothing but bone and muscle. And worst of all, it should’ve looked like Seifer had a chance, after all this time, to take him in a fight. But the War and Rinoa hadn’t destroyed Squall, just pared him down to the bare essentials. To the bone. His eyes still burned silver.

“Seifer,” Squall husked in a sleep-thick voice, setting aside a sheaf of papers and straightening behind the desk like everything was normal. Seifer shook off his daze and stepped forward to stand squarely before the large desk. He smiled crookedly, and flicked the collar of his trench coat, brown and sensible and nothing like he’d worn Before.

“How’d you guess it was me, Squally?” he needled, squaring his shoulders, rebuilding the mask with every word and gesture. Squall just cocked one brow at him, and leaned back in his chair.

“It hasn’t been that long, Seifer,” Squall said quietly, seeming hardly surprised at his presence. Seifer nodded, slouched into the chair before Squall’s desk without asking, the not asking as deliberate as his wardrobe. The world is a stage, you know.

“So, how are things?” Seifer asked, willing to begin the inevitable questioning. He knew Squall better than anyone, he knew how this would go.

And then Squall laughed.

“I think you know,” Squall choked out, the sound bitter, drowning in age and silence and endless regrets. “That’s why you’re here, right? You finally came home. For her.”

“I heard, yeah.” And already unsettled, staring at Leonhart as though he (Squall) might attack, the silver eyes not quite sane in the low light. “Came to talk to you.”

Squall didn’t answer, just stared at him for a moment (indifferent or calculating Seifer wasn’t sure) and then stood abruptly from his desk. “About what?” Squall murmured, not looking up, watching the desk or his hands or the patterned carpet. “What do we have to talk about?”

“Old times?” Seifer grinned false as a jester’s mask and crossed his legs easily. Squall’s eyes flickered up briefly, then away again. “The War? Come on, Squally, we can reminisce.”

“Rinoa.” Squall’s voice was low, rough, not as indifferent as he remembered.

“Or we could talk about Rinoa,” Seifer agreed, easily enough.

“Rinoa,” Squall repeated, smiling, (He’d never smiled this much before, Seifer knew, something uneasy in grimly smiling before the upward-arching glass, the soft short hairs on the back of Seifer’s neck prickling with the rise of adrenaline.) his faintly-trembling hands folding down birdlike clasped on the desk before him.

(Presumably we’re encouraged to think in certain ways at any one time.) Seifer blinked first, made a settling-in motion in the chair. It was not enough to sit in sunlight before the melting façade (limned in afternoon glow) of this former-friend.

“Why are you here,” Squall asked again, that frightening broken little smile faded beneath too-old eyes. (Too old for seventeen. Seventeen, or was he eighteen, would be eighteen soon? Somewhere Seifer had lost track, as he had lost track of the memories and of Matron and of his own origin, irretrievably, irrevocably lost along the way.)

“I needed to see you,” Seifer said, calmer now with dust sloughing into the upholstered visitor’s chair from his faded canvas duster and lassitude draining through all his limbs as the journey settled into brain and bone. “I had some things to settle between us.”

Squall shook his head, quickly, almost before Seifer had finished speaking. “There is nothing between us.” Stubborn with the old childlike refusal to listen and Seifer closed his eyes for a moment.

“You can’t make this go away by ignoring it.” Leaning forward (ready to spring) if only Squall would move or breathe or flinch. It lay there between them, Squall stiff and startled-deer frozen. He wouldn’t speak, Seifer knew that, and he (Seifer) pushed down the frustration and the shame and the anger sparked by both. “We’ll have to talk, Squall,” voice very serious, very low, using his name, his true name, for the first time in an age, the echo of industrial wail and electric spark between them.

Squall seemed to fold, collapse in on himself with the same resiliency as the folded paper screen, face as white, hands shaking now almost imperceptibly but trembling against file folders and polished oak. He nodded. And Seifer paused, unsure where to begin, having won the war not having expected to win the battle.

“I think …” And Squall breathed out, unable to finish the words, climbing to his feet on legs that didn’t seem to want to hold him to slink to the liquor cabinet Seifer knew Cid used to maintain behind the leftmost decorated screen. The slinking was as much out of character as the bottle of fifty-year old single malt pulled from Cid’s collection, and Seifer watched his (Squall’s) return with all the wariness befitting his (Seifer’s) War-nursed paranoia. “We’ll need a drink for that talk,” Squall decided, not asking but setting out two cut-crystal snifters and pouring two measures of regret.

Seifer took up his glass, the glass nearest his hand, threw back smooth fire and slammed it down again. He and scotch had become excellent friends in the After-time. Squall didn’t acknowledge the gesture, didn’t match it with his own, just poured out another glass for Seifer before taking his first drink. Cautious as ever, Seifer wondered, or simply with nothing left to prove. Even clichés could kill. Fire again traced his throat, thick on the back of his tongue in a lingering caress. He watched Squall’s slow silent progress through heavy-lidded eyes, watched the pink tongue wet liquor-dampened lips, the silver eyes flicker over taste and flame in the thin-arched throat.

“I’m sorry.” Seifer blinked, swallowed, regretting the words as soon as spoken but unwilling to look away from Squall’s startled gaze. He wouldn’t repeat the words, hadn’t thought himself capable, and saw the knowledge of it in Squall’s eyes. Squall sort of nodded, looked down at the glass in his hand like it held the answers he’d been seeking.

“You can come back, if you want,” Squall offered, low and dull and characterless and spoken more to the scotch than to Seifer. Seifer grinned dully, swirled amber liquid to refract in the smooth light, nodded.

“I don’t know that I have a place here, anymore.”

“No,” Squall agreed.

“I thought we should …” Seifer paused, took a drink, coughed on the suddenness of his excuse.

“It doesn’t matter,” Squall dismissed, not looking up.

“Of course it matters!” Seifer slammed down the glass to pour out another, hands shaking ever so slightly, imperceptibly, against the smooth glass. “I betrayed everyone. I never meant to not pay for it.” And another drink, to drown this regret.

Squall’s eyes flickered silver, glanced up from his own glass, followed the trail of scotch down Seifer’s throat. “I never meant …” he breathed, swallowed.

“What do you, what does that mean?” Seifer demanded, voice roughened and eyes going mean with the liquor. “I never understood you, Leonhart. I tried, Hyne knows I tried, but.”

Squall ducked his head as if to hide beneath the ragged too-long fringe of hair, chestnut and auburn in the settling sun, and something inside Seifer twisted, churned, ignored finally boiling into “What in Shiva’s name did you see in Rinoa of all people?” looking shocked at his own bluntness.

Squall didn’t react, didn’t move or wouldn’t move or couldn’t, and Seifer plowed on. “The girl I knew was an overly-optimistic idealist, and you,” Seifer paused, understanding dawning in his widening eyes. “That was the attraction: the innocence. Something so pure you don’t think you can touch it but Hyne how you want to.”

No, Squall wanted to tell him, wanted to interject, staring into the depths of the cut glass snifter in his clenching fingers. But the word caught in his throat, tangled in a memory of her, and he only glared up into the blue eyes of his oldest enemy, the words to an old song (absently changing the present tense to past) running through his head: if you could only see the way she loves me, then maybe you would understand why I feel this way. The knowledge of her death rode him worse than any Eden-induced addiction.

“So where have you been?” Squall asked, staring into his glass. Amber liquid swirled, the light sparking deeper, blood-red tones.

“What does that mean?” Harsh, low, distraction incomprehensible but accepted in the ritualized pattern of their usual dance.

“Nothing. You just always were there, it seemed strange with you gone.” As if it were safer this way, admit something to hide something else, something deeper, closer to the center.

“Well, you had Rin,” Seifer began slowly, the alcohol reaching his stomach and finally tendrils into limbs and lungs and brain. “And this Commander gig. I figured you wouldn’t want me around anymore, screwing things up. So I decided to settle elsewhere.”

“Yeah. Seems like everyone decides that after enough time in my company.” The scotch makes you verbose, wordy, eloquent and a danger to yourself. Seifer’s eyes flashed blue and clear through whiskey-blear.

“Oh, what is this? Self-pity?”

Nothing to respond to.

“You’re going to have to do better than that, Leonhart. You beat me, okay? Does it make you happy to hear me admit that?”

“No!” His head came up (as though he’d never even considered the possibility).

“It should!” Seifer returned immediately. “All our lives that was all we had. You destroyed my dream, Leonhart, you destroyed my world! Now don’t you dare sit there and tell me it meant nothing to you!”

“What do you want to hear?” Squall cried, voice ragged. “That I hated it? That I didn’t want it, that I never wanted that responsibility? People died because of me, because I’m too screwed up to keep my only friend from leaving--”

Squall stopped himself on a breath, staring at Seifer, amazed at his own words. Seifer stared back.

“Leaving ... you? Is that what this is about?”

Squall glared at him sullenly, not speaking, glass shaking in his tightening fist.

“I didn’t leave you, you selfish prick, you left me! Fuck, if it’d been anyone but Seifer you’d have followed with the cavalry, but me? Did you even think of trying to save me?”

“Save you? You went with her!”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said, explained, excused.

“Fuck that, Seifer, and fuck you! I was there. You looked that sorceress bitch in the eye and you chose to step on that dais. You chose to leave.”

“You think . . .” Seifer sat back, slumped in the chair, betrayal cutting through the comfortable liquor-haze. “You think I did that? You think I was under my own control?”

He didn’t mention D-District Prison. Neither man did. Neither man could.

“You think that was me?” He looked away. “Fuck, Squall, what you must think of me …”

A Mesmerize wheeled across the plain, screeling sharply in the far distance in the utter silence of realization.

“She was controlling you?” Squall asked after a moment. His voice was small, and sick.

Seifer nodded grimly, not meeting the other man’s eyes.

“Oh, Hyne, she was controlling you ...” Squall whispered. His eyes squeezed shut, scar wrinkling with his drawn together brows. He was shaking.

“Squall?” Seifer looked up, looked at the regret sharp in silver eyes, and grimaced down a swallow of fifty year old scotch. “Fuck, man, it hardly matters now,” he said expansively. “Forget about it.”

“I can’t, forget?” Squall stared at him wildly. “I thought, the things I thought, I didn’t, I’m-”

“Don’t say it.”

Seifer’s voice came low, and hard, perceptible threat that closed Squall’s mouth and killed the regret.

“She was.”

“Don’t say it,” Seifer repeated, shaking his head. “Nothing excuses, I …” He tossed his darker hair, squeezed shut both eyes.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does!” Past-echo, repeated argument and as Seifer recognized it he grinned bitterly, drained the bottle, Squall not noticing or pretending not to hear, more than prepared to ignore Seifer’s very presence. And quiet for a time, shared, a second bottle drawn from the cabinet and then a third as the sun sank to the far sea behind silvered mountains, just the clink of glass on glass and Seifer’s increasingly sullen mutterings as better intentions drowned themselves in worse.

The midsummer midges would emerge soon to glow against the growing night. Seifer’s chair developed a squeak and he rocked against it restlessly, dwelling on the cowboy and the yellow-dressed girl and the anxious crowd of cadets waiting for a second miracle. He felt old, suddenly, ancient at nineteen (or was it twenty? In the lost-time he couldn’t be sure) before Leonhart’s stoic pain like a neon display until amber softened the sharp-set shoulders and slumped the Commander in the leather office chair like an unmanned marionette and filled Seifer with the same old niggling desire for provocation that almost forced him to drawl:

“So, I heard you found your father.” Insolently, glancing from beneath sun-bleached lashes to watch his (Squall’s) reaction.

“Yeah,” Squall said dully, simply, not satisfying as never satisfying the old niggling urge.

“Must be nice,” Seifer expanded, “Hanging with your old man, learning all that father-son shit,” leeringly, arms flung out beyond the bounds of the chair as if in illustration, last rays of the dying sun staining his coat and hair and skin bloody.

“What, Laguna?” Squall asked, finally reactant to the niggling, the urge, the eager blue-eyed provocation. He (Squall) snorted, peering into his nearly-full glass, still searching. “He’s too fucking useless to keep track of a two-year old, how can he help me now?”

“At least you have a father,” Seifer returned, glaring as fiercely as ever, the niggle transformed to the same desperate anger that had probably caused the War, his (Seifer’s) glass clutched in an angry, too-firm grip. “You have what the rest of us wanted our whole lives, Leonhart: a family.”

“I don’t want it,” Squall said softly, any anger drained into empty bitterness as the sun sank into dusk. “I stopped wanting it a long time ago.”

“Just like always,” Seifer agreed, his lips curling into a sneer. “It all always came so easy for you. Everything in your fucking life, like fish in a barrel. Bang.” And he targeted an imaginary fish with forefinger and thumb, slopping scotch over one wrist, missing the trace of agony that flashed in Squall’s silver eyes.

“Easy?” Squall asked, voice dangerously monotone. “What exactly have I had ‘easy’, Almasy? You, tormenting me all my life? My disappearing, reappearing father, who’s too fucking incompetent to clean that thrice-cursed machine gun, much less run a country or be a father. Rinoa?” Squall’s voice broke then, and he squeezed shut his eyes on a renewed flush of pain.

“Easy come, easy go,” Seifer said flippantly, his voice too hoarse to be truly spiteful in spite of the desire-need to cause this pain. “You were lucky, Leonhart. All your Hyne-blessed life, you were lucky. How else did you beat me? Meet and win Rinoa? Find your father?” Seifer downed his glass in a swallow and set it on the desk in the growing dark between them with a final-sounding thump, and leaned back as though that finalized his argument. “See? Luck.”

“Yeah,” Squall said, almost choking. “Real lucky. Always the lucky one ...” With the words, his hand tightened on his glass, and struck the desk’s polished flat. The blow shattered the shot glass, and he watched the shards shred into his flesh with something like satisfaction. Blood and Trabian scotch mixed, and pooled, and dripped from the edges of the desk with frightening rapidity.

“Fuck, Leonhart,” Seifer exclaimed, dropping his own glass and diving around the desk to clutch at Squall’s bleeding hand. “What did you do,” he cried, dismayed, almost panicked as always at the true consequences of giving in.

“Nothing,” Squall growled, closing his fist stubbornly around his slivers of glass. “Why do you care anyway, Seifer?” he continued, unable to leave that niggling doubt alone. “Why should you even care?” Cradling his wound to his chest, pinning Seifer with his eyes. “You don’t care,” he whispered, reading what he thought was truth in summer-blue eyes barely visible in the in-streaming night. “You don’t.” His blood ran thick down his wrist, twining his forearm in ribbons of scarlet.

“Shit, Leonhart, I care!” Seifer said desperately, knowing the futility of trying to physically tackle the Commander. “I care. Why do you think I always tried with you?! Even as a kid you were scary-quiet, never talked. Hyne, you probably woulda slipped into catatonia if not for me!”

“Go away, Seifer,” was his only response. Squall was deliberately clenching the wounded fist, driving the shards deeper, scraping bone, huddling in on himself as if to hide. “Just go away.”

“No! Listen to me, damnit,” Seifer pled, no longer caring about his pride. “I care, I do, please stop this!” Blood had streaked Squall’s front, and small spatters and puddles had begun on the plush carpet. “Squall, do something!” he shouted. “Heal yourself, Hyne damn it, I’m not Junctioned!”

Time seemed to freeze for Seifer as he admitted (to his eternal rival) the extent of his helplessness. His heart thumped. Squall’s blood dripped to the carpet with a distinctive plip. He raised dazed eyes to Squall’s.

But Squall wasn’t even looking at him. Squall was staring at the tall windows, even white teeth gnawing at his lower lip like he missed the taste of blood.

“Squall?” Seifer said hesitantly. Had Squall even heard him?

“Where’s Irvine?” Squall asked suddenly, voice sounding very young though not unsure.

Seifer was baffled for a moment by the abrupt change in topic.

“Probably in his rooms,” Seifer said slowly, trying to remember his earlier conversation with the cowboy. “He said he’d be waiting.”

“What for?” Squall said, almost to himself, then choked on a laugh. He stood very suddenly, and as suddenly found himself on the floor, partially in Seifer’s lap.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Seifer asked, purring.

“Find Irvine,” Squall answered, closing his eyes.

“Not before a trip to the Infirmary, you great idiot,” Seifer said, almost fondly. “You’ve nearly bled out, and I can’t put pressure on the wound without making it worse.”

“I need to see Irvine,” Squall insisted, tugging irritably at his hand when Seifer tried to look at it.

“Why? My company not good enough for you?” Seifer asked. Squall’s brows furrowed with pain, and he rolled his head miserably in Seifer’s lap.

“Just ... I just need to go find him, okay?” he ground out. “He’s waiting. Rinoa--”

“What,” Seifer said, when it became apparent that Squall wouldn’t continue. “The cowboy makes you feel better?” He laughed. “Well then what the fuck am I doing here?”

“This isn’t,” Squall groaned, pushing himself up, slipping in his blood painted bright even in the dark office. Seifer tightened his hold, leaned up to flick on the desk lamp to bathe them both in its warm yellow phosphorant glow. “There’s a call-box on the desk,” Squall admitted sullenly, almost sulking in the quiet drain of his blood.

“Call-box, right,” Seifer groaned, shifting on his knees, Squall held secure against his chest until he could lean up over the desk’s cluttered surface, fumbling through papers for the antiquated piece of machinery with one hand, the other clamped fast around Squall’s wrist as a make-shift tourniquet. A few shouted words and they came running, gratifying or insulting in the quickness of their response Seifer wasn’t sure, as Quistis came through the outer door at a quick jog, lips set in a grim line.

“What happened here?” she growled, full Instructor-voice and blue eyes snapping in a way that Seifer had always admired (in a lustful way) and hands moving gracefully in a kata peculiar to the Blue magic she washed quickly through Squall’s veins. The blood slowed immediately, and Seifer said, “We were talking, and things got out of hand,” quick as a joke, levering to his feet with Squall still and pale in his arms, not struggling now even though the bleeding had slowed, walking past Quistis to the door careful not to slip in his (Squall’s) blood.

“Out of hand?” Eyes cold, cold, furious as ever with her bloodied finger smudging the elevator’s hold button, Seifer hugging Squall closer to maneuver through the sliding doors.

“Not really the time, Quisty,” he growled, arm slick and slipping on the leather jeans, nearly dropping Squall and too conscious of the slack limbs and shallow pulse. “Where is everyone?” There should be more than just Quistis up here with him (Squall) in the too-quiet office.

“Giving you a bit of distance,” she muttered, not looking at him now, stepping in closer to take the wrist of Squall’s wounded hand and hold it above heart-level. Squall stirred aimlessly, still not quite unconscious but eyes refusing to focus silver. Seifer shrugged Squall’s body to a more secure position in his arms, ignoring the weakly voiced protest, his arms and back thrumming with strain as the elevator jounced a bit on landing and Quistis nearly closed them in with her impatient lunge for the Open-doors button.

She backed out first, fingers secure around Squall’s wrist, her other hand levering Squall’s head up onto Seifer’s shoulder as he (Seifer) edged out of the elevator into a scene from one of those old horror movies like they used to make before someone sealed Adel in space, back when there was television and the villagers used to surround the castle and its villain with lit torches and sharpened pitchforks, and if the cadets lacked said torches they certainly made up for it in enthusiasm. But Quistis was still walking, backwards down the stairs now and still attached to Squall, so Seifer followed, almost relieved when the cowboy ran up with murder in his eyes, shoving through the murmuring cadets to pull Squall from his arms.

Blood spattered the stairs, and Quistis staggered trying to maintain her hold on the fragile-looking wrist and Squall was completely out now, head lolling back and Seifer was left there alone, Irvine clutching the Commander to him protectively and working flawlessly with Quisty to get him down the stairs and through the goggling cadets and Seifer was left alone, alone, trench coat wet with blood already drying on his hands as his eyes followed the cowboy’s back through the crowd, anxious on Squall’s dangling legs and the slow-bleeding hand still held aloft by Quisty like a prize past the curve of the fountain toward the Infirmary.

Seifer followed them out of sight, then nodded, ducked his head and thrust his bloodied hands into his pockets as he started down the stairs. The cadets might have stood in his way except he didn’t look at them, didn’t look up from the spattered trail of blood that he followed march-slowly to the Infirmary. He wouldn’t be allowed in, he knew from experience, but something wouldn’t let him return to sit alone in the borrowed dorm, the liquor in his blood or some building sense of responsibility and he strode after them with an entirely new intentionality lightening the old burden.

This was his blame, at least in part. And it was his responsibility to fix it, his alone.

A/N Title taken from “Sullivan Street” by the Counting Crows. Thanks to Scribblemoose’s efforts as beta and first-reader.