fic: imperfect tense - ch.7 (ff7+ff8)
Imperfect Tense
Chapter 7
FF7/8 || R - sexuality, battle violence, language || Squall/Seifer, Sephiroth/Cloud || crossover
Jenova's legacy, living on through the Sorceresses, is forcing Squall to deal with an unstable Seifer, Cloud Strife, and yet another potential end of the world. Maybe paperwork really wasn't so bad.
Word Count: 1,600
Date: 7 December 2010
7.
"Squally, we totally need to get some of these for Garden."
Selphie was happily spinning around in one of the plush chairs in the conference room, waiting for everyone else to take their own seats around the elliptical table. Squall ignored her in favor of leaning forward slightly and fixing his stare on Strife, directly across the table.
"You gonna tell us what this is about now?" Zell yawned, the sunlight coming through a high window and lighting up his hair making him look like a disgruntled chocobo. Selphie started to reach out to pat him on the head, but Quistis smacked her hand away.
"Tell them what you told me," said Squall.
Strife's eyes narrowed, but he repeated, almost word for word, what he'd told Squall the night before over the vid-phone.
"Hold on. An alien?" repeated Zell.
"Yes," replied Strife.
"Really?"
Strife gave him a flat look.
"Right. Aliens are a 'go.'" When Squall put his head in his hands, Zell asked, "What?"
Kiros, sitting beside Laguna at one of the narrow curves of the tables, hummed thoughtfully. "If the Lifestream is the source of life for everything, then why are only the Sorceresses affected?"
"It'd be hard to say," said Quistis. "We still don't actually know how someone becomes a Sorceress, stories about Hyne aside."
"Wait," Selphie broke in suddenly, "Cloud, if you were there when Jenova was last time, how old are you?"
Strife blinked. "I…don't know."
"Did you ever have a dinosaur for a pet?"
What Strife was actually going to say when he opened his mouth no one would ever know, since Quistis had snapped around in Squall's direction and frowned. "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 ran a hand through his hair irritably. "I told you that I've been having dreams. They…included the Lifestream."
"And Strife was there?" Irvine asked mildly. Squall nodded once.
"The Lifestream is how you've been kept alive all these years," Quistis concluded shrewdly, shooting a look at Strife and getting another nod in return.
"So who are you, exactly?" Laguna demanded, exasperated. "You come out of nowhere talking about Sorceresses and trying to take me hostage - "
Strife shifted in his seat. "We're…no, I am - was a mercenary."
Squall's eyes narrowed at the apparent confusion of pronouns and verb tenses and thought that perhaps they'd need to keep an especially close eye on him. Unpredictable people were the most dangerous, and losing their main source of information to a Sorceress' seduction would probably be a bad thing. (In the back of his mind, Shiva sent small, supportive wisps of cold curling through his thoughts.)
On the other side of the table in the red corner, Cloud was wishing he was anywhere else. Should've seen the conferences Sephiroth was forced attend, Zack pointed out, but at least he had the Masamune. A hand on that hilt and Heidegger would shut the fuck up real fast.
"So where's this Sorceress?" asked the cowboy, lounging like a lazy housecat. "Doesn't Esthar monitor that kind of thing?"
"If we could find Sorceresses so easily, we'd know immediately anytime one of them was born," Laguna admitted. "But usually they don't even show until adolescence."
Quistis sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses askew. "So she could be anywhere right now."
"We do know one Sorceress," Tilmitt-call-me-Selphie-you-cutie interjected, sounding uncharacteristically timid as she glanced at their commander. Leonhart didn't react.
"You really think Rinoa would do anything, though?" Zell was frowning doubtfully. "Wouldn't she come to us if something was wrong?"
"Look at Edea," Quistis said softy, and the rest of the SeeDs went quiet.
Cloud broke in, "Jenova doesn't require a willing host. Though it helps."
Leonhart looked skeptical. "What's Jenova after?"
("Mother is the rightful ruler of this Planet.")
"Domination. Cleansing the Planet of humanity."
("I will be a god.")
"As soon as we return to Garden, we'll need to track down Rinoa and Seifer."
"Seifer?" Zell blinked.
"He was a Knight as well."
"What does being a Knight have to do with any of this, though?"
("Don't you two ever talk, Cloud? Like, outside the bedroom?")
("I'm worried about you, Spike. Sephiroth's not exactly the most…sensitive of people, and you're - no, Cloud, I'm not calling you worthless, but you're practically still a kid and - please, don't look at me like that.")
"If he was controlled by Ultimecia once - "
Cloud, who'd been staring out the window behind Zell, twitched and glanced at the commander. "Controlled how?"
"Sorceresses have Knights," Quistis explained. "Like their general or right-hand man. He isn't nearly as powerful, but he can still draw on her power."
Cloud stared at her and felt like Zack had just landed a blow in his stomach during a training session. Meteor Crisis. Reunion.
"You okay, Cloudy?" said Selphie, but Cloud ignored her, demanded, "How do these men become Knights?" and didn't miss the way everyone looked at Leonhart.
"We don't know." His voice was completely flat. "I don't remember how I became a Knight."
"But it explains why you were able to get into the Lifestream."
Something in his voice must've been strange enough to tip off Quistis. "You all right, Cloud?"
"Jenova had…a Knight," he muttered, glancing down and letting his hair fall over his eyes. "The general of the largest army in the world. He nearly destroyed it, and he had a piece of her inside him. If what you're saying about Knights is true then you're just as much of a liability as this Rinoa and Seifer, Leonhart."
Leonhart's eyes narrowed and, yes, there was the killer hiding behind a pretty face. Laguna and the SeeDs looked distinctly unhappy, but Cloud didn't think they'd noticed the tendrils of frost winding from under Leonhart's gloved hands and down the armrests of his chair.
Well. That wasn't normal.
"What about you?" the commander returned. Cloud smiled humorlessly, already seeing in the kid that very human fear of losing control. It would be a cruel fate for him to defeat a Sorceress and her Knight once only to turn around and take one of those places himself, strung along a like a puppet and too drunk on power to see the strings. Better to die as yourself than as a monster.
"Don't worry, Leonhart. When the time comes, I won't hesitate."
He knew the commander would understand what he meant.
…
Rinoa stared into the tiny mirror over the bathroom sink and thought, I'm going insane. Oh Hyne, Squall, help me, there's something wrong and I think I'm losing it.
Someone knocked on her apartment door and called, "Rinoa, you in there? Are you okay? We were all worried, you never showed up at the site yesterday…"
It was the girl with whom she'd had lunch the other day, sweet Amanda with a cat and a parakeet and a dream of being a veterinarian someday. Her voice, muffled by the door, made the sickness under Rinoa's skin shiver.
"Go away!" Rinoa managed around the lump in her throat.
"What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"Go away!"
Then there was silence and she was alone. She'd skipped work because now whenever she saw someone she could picture their eyes exploding in their sockets, how easy it'd be, how defenseless their minds really were. Last night a bird had landed on her windowsill and an instant later it was a smear of blood and feathers on the wood.
Her reflection's eyes were bloodshot, silky hair tangled in a two-day-old braid, the salty grime of tears left on her cheeks. She looked like shit and felt like hell.
Why waste divine power on the unworthy?
It'd started with dreams but now she was hearing a voice, that voice, all the time and Hyne, gods, she really was going insane.
You can't judge anyone's life as 'unworthy,' she argued.
The weak are meant to bow to the strong, to love them, to follow their will. It is the natural order.
Rinoa was unconsciously tipping closer to the mirror and she saw Squall on the floor, unmoving, blood spattered over his bone-white face, eyes half-lidded and staring -
She jerked back with a cry, knocking her elbow against the porcelain, not closing her eyes fast enough to miss the poisonous green irises in her own eyes. SeeD was meant to control Sorceresses, she remembered, and she stumbled out of the bathroom, hitting her shoulder on the doorjamb hard enough that she was going to have a magnificent bruise there later. The vid-phone on the kitchen counter nearly fell out of her fumbling hands. No one answered the private lines of Squall, Quistis, Zell, or Selphie, and she prayed that the messages she left would be somewhat coherent.
They abandoned you. Take your vengeance.
They're mercenaries, I know now that I never would've been able to live like that anyway, but the voice didn't like that and the headache she'd had since her episode at the construction site flared into blinding agony. She fell on her knees and moaned.
It'll be worse if you fight, child.
…
"So this Sephiroth guy was taken over by a space alien named Jenova and tried to destroy the world, yanno?"
"Yes," said Vincent. It wasn't their fault if they didn't know the full extent of the tragedy and pain and madness caused by corporations, sadists, and men too broken to want anything other than death.
Seifer snorted, flopped back against the sofa cushions with a wince when he jostled his shoulder. "And you think this bitch is the reason why these monsters are so hard to kill."
"Yes."
"And Sephiroth is now in my head." Vincent just gave him a look. "So what's this 'cloud' he was talking about?"
Figuring the dead were best left to the past, Vincent shrugged silently.
"STAY?"
"Wait, what? Fu, what the hell?"
"Maybe she's right," Raijin argued. "He knows more than we do, anyway, yanno?"
"Yeah, whatever," and if he was going to start talking like Squall fucking Leonhart, he really was losing it.
Previous parts:
DW || LJ
Chapter 7
FF7/8 || R - sexuality, battle violence, language || Squall/Seifer, Sephiroth/Cloud || crossover
Jenova's legacy, living on through the Sorceresses, is forcing Squall to deal with an unstable Seifer, Cloud Strife, and yet another potential end of the world. Maybe paperwork really wasn't so bad.
Word Count: 1,600
Date: 7 December 2010
7.
"Squally, we totally need to get some of these for Garden."
Selphie was happily spinning around in one of the plush chairs in the conference room, waiting for everyone else to take their own seats around the elliptical table. Squall ignored her in favor of leaning forward slightly and fixing his stare on Strife, directly across the table.
"You gonna tell us what this is about now?" Zell yawned, the sunlight coming through a high window and lighting up his hair making him look like a disgruntled chocobo. Selphie started to reach out to pat him on the head, but Quistis smacked her hand away.
"Tell them what you told me," said Squall.
Strife's eyes narrowed, but he repeated, almost word for word, what he'd told Squall the night before over the vid-phone.
"Hold on. An alien?" repeated Zell.
"Yes," replied Strife.
"Really?"
Strife gave him a flat look.
"Right. Aliens are a 'go.'" When Squall put his head in his hands, Zell asked, "What?"
Kiros, sitting beside Laguna at one of the narrow curves of the tables, hummed thoughtfully. "If the Lifestream is the source of life for everything, then why are only the Sorceresses affected?"
"It'd be hard to say," said Quistis. "We still don't actually know how someone becomes a Sorceress, stories about Hyne aside."
"Wait," Selphie broke in suddenly, "Cloud, if you were there when Jenova was last time, how old are you?"
Strife blinked. "I…don't know."
"Did you ever have a dinosaur for a pet?"
What Strife was actually going to say when he opened his mouth no one would ever know, since Quistis had snapped around in Squall's direction and frowned. "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 ran a hand through his hair irritably. "I told you that I've been having dreams. They…included the Lifestream."
"And Strife was there?" Irvine asked mildly. Squall nodded once.
"The Lifestream is how you've been kept alive all these years," Quistis concluded shrewdly, shooting a look at Strife and getting another nod in return.
"So who are you, exactly?" Laguna demanded, exasperated. "You come out of nowhere talking about Sorceresses and trying to take me hostage - "
Strife shifted in his seat. "We're…no, I am - was a mercenary."
Squall's eyes narrowed at the apparent confusion of pronouns and verb tenses and thought that perhaps they'd need to keep an especially close eye on him. Unpredictable people were the most dangerous, and losing their main source of information to a Sorceress' seduction would probably be a bad thing. (In the back of his mind, Shiva sent small, supportive wisps of cold curling through his thoughts.)
On the other side of the table in the red corner, Cloud was wishing he was anywhere else. Should've seen the conferences Sephiroth was forced attend, Zack pointed out, but at least he had the Masamune. A hand on that hilt and Heidegger would shut the fuck up real fast.
"So where's this Sorceress?" asked the cowboy, lounging like a lazy housecat. "Doesn't Esthar monitor that kind of thing?"
"If we could find Sorceresses so easily, we'd know immediately anytime one of them was born," Laguna admitted. "But usually they don't even show until adolescence."
Quistis sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses askew. "So she could be anywhere right now."
"We do know one Sorceress," Tilmitt-call-me-Selphie-you-cutie interjected, sounding uncharacteristically timid as she glanced at their commander. Leonhart didn't react.
"You really think Rinoa would do anything, though?" Zell was frowning doubtfully. "Wouldn't she come to us if something was wrong?"
"Look at Edea," Quistis said softy, and the rest of the SeeDs went quiet.
Cloud broke in, "Jenova doesn't require a willing host. Though it helps."
Leonhart looked skeptical. "What's Jenova after?"
("Mother is the rightful ruler of this Planet.")
"Domination. Cleansing the Planet of humanity."
("I will be a god.")
"As soon as we return to Garden, we'll need to track down Rinoa and Seifer."
"Seifer?" Zell blinked.
"He was a Knight as well."
"What does being a Knight have to do with any of this, though?"
("Don't you two ever talk, Cloud? Like, outside the bedroom?")
("I'm worried about you, Spike. Sephiroth's not exactly the most…sensitive of people, and you're - no, Cloud, I'm not calling you worthless, but you're practically still a kid and - please, don't look at me like that.")
"If he was controlled by Ultimecia once - "
Cloud, who'd been staring out the window behind Zell, twitched and glanced at the commander. "Controlled how?"
"Sorceresses have Knights," Quistis explained. "Like their general or right-hand man. He isn't nearly as powerful, but he can still draw on her power."
Cloud stared at her and felt like Zack had just landed a blow in his stomach during a training session. Meteor Crisis. Reunion.
"You okay, Cloudy?" said Selphie, but Cloud ignored her, demanded, "How do these men become Knights?" and didn't miss the way everyone looked at Leonhart.
"We don't know." His voice was completely flat. "I don't remember how I became a Knight."
"But it explains why you were able to get into the Lifestream."
Something in his voice must've been strange enough to tip off Quistis. "You all right, Cloud?"
"Jenova had…a Knight," he muttered, glancing down and letting his hair fall over his eyes. "The general of the largest army in the world. He nearly destroyed it, and he had a piece of her inside him. If what you're saying about Knights is true then you're just as much of a liability as this Rinoa and Seifer, Leonhart."
Leonhart's eyes narrowed and, yes, there was the killer hiding behind a pretty face. Laguna and the SeeDs looked distinctly unhappy, but Cloud didn't think they'd noticed the tendrils of frost winding from under Leonhart's gloved hands and down the armrests of his chair.
Well. That wasn't normal.
"What about you?" the commander returned. Cloud smiled humorlessly, already seeing in the kid that very human fear of losing control. It would be a cruel fate for him to defeat a Sorceress and her Knight once only to turn around and take one of those places himself, strung along a like a puppet and too drunk on power to see the strings. Better to die as yourself than as a monster.
"Don't worry, Leonhart. When the time comes, I won't hesitate."
He knew the commander would understand what he meant.
…
Rinoa stared into the tiny mirror over the bathroom sink and thought, I'm going insane. Oh Hyne, Squall, help me, there's something wrong and I think I'm losing it.
Someone knocked on her apartment door and called, "Rinoa, you in there? Are you okay? We were all worried, you never showed up at the site yesterday…"
It was the girl with whom she'd had lunch the other day, sweet Amanda with a cat and a parakeet and a dream of being a veterinarian someday. Her voice, muffled by the door, made the sickness under Rinoa's skin shiver.
"Go away!" Rinoa managed around the lump in her throat.
"What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"Go away!"
Then there was silence and she was alone. She'd skipped work because now whenever she saw someone she could picture their eyes exploding in their sockets, how easy it'd be, how defenseless their minds really were. Last night a bird had landed on her windowsill and an instant later it was a smear of blood and feathers on the wood.
Her reflection's eyes were bloodshot, silky hair tangled in a two-day-old braid, the salty grime of tears left on her cheeks. She looked like shit and felt like hell.
Why waste divine power on the unworthy?
It'd started with dreams but now she was hearing a voice, that voice, all the time and Hyne, gods, she really was going insane.
You can't judge anyone's life as 'unworthy,' she argued.
The weak are meant to bow to the strong, to love them, to follow their will. It is the natural order.
Rinoa was unconsciously tipping closer to the mirror and she saw Squall on the floor, unmoving, blood spattered over his bone-white face, eyes half-lidded and staring -
She jerked back with a cry, knocking her elbow against the porcelain, not closing her eyes fast enough to miss the poisonous green irises in her own eyes. SeeD was meant to control Sorceresses, she remembered, and she stumbled out of the bathroom, hitting her shoulder on the doorjamb hard enough that she was going to have a magnificent bruise there later. The vid-phone on the kitchen counter nearly fell out of her fumbling hands. No one answered the private lines of Squall, Quistis, Zell, or Selphie, and she prayed that the messages she left would be somewhat coherent.
They abandoned you. Take your vengeance.
They're mercenaries, I know now that I never would've been able to live like that anyway, but the voice didn't like that and the headache she'd had since her episode at the construction site flared into blinding agony. She fell on her knees and moaned.
It'll be worse if you fight, child.
…
"So this Sephiroth guy was taken over by a space alien named Jenova and tried to destroy the world, yanno?"
"Yes," said Vincent. It wasn't their fault if they didn't know the full extent of the tragedy and pain and madness caused by corporations, sadists, and men too broken to want anything other than death.
Seifer snorted, flopped back against the sofa cushions with a wince when he jostled his shoulder. "And you think this bitch is the reason why these monsters are so hard to kill."
"Yes."
"And Sephiroth is now in my head." Vincent just gave him a look. "So what's this 'cloud' he was talking about?"
Figuring the dead were best left to the past, Vincent shrugged silently.
"STAY?"
"Wait, what? Fu, what the hell?"
"Maybe she's right," Raijin argued. "He knows more than we do, anyway, yanno?"
"Yeah, whatever," and if he was going to start talking like Squall fucking Leonhart, he really was losing it.
Previous parts:
DW || LJ