FFVIII // Seifer/Selphie - Hope on Fire (Part 5/?)
Title: Hope on Fire (Part 5/?)
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairings: Selphie-centric, eventual Seifer/Selphie
Rating: PG-13 (for now - will go up in later chapters)
Warnings: A very unconventional way to look at Sorceress powers and the way Knights come to be Knights. (I warn for canon purists who may or may not like my take on all this.) Also, yes, it's written in present-tense, and I know that can be an issue for some people. It just feels right for this particular fic, though, and so I'm going with it. :)
Summary: Post-game. Selphie unexpectedly receives Sorceress powers. In the days that follow, she has frightening visions of herself, destroying the world, and the warning that if she doesn't find her Knight in time, it will all be more than just a vision. And for Seifer, it's the beginning of his second chance -- at everything. (In this chapter -- Selphie gets sent far away.)
Notes: I fail at updating, I know. But I promised Jamie I'd have the next part done by the time she got back from Japan, so here it is! xD
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
She knows she must be a sight, lying on the floor in the middle of one of Garden’s busiest hallways, but she isn’t able to make herself move for several minutes. There’s a brief moment when the urge to engulf the place in flames flashes through her mind, but she is able to quell the thought -- for now, anyway.
Her eyesight still isn’t right, though; she’s seeing everything through a smoky haze. She wonders if this is normal -- if her fire affinity is just going to continue to spill over into everything in her life from now on.
How easy it would be to just end it all though. Just flick your wrist and …
“Selphie!” The concerned voice from somewhere behind her brings her back to the moment, and Edea is crouched over her. Selphie sees Matron’s eyes flick over her face, and over to the charred wall. Her mouth purses. “What happened?” Cid, Squall, and Rinoa arrive then, and Selphie can see and feel and taste the fear and concern coming off of them in waves.
“Absum,” Selphie manages to mutter, even though it hurts, it physically hurts to say the word, like she has to cut it out of her throat with a dull knife. Had it hurt him to say it?
It is so strange, she isn’t emotionally pained by the rejection, because she hasn’t ever been emotionally invested in him. It just … feels like she’s missing a limb, in a very literal sense. It’s such an odd feeling … she wonders how she’ll function now that a part of her she didn’t even know she needed was gone.
Edea’s eyes are wide now. “I wasn’t even aware you had a Knight, let alone one who would deny you,” she says quietly.
Rinoa kneels down on Selphie’s other side, and touches her softly. Between Edea’s cooling, icy touch, and Rinoa’s soothing, healing one, Selphie begins to feel better in mere moments.
“He thinks … I’m her,” Selphie croaks out. Her throat is burning, and every word is agony.
Edea is puzzled for all of three seconds, it seems, before realization widens her dark eyes. “Ultimecia. Your Knight … is Seifer.”
Rinoa audibly gasps, and she turns to look at Squall, who immediately takes off. After Seifer?
“No!” Selphie cries out, sitting up.
Squall stops and turns around. “Selphie, you have to let me get him back here,” he says, his voice even, though she knows he’s frustrated.
“I won’t force him,” Selphie says firmly.
She feels better now, the fire inside her is abating, somewhat. “Besides, it’s not my choice any more, is it? Absum means he’s free … unless he changes his mind. I just don’t understand, Matron. I thought there had to be some sort of … connection … between Sorceress and Knight. Seifer and I don’t have one.”
Edea smiles softly, and Selphie recognizes the expression as the nostalgic one she gets when she thinks of her children.
“We did?” Selphie asks incredulously. “I don’t remember anything other than him always antagonizing Zell and Squall.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything you’d call friendly or tolerant.” Edea’s voice is full of mirth. “You antagonized him right back, Selphie. You two fought terribly, all the time. It was enough to drive anyone insane. Always with the ‘Matron, Seifer broke my crayons!’ or ‘Matron, Sefie stole the rest of my chocolate!’.Five minutes wouldn’t pass without one of you screaming at the other. ”
“I do not remember that.” Selphie blinks, and is happy to find that her vision has cleared. “Is that really enough, though?”
“It would seem that it is, if he’s who your magic has chosen.”
“But you all said it was twisted and weird … what if this is just another thing affected by it?”
Rinoa shook her head beside Selphie. “Fire, right? You said you feel fire -- Seifer’s got an affinity for fire, too.” She smiles, and Selphie knows she’s trying to be reassuring, so she smiles back a little. “I don’t understand what’s going on any more than you do, Sefie. But I think this is … right.”
Oh, what do you know, stupid little girl with your stupid little fairy tale, you don’t know anything, I AM fire, and I will destroy you all, purge this world and bring on the Apocalypse, watch me, watch me, you will burn …
There’s a scream then, she thinks it might be her own, and pain sears through Selphie’s body before it all goes black around her.
~/~
When she wakes, nothing around her is familiar. She’s not in her own room in the dorms, she’s not in the infirmary … she’s not even sure she’s in Garden any more. But no, she must be, because Dr. Kadowaki is here, smiling gently. “How are you feeling?” the doctor asks her when she notices that she’s awake.
“I … I’m confused. What happened?” Selphie asks, sitting up, happy to find that she isn’t weak or shaky or dizzy. “How long have I been here? And while we’re at it, where is here?” Her mind feels clearer than it has since that day with Ellone’s accident, when all this had started, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t confused.
Dr. Kadowaki just keeps smiling. “You’ve been here about a week-and-a-half. In and out of it most of the time. As for the where, well, it’s not a good idea for me to tell you,” she says apologetically. “Cid and Edea will be coming for you shortly. Just try to relax in the meantime, all right?”
Dr. K is out of the room before Selphie can open her mouth to say anything else, and she flops back against the pillows on her bed huffily. “That’s just great,” she mutters. It’s then that she notices the gauze on her right arm, wrapped from her elbow all the way up around her fingers. What had she done?
She suddenly remembers, remembers fire shooting up out of her fingertips, fire she couldn’t control. She’d fought them when they’d tried to drag her out of the burning hallway, and had gotten herself burned in the process. She could hear their shouts, the franticness in all their voices. She hadn’t even heard them yelling then, but she could envision it perfectly now.
That voice. She’d heard it twice now. It sounded like her, but it wasn’t her, it was something dark, something twisted and bad, and it controlled her -- it made her do things, things that might get people hurt. Seifer had stopped her the first time, his voice had been like someone flipping on a light switch within her. The second time, he hadn’t been there … and they hadn’t been able to stop her before she’d set the hallway ablaze.
“Great. I’m a freaking firestarter,” she mutters to herself sarcastically. “They’ve probably got me locked away somewhere, and I bet these walls are fireproof.”
“No need for that,” Edea’s voice is here now, and Selphie finds that she can’t look at her. Edea goes to her left side and holds up Selphie’s arm.
“An Odine bangle?” Selphie manages to choke out. It’s no wonder she feels better than she has in days. The Odine bangle has effectively locked the Sorceress magic away from her. But she can’t deny the constant thrumming in the back of her brain, saying that it won’t be contained for long, that the Odine bangle just isn’t strong enough. It’s as though the magic is simply locked behind a door in her mind, and sooner or later, it will find a way to break the door down.
“Is it … how bad is it?”
“It could be worse,” Cid tells her. “Just the hallway, and mostly just aesthetic damage. None of the dorms were damaged heavily. A little smoke damage here and there, nothing that can’t be fixed. We’re more concerned about you, Selphie.”
“I think … I need to get rid of these powers,” she says softly. “Isn’t there any way? I’m obviously not meant to have them.”
She hopes she sounds convincing, because part of her worries that she is meant to have them, that somebody has to carry on all the work left undone, now that Adel and Ultimecia are no longer. And it seems fitting that it should be her -- she was the one who had no Knight, the one who had powers that were too much to handle.
“We haven’t found anyway to remove them from you safely,” Edea tells her then. “You know firsthand what happened when we tried with Ellone. The powers just have a will of their own.”
“We do think it would be best for you to leave Garden for awhile,” Cid says then, and Selphie looks at him in astonishment. “Edea is going to take you to the old house. It’s far enough away from …”
He doesn’t have to finish, Selphie knows what he was going to say. Far enough away from anyone you might hurt … They were going to banish her to Centra, until they could figure out what to do with her.
She blinks back tears and looks away from them, not wanting them to see how upset this news makes her. “So you’re sending me away,” she says flatly. “I’m being exiled.”
“Selphie,” Edea says softly. “If word were to get around about you, and your uncontrolled powers -- well. Do you remember what happened when Rinoa first got her powers?”
Selphie just nods. Officials had come, and they had tried to lock Rinoa away in the Sorceress Memorial. Squall hadn’t let that happen, though, he’d gotten her out of there. But Selphie doesn’t have anyone like that. Her Knight doesn’t want her. And she wants to blame it all on Ultimecia, but she can’t, because really … even without everything that had happened to them with that crazy bitch … would Seifer ever have wanted her?
She understands now. Sending her to Centra is the kindest thing anyone can do for her, considering this situation. “I get it,” she says. “Will this be staying on?” she lifts up her left arm and gestures to the Odine bangle.
Edea nods. “Until you feel more in control. There’s only one way to get it off, and that’s with a key, which I will keep with me at all times, so you won’t have to worry about that.”
Selphie swallows hard. While the bangle is helping her … her mind is clearer, and she doesn’t feel so full of rage at the moment … it still hurts. Like part of her is locked up, and it’s beating against the rest of her, frantically trying to get out. It will be tiring, keeping the bracelet on. She needs to get her powers in check, and fast. But is it even possible, with no one to ground her? “When do we leave?” she finally asks.
“Soon,” Cid says. “The sooner the better.” He casts a glance at Edea, and Selphie can tell that they are communicating wordlessly. Sorceress/Knight benefit, of course. Selphie had only gotten a taste of it, herself … but it was powerful. There’s something more going on here, she feels it, but she has no idea what it might be. Only that it pertains to her, and they’re too afraid to say it out loud.
“Matron?” she asks, standing up.
“Yes, Selphie?”
“Is it possible -- I mean, could I ever have a Knight, now that Seifer’s rejected me? I mean, a different one?”
Edea’s mouth is a firm, thin line. “The magic wants only one,” she tells Selphie gently. “It does not make substitutions.”
“But Ultimecia had two Knights,” Selphie points out.
“Ultimecia was different, because of her power … she got to pick and choose and do whatever she wanted. She chose Seifer because he was there, no other reason than that. If Squall had been there, she would’ve taken him. It wouldn’t have made Rinoa’s bond with Squall any less real, though, because Rinoa’s magic actually did choose Squall. Just like your magic actually chose Seifer. Do you understand?” Edea explains. “Ultimecia was a vulture, and an opportunist. She latched on, with no rhyme or reason, and dug her talons in, forcing a bond that was never supposed to be there. Her true Knight died long, long ago. Seifer was merely a pawn.”
“He’s never going to care about all that, though.” Selphie shakes her head. “He thinks I’m like her, that I want to use him.”
“Let him know that you won’t,” Cid says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
“Excuse me?” Selphie blinks.
“Just because he absconded from you, doesn’t mean he broke the bond,” Cid continues. “The bond is everlasting, till one of you is dead. He can still hear you, even though it isn’t quite the same as when the bond is fully intact. And if you search, you can still hear him.”
She wonders -- if she could just talk to him, in person, away from everyone and everything else -- would he actually listen to her, then?
Closing her eyes and focusing inward, she sends out a plea. She can only pray that her will is strong enough to compel him, with just three simple words.
Centra. Orphanage. Please.
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairings: Selphie-centric, eventual Seifer/Selphie
Rating: PG-13 (for now - will go up in later chapters)
Warnings: A very unconventional way to look at Sorceress powers and the way Knights come to be Knights. (I warn for canon purists who may or may not like my take on all this.) Also, yes, it's written in present-tense, and I know that can be an issue for some people. It just feels right for this particular fic, though, and so I'm going with it. :)
Summary: Post-game. Selphie unexpectedly receives Sorceress powers. In the days that follow, she has frightening visions of herself, destroying the world, and the warning that if she doesn't find her Knight in time, it will all be more than just a vision. And for Seifer, it's the beginning of his second chance -- at everything. (In this chapter -- Selphie gets sent far away.)
Notes: I fail at updating, I know. But I promised Jamie I'd have the next part done by the time she got back from Japan, so here it is! xD
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
She knows she must be a sight, lying on the floor in the middle of one of Garden’s busiest hallways, but she isn’t able to make herself move for several minutes. There’s a brief moment when the urge to engulf the place in flames flashes through her mind, but she is able to quell the thought -- for now, anyway.
Her eyesight still isn’t right, though; she’s seeing everything through a smoky haze. She wonders if this is normal -- if her fire affinity is just going to continue to spill over into everything in her life from now on.
How easy it would be to just end it all though. Just flick your wrist and …
“Selphie!” The concerned voice from somewhere behind her brings her back to the moment, and Edea is crouched over her. Selphie sees Matron’s eyes flick over her face, and over to the charred wall. Her mouth purses. “What happened?” Cid, Squall, and Rinoa arrive then, and Selphie can see and feel and taste the fear and concern coming off of them in waves.
“Absum,” Selphie manages to mutter, even though it hurts, it physically hurts to say the word, like she has to cut it out of her throat with a dull knife. Had it hurt him to say it?
It is so strange, she isn’t emotionally pained by the rejection, because she hasn’t ever been emotionally invested in him. It just … feels like she’s missing a limb, in a very literal sense. It’s such an odd feeling … she wonders how she’ll function now that a part of her she didn’t even know she needed was gone.
Edea’s eyes are wide now. “I wasn’t even aware you had a Knight, let alone one who would deny you,” she says quietly.
Rinoa kneels down on Selphie’s other side, and touches her softly. Between Edea’s cooling, icy touch, and Rinoa’s soothing, healing one, Selphie begins to feel better in mere moments.
“He thinks … I’m her,” Selphie croaks out. Her throat is burning, and every word is agony.
Edea is puzzled for all of three seconds, it seems, before realization widens her dark eyes. “Ultimecia. Your Knight … is Seifer.”
Rinoa audibly gasps, and she turns to look at Squall, who immediately takes off. After Seifer?
“No!” Selphie cries out, sitting up.
Squall stops and turns around. “Selphie, you have to let me get him back here,” he says, his voice even, though she knows he’s frustrated.
“I won’t force him,” Selphie says firmly.
She feels better now, the fire inside her is abating, somewhat. “Besides, it’s not my choice any more, is it? Absum means he’s free … unless he changes his mind. I just don’t understand, Matron. I thought there had to be some sort of … connection … between Sorceress and Knight. Seifer and I don’t have one.”
Edea smiles softly, and Selphie recognizes the expression as the nostalgic one she gets when she thinks of her children.
“We did?” Selphie asks incredulously. “I don’t remember anything other than him always antagonizing Zell and Squall.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything you’d call friendly or tolerant.” Edea’s voice is full of mirth. “You antagonized him right back, Selphie. You two fought terribly, all the time. It was enough to drive anyone insane. Always with the ‘Matron, Seifer broke my crayons!’ or ‘Matron, Sefie stole the rest of my chocolate!’.Five minutes wouldn’t pass without one of you screaming at the other. ”
“I do not remember that.” Selphie blinks, and is happy to find that her vision has cleared. “Is that really enough, though?”
“It would seem that it is, if he’s who your magic has chosen.”
“But you all said it was twisted and weird … what if this is just another thing affected by it?”
Rinoa shook her head beside Selphie. “Fire, right? You said you feel fire -- Seifer’s got an affinity for fire, too.” She smiles, and Selphie knows she’s trying to be reassuring, so she smiles back a little. “I don’t understand what’s going on any more than you do, Sefie. But I think this is … right.”
Oh, what do you know, stupid little girl with your stupid little fairy tale, you don’t know anything, I AM fire, and I will destroy you all, purge this world and bring on the Apocalypse, watch me, watch me, you will burn …
There’s a scream then, she thinks it might be her own, and pain sears through Selphie’s body before it all goes black around her.
~/~
When she wakes, nothing around her is familiar. She’s not in her own room in the dorms, she’s not in the infirmary … she’s not even sure she’s in Garden any more. But no, she must be, because Dr. Kadowaki is here, smiling gently. “How are you feeling?” the doctor asks her when she notices that she’s awake.
“I … I’m confused. What happened?” Selphie asks, sitting up, happy to find that she isn’t weak or shaky or dizzy. “How long have I been here? And while we’re at it, where is here?” Her mind feels clearer than it has since that day with Ellone’s accident, when all this had started, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t confused.
Dr. Kadowaki just keeps smiling. “You’ve been here about a week-and-a-half. In and out of it most of the time. As for the where, well, it’s not a good idea for me to tell you,” she says apologetically. “Cid and Edea will be coming for you shortly. Just try to relax in the meantime, all right?”
Dr. K is out of the room before Selphie can open her mouth to say anything else, and she flops back against the pillows on her bed huffily. “That’s just great,” she mutters. It’s then that she notices the gauze on her right arm, wrapped from her elbow all the way up around her fingers. What had she done?
She suddenly remembers, remembers fire shooting up out of her fingertips, fire she couldn’t control. She’d fought them when they’d tried to drag her out of the burning hallway, and had gotten herself burned in the process. She could hear their shouts, the franticness in all their voices. She hadn’t even heard them yelling then, but she could envision it perfectly now.
That voice. She’d heard it twice now. It sounded like her, but it wasn’t her, it was something dark, something twisted and bad, and it controlled her -- it made her do things, things that might get people hurt. Seifer had stopped her the first time, his voice had been like someone flipping on a light switch within her. The second time, he hadn’t been there … and they hadn’t been able to stop her before she’d set the hallway ablaze.
“Great. I’m a freaking firestarter,” she mutters to herself sarcastically. “They’ve probably got me locked away somewhere, and I bet these walls are fireproof.”
“No need for that,” Edea’s voice is here now, and Selphie finds that she can’t look at her. Edea goes to her left side and holds up Selphie’s arm.
“An Odine bangle?” Selphie manages to choke out. It’s no wonder she feels better than she has in days. The Odine bangle has effectively locked the Sorceress magic away from her. But she can’t deny the constant thrumming in the back of her brain, saying that it won’t be contained for long, that the Odine bangle just isn’t strong enough. It’s as though the magic is simply locked behind a door in her mind, and sooner or later, it will find a way to break the door down.
“Is it … how bad is it?”
“It could be worse,” Cid tells her. “Just the hallway, and mostly just aesthetic damage. None of the dorms were damaged heavily. A little smoke damage here and there, nothing that can’t be fixed. We’re more concerned about you, Selphie.”
“I think … I need to get rid of these powers,” she says softly. “Isn’t there any way? I’m obviously not meant to have them.”
She hopes she sounds convincing, because part of her worries that she is meant to have them, that somebody has to carry on all the work left undone, now that Adel and Ultimecia are no longer. And it seems fitting that it should be her -- she was the one who had no Knight, the one who had powers that were too much to handle.
“We haven’t found anyway to remove them from you safely,” Edea tells her then. “You know firsthand what happened when we tried with Ellone. The powers just have a will of their own.”
“We do think it would be best for you to leave Garden for awhile,” Cid says then, and Selphie looks at him in astonishment. “Edea is going to take you to the old house. It’s far enough away from …”
He doesn’t have to finish, Selphie knows what he was going to say. Far enough away from anyone you might hurt … They were going to banish her to Centra, until they could figure out what to do with her.
She blinks back tears and looks away from them, not wanting them to see how upset this news makes her. “So you’re sending me away,” she says flatly. “I’m being exiled.”
“Selphie,” Edea says softly. “If word were to get around about you, and your uncontrolled powers -- well. Do you remember what happened when Rinoa first got her powers?”
Selphie just nods. Officials had come, and they had tried to lock Rinoa away in the Sorceress Memorial. Squall hadn’t let that happen, though, he’d gotten her out of there. But Selphie doesn’t have anyone like that. Her Knight doesn’t want her. And she wants to blame it all on Ultimecia, but she can’t, because really … even without everything that had happened to them with that crazy bitch … would Seifer ever have wanted her?
She understands now. Sending her to Centra is the kindest thing anyone can do for her, considering this situation. “I get it,” she says. “Will this be staying on?” she lifts up her left arm and gestures to the Odine bangle.
Edea nods. “Until you feel more in control. There’s only one way to get it off, and that’s with a key, which I will keep with me at all times, so you won’t have to worry about that.”
Selphie swallows hard. While the bangle is helping her … her mind is clearer, and she doesn’t feel so full of rage at the moment … it still hurts. Like part of her is locked up, and it’s beating against the rest of her, frantically trying to get out. It will be tiring, keeping the bracelet on. She needs to get her powers in check, and fast. But is it even possible, with no one to ground her? “When do we leave?” she finally asks.
“Soon,” Cid says. “The sooner the better.” He casts a glance at Edea, and Selphie can tell that they are communicating wordlessly. Sorceress/Knight benefit, of course. Selphie had only gotten a taste of it, herself … but it was powerful. There’s something more going on here, she feels it, but she has no idea what it might be. Only that it pertains to her, and they’re too afraid to say it out loud.
“Matron?” she asks, standing up.
“Yes, Selphie?”
“Is it possible -- I mean, could I ever have a Knight, now that Seifer’s rejected me? I mean, a different one?”
Edea’s mouth is a firm, thin line. “The magic wants only one,” she tells Selphie gently. “It does not make substitutions.”
“But Ultimecia had two Knights,” Selphie points out.
“Ultimecia was different, because of her power … she got to pick and choose and do whatever she wanted. She chose Seifer because he was there, no other reason than that. If Squall had been there, she would’ve taken him. It wouldn’t have made Rinoa’s bond with Squall any less real, though, because Rinoa’s magic actually did choose Squall. Just like your magic actually chose Seifer. Do you understand?” Edea explains. “Ultimecia was a vulture, and an opportunist. She latched on, with no rhyme or reason, and dug her talons in, forcing a bond that was never supposed to be there. Her true Knight died long, long ago. Seifer was merely a pawn.”
“He’s never going to care about all that, though.” Selphie shakes her head. “He thinks I’m like her, that I want to use him.”
“Let him know that you won’t,” Cid says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
“Excuse me?” Selphie blinks.
“Just because he absconded from you, doesn’t mean he broke the bond,” Cid continues. “The bond is everlasting, till one of you is dead. He can still hear you, even though it isn’t quite the same as when the bond is fully intact. And if you search, you can still hear him.”
She wonders -- if she could just talk to him, in person, away from everyone and everything else -- would he actually listen to her, then?
Closing her eyes and focusing inward, she sends out a plea. She can only pray that her will is strong enough to compel him, with just three simple words.
Centra. Orphanage. Please.