Of the Lion and the Knight

Disclaimer: Characters of FFVIII property of Square Enix; I don't own them, but I do own the plot of this here humble fic, and I am certainly not making any profit from this story… so please don’t sue, with sugar on top.

Warning: This chapter is rated M for slight sexual/violent connotations and language (swearing).

A/N: Another reminder, the prolog takes place in the present, and this/subsequent chapters are working up to it, and so took place previous to the prolog. Heads up for suggestion of violence, swearing, wet dreams and general angst. =D


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Chapter Two: The Frayed Ends of Understanding

The initial shock of the impact almost bowled him over, completely unexpected as it was; only the aid of some quirk in the ground lent him purchase enough to dig a fast heel into it and save himself an undignified tumble flipside across the cobblestones. On the other hand, the someone gave a loud yelp and scrambled backwards, falling over in the process and issuing a long string of colourful expletives.

He might’ve forgotten a lot of things, but Seifer Almasy would never forget that voice. Breathing hard, he felt immediate irritation seize him at the mere sound of it, and the swarming pain in his shin hadn’t even registered yet.

“What the fuck’re you doing, creeping around in the dark, Chicken-boy?” he seethed, straining for sight of that familiar and ridiculous tuft of hair in the poor light. Not that he needed to see it to know it was Zell who’d almost tried to assassinate him, sitting hunched up on the doorstep like a drunken drifter…

The comeback wasn’t quite as immediate, but it was equally loud - and definitely more surprised.

“What’re you doing here?” mammoth suspicion settling in it, after the initial astonishment and grim recognition washed over. “And the hell’re you creeping around in the dark for, Almasy?”

The young martial artist had barely time to right his swimming vision before he was suddenly gripped hard around both sides of the collar and pulled bolt-upright, sensing another’s face only inches from his own.

“Will you shut your damn trap?” Seifer hissed at him, fiercely. “Don’t mention my name - especially my last name. Not now, not anywhere. Got that?” Squeezing the lapels of Zell’s coat harder to emphasize the final words, he let go, dismissively, cursing under his breath. Then, backing away, quite disoriented, the taller man looked to both ends of the moonlit street uneasily.

Confusion did nothing to allay the indignation of treatment so typical of his childhood nemesis; Zell did only what came natural to him. He snorted and brushed himself down, scowling.

“Screw you, Seifer.”

Far from being in the mood for an argument, the martial artist was suddenly reminded how difficult he always found it to not want to punch this guy somewhere terribly painful. And right now he wasn’t in the mood for an argument at all – more like a fight at this rate.

He straightened up, defiant; but the other just ignored him, never having looked more preoccupied in his whole bothersome, aggravating life. What was he even doing in Balamb, after all the trouble he’d caused? And creeping about in the dark like… like a…

Zell looked at him. Seifer seemed as piqued as a cat that had spotted another cat sitting on its garden fence. The hell’s Egomaniac looking for, anyway…?

“What’re you doing?” he asked irately, after minute or two passed with Seifer utterly unforthcoming of response. He looked as if he was… well, spying on something.

“I said shut up,” was the unsurprisingly caustic answer.

“What for?” Zell muttered, letting more than a drop of impudence seep into his voice. That grab’d hurt – wasn’t he owed some kind of an explanation? Apology? And who did Seifer still think he was, still pushing him around like that… the Sorceress’ Prowler?

Wiping away a smear of grit that’d stuck to his arm in the fall, Zell frowned at the cross-sword emblem on Seifer’s coat standing out boldly against the lighter material behind it. The moonlight played across it indifferently, but he remembered only too well the last time he’d seen it - in the Lunatic Pandora, as its cursing, bleeding owner had thrown his own girlfriend to the mercy of the monstrous Adel. He realised he had no idea whose side Seifer was on anymore – except that it most likely wasn’t his.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked again, sharply. “What happened after Lunatic Pandora -?”

But he never got an answer to that one. Seifer backed right up against the wall, staring toward the station. He stood there, completely still, for the better part of another whole minute… with such apparent concentration even Zell was distracted from his anger and followed the taller man’s gaze. He screwed up his eyes, squinted, even stood on his toes… but the gloom beyond the flickering streetlamps seemed empty. He rolled his eyes.

“Have you gone completely nuts?”

Now he had to stifle a sardonic laugh at himself; how could he even suggest Seifer’d gone completely nuts? That would’ve implied he hadn’t been nuts to begin with – and evidence there was stacked against Seifer… well, just a little.

“See any Galbadian soldiers around anywhere, Chicken?”

...Not the answer Zell had been at all expecting. Galbadians? What was so friggin’ precious about Galbadians all of a sudden?

“No,” he shrugged stiffly, ignoring the insult. “Not earlier, anyway.”

“What about when you first came in?”

Zell noticed they were speaking in hurried whispers, like a pair of kids sneaking about after curfew and afraid of being caught. “No,” he grated firmly, though he began to wonder at his own words, shifting a little closer to the wall and hoping for a better look at what the other was seeing. He hadn’t paid all that much attention when they’d come into town, he admitted to himself.

“Well, well…” Seifer muttered, still gazing with growing interest into the shadows. “So there you are. ”

Zell craned nervously; he couldn’t see shit. And then Seifer suddenly looked as if he’d seen a ghost, started backing away and flattening himself up even more against the side of the hotel, edging toward the side-door. Ignoring his first instinct - which was to suspect Egomaniac of some stupid joke or attempt to humiliate him - he turned and again scanned the lamp-lit street.

To all intents and purposes, it seemed deserted, languorous under the broad pale face of the moon, and they the only ones in it; but after several heartbeats, he finally saw what had interested the other. A shape, nothing more than a patch of darkness, slid from one side of the station steps to the other, halting, before it began slowly to advance down the lane toward them. He kept his gaze on it, transfixed, and had just decided it was definitely of man-shape and height (and appeared to be sneaking around and probably up to no good, therefore) when it dawned on him how exposed his own position was. The figure stopped dead, as though it’d seen him, and for some reason, a prickly feeling of unpleasantness poked him right in the guts like a jabbing finger.

The skulking figure halted, as if considering, before it decided to skulk in his direction.

“Who is that?” Zell breathed, and for once not finding himself all that keen on the answer.

“Trouble,” came a low, hissed reply, and a hand caught him hard on the shoulder, pulling him down. “Get down Chicken, for fuck’s sa-”

“Hold it!”

A loud voice cut the night suddenly from somewhere to the left, and the direction of the harbour. “Who’s there?”

Two of them…?

A bright light pierced the darkness where they were crouching; he covered his eyes as he was caught completely in its beam.

Ow -

“What the -?”

“What’re you loitering around here for?” the light-holder barked warily, a faceless shadow from where Zell was stooped. In the glare, the martial artist could see little past his own arms as he kept crossing them and squinting, trying to shield himself and see at the same time. “Up to no good? One of them sabotagists, I bet!”

“Was there another with you? Eh?” another voice joined the first, probably belonging to the figure from the lane, and it seemed to be the nastier of the two. “Could’ve swore I saw two of ‘em…”

Zell said nothing.

“Hey!” the light-holder exclaimed. “Isn’t he…? It’s one of them!” The beam got brighter as someone came and shone another torch right in his face.

“Why, so it is,” wheedled the other derisively, as the lights roved over Zell’s form. “Might’ve known. Where’re all your little friends this time?”

“Not lookin’ so tough without them, eh?”

Zell continued to blink and wince. He thought he recognised one of the voices from somewhere.

“This’s big,” they continued, excitedly. “We could say we got one of them… aren’t they still wanted for crimes against the State, too?”

“Every last rat-bastard one. I bet it’s them that’s been wrecking the new network cables. Why didn’ I think of it before?”

“I’ll go call the -”

“Hold up. We’ve got a score to settle with this one. Never thought I’d get the chance.”

“But what if they come looking for him?” the first one stammered. “There’s more of them than us… And we’re not… he isn’t the one we’re meant to…”

“It’s almost too easy,” the nastier of the two voices said, ignoring the other, “for us to take it outta your ass, now, isn’t it? Don’t suppose you stopped to think what’d happened to us because of you and your buddies, did you, eh, Chocobo Boy? You’re lucky I don’t just do it myself right here, and save them the job…”

“We can’t do that…”

“It’s too bad he won’t give us much for this one. But who’s to know if I got an advance on my payback right now, eh? They’ll be too happy to see his pretty face at the Pit to care what condition it’s in.”

There was a reluctant grunt of agreement, and the nastier one chuckled meaningfully. Zell didn’t know what he’d done to warrant any of this talk, but he didn’t like the way it was going. He tried to get up, but someone pushed him back down with a grubby boot.

“This’s my lucky night all right,” the Nasty Voice said, now sounding decidedly malicious. “Let’s take him somewhere quiet.”

With the light blinding him and a hand in his hair, Zell could only stagger up and squirm as he tried vainly to focus.

*

Shit, Seifer thought, watching the two figures drag their struggling captive away, still safely concealed as he was in the dark of the hotel doorway. Shit, shit, shit. If he hadn’t been sure the Chicken-Wuss was a curse on his person before, he was positively convinced of it now; it was obvious what they were going to do, and there was a fair chance Chicken would spill the beans about him under it.

Though it’s probably my fault anyway, a small, but irritating voice at the back of his mind added.

For a moment or two, he wondered if the game was up; if they’d come to Balamb because they knew he was there. He watched the torches go out and heard Zell’s half-concussed muffles dying away with the distance, but the sigh he allowed himself felt far from relieved. They hadn’t caught Seifer Almasy, but they were still here… which meant others were probably close, too. No use sliding back into the hotel and laying low if Chicken told them he was right there in the town – and they’d been practically in the hotel foyer when they’d bumped into each other. Still, for once, he didn’t feel too angry at Zell; he now figured just why Chicken had been sitting on the steps outside at night, alone -

…Shit.

As much as his taught insides wanted to, he couldn’t blame him; and besides, this fight didn’t belong to the Chicken - it belonged to the Sorceress’ knight… or what was left of him.

There wasn’t time to fetch his Hyperion; he would lose sight and sound of them in seconds if he didn’t start following. At a cautious stride, he put thirty yards or so of distance between the three stumbling silhouettes and himself, careful to keep from making any noise and noting sourly their destination took him past and beyond the pier to where an old avenue of derelict outhouses began. It was familiar enough – he’d cornered Squall more than once there in their younger days, knowing that nobody came down that way, and so were unlikely to interrupt the tussles he’d planned.

Pair of fucking cowards, he sneered inwardly. Sure, he’d been sneaky to do it himself, but there was a big difference between a fight and a beating, after all - and he’d been a mere kid at the time, these were grown men. He had no doubt the goons intended to kick ten shades of shit out of their captive undisturbed, before… well, before handing him over to Them.

Even Chicken doesn’t deserve that, as much of a pain in the ass as he is…

To say that thought surprised him would have been a gross understatement. It was Chicken’s fault they’d stumbled across him anyway, wasn’t it?

Not so sure about that…

Well, Chicken did have a raging habit of putting himself in the wrong places at the wrong times, he sniffed inwardly, and as usual someone has to bale him out. Rather it wasn’t ME, of course…

Sidling along behind them, he had to wonder what the hell he was doing. He was a wanted man, after all… and if this wasn’t looking for trouble, he didn’t know what was. Still, he reminded himself sarcastically, I’ve made a pretty good career of it so far… and if Chicken talked, well, what difference did it make?

No use being afraid of your Fate...

Or hiding from it forever…

They turned a corner, disappearing into the open mouth of a dilapidated warehouse that looked as if it’d once been used for storing boat engines or parts. Stealing close up to the rusted entrance, Seifer heard the familiar voices close, snickering to the heated protests of their victim, in whose face they appeared to be enjoying shining their torches. Casting his glance about first for signs of others, then for something to serve as a makeshift weapon - his eyes immediately fell on a large iron spike in the grassy ground not three feet away – an ancient and rather vicious-looking boat hook.

There wasn’t much to think about. He was in so much shit already, a little more over the head wouldn’t make a difference…

“Once we’re through with you, all we’ll have to do is wait for your little friends to show up and we’ll have the full set,” one of the captors jeered.

“We’ll be promoted faster than you can say ‘electrocution’…”

More laughter and a pained snarl from Zell filled the tinny air.

“Doesn’t matter to us, does it, Wedge?”

“Not if you knew how much being made the lowliest mechanic in the G-Army sucks,” Wedge muttered bitterly. “Especially when I never knew it was illegal to just quit. The crap they had me doing...”

“Will you quit whining about that?” Biggs growled. “I didn’t know either… and it’s not my fault you cut such a useless figure back there they put us down for cable-tying on the – OWWUGH!”

Biggs, who’d been standing nearest to the door, suddenly went limp and crumpled to the ground, and in the brief seconds after the torch had been knocked away, Zell caught glimpses of someone dragging Wedge madly about with the spike held flat across his neck, while Wedge choked and kicked and kept on trying to say something. A pile of empty fuel cans bought it in the struggle, crashing and clanging loudly in the abandoned place. Finally, the scrawny soldier passed out and slid to the floor like a carcass, and the martial artist stared up groggily to see who was still left standing in the entranceway.

“Huh. I thought you SeeDs could handle yourselves?” Seifer drawled in something like disappointment, flinging the boat hook aside. “And to think these dumbasses worked for me, too...”

Zell blinked profusely, the shadowed expression on his face particularly precious, as though he couldn’t decide whether to look horrified, sickened, abashed or grateful. In the end, though, he settled for what looked like just plain relieved. He got to his feet, coughing painfully once or twice.

For once, words didn’t come easy to him.

“Why didn’t you fight back?” Seifer shrugged, watching the other pick himself up for a second time that night, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head dazedly.

“I’m… I mean, I wasn’t…” Zell began, but trailed off as his gaze fell across the sprawled bodies of his kidnappers; no longer dressed in their former ranking colours, they now sported the shabbiest, oil-smeared iron-gray drabs of the lowest-grade Galbadian military engineers. “Are they… dead?”

“…Wasn’t feeling ‘up to it’?” Seifer pressed, ignoring the question. “You know where you’d be right now if I hadn’t bothered to come save your ass?”

Zell rested his palms on his knees as he breathed the pain of a few jabs to the ribs out. He almost laughed; he’d never heard his childhood foe sound quite so much like a mother hen, or concerned, or scolding - perhaps he was more concussed than he thought. Seifer was the last person he’d expected to turn up and help - if anything, he’d have figured the tall blond happier to join in the kicking - Biggs and Wedge had been under his command before, after all. For a while he’d actually thought it’d been a trap, till he’d heard what his captors said…

“I was right about you, wasn’t I?” Seifer smirked, but it was a gesture without much mirth. “You’re so fucking careless. I know I am, but at least I can deal…”

Zell scowled. He’d been about to protest, to say how his concentration had been so weak he’d not been able to make the full mind-link to his GF, but Seifer had already hit the mark with his rather shrewd… guess. Nothing Seifer ever said wasn’t condescending though, he reminded himself, and he still sounded condescending whether he was pretending to be concerned or not.

But…

The bastard had actually helped him; maybe even saved his life just now… and the fact stood out rather awkwardly now in the subdued scene before him.

“Alright… thanks. That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it?”

“…Thanks? I don’t want your thanks,” Seifer frowned, sounding insulted at the very idea as he nudged one of the slumped, unmoving figures tentatively with his boot. Wedge groaned pathetically. Nonplussed, Zell rubbed at the growing swelling on the back of his head where one of the goons had whacked him earlier with his torch; his hand came away wet and black in the half-light.

Well, what did he want to say to him, Seifer asked himself. That he didn’t want the thought of Chicken rolling about in his own blood on his conscience, because had enough on his conscience as it was? That Chicken could be dead or Hyne-knew-where now because he’d been too preoccupied with his mother’s illness? That he better start watching his own back, as well? That it didn’t matter whose fault any of this was, but that after tonight, neither of them – no, none of them - would be safe in Balamb…

For immeasurable moments the two stood facing mutely, each trying to find expression. Finally, Seifer broke the silence.

“Just… stay out of my way, Chicken, all right?”

Fuck. That’s not it…

“I mean - you heard ‘em… you know what kind of reputation Garden still has… everyone of Garden… even SeeD…” The taller man paused and regarded the other with a strangely feeble expression. “I don’t wanna be responsible for any more of… this.”

“All right,” Zell offered hesitantly, and not a little puzzled. “But tell me -”

“Squall can tell you the rest. I’m going.”

Seifer turned away.

“Wait,” Zell urged. “They did say something about you – some guy who’s paid them to keep a look out for you, and would’ve paid them the rest when they handed you over to him…”

Seifer cut him off. “Old news… thanks anyway, Chicken.”

“So you’re not on their side any more…?”

Seifer stopped just beyond the threshold of the battered old shutters, but didn’t turn around. “Only ever been on my own side,” he shot wryly, but didn’t sound quite so condescending now. No, he sounded almost…

But he’d already gone. Alone in the dank, vacant warehouse with the two fallen soldiers and the moon throwing stark shadows up all around him, Zell knew then that he had to move… Garden had to be warned, and quickly. A shiver of cold foreboding ran through him as he goaded himself into an aching lope, clearing the body of Biggs and his semi-unconscious cohort and hoping blearily that just leaving them there wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass…

He’d hardly stumbled five paces back down the path when something hard struck him from behind… and everything went completely dark.

* *

He gasped and twisted, the force of sudden detestable revulsion wrenching him awake. Writhing and fumbling to get the sea of grasping hands off him, he found he was no longer in their clutches, but sitting upright in a small, tidy, rectangular room, covers falling away from his bare and sweat-soaked chest, now warmed by a strong sunlight streaming in through the half-open slits of the window-shutters. Panting, he looked around wildly to find himself alone, quite alone, which was not what he could have sworn he’d been a moment ago…

I wasn’t alone, Squall thought heavily, pressing a palm to his burning head. For once, I didn’t feel like I was alone, but…

His heart was still hammering at the sides of its ribcage at a feverish tempo, the blood thudding in his ears; he could still feel the deadly touch of those vaporous unearthly hands, the freezing ghostly fingers that had been all over him, trying to take him, take him away from the one he’d sworn his true promise to… take everything… everyone…

Glancing up, he waited breathlessly for recognition to filter into his senses, forcing its way through the confounding vision he’d just left… now merely a bedroom, a harmless bedroom, replica weapons adorning the walls, a neatly-made bed to his right…

This was real, wasn’t it? This was… Zell’s room, wasn’t it…?

It all seemed so real, and I was…

I was…

Yes, he could still remember that truth, its terrible surety filling his veins like a poison… but even now, the memory of what’d been so intolerably certain, carven into the very core of him mere seconds ago, was beginning to fall away, to dissipate like dust on the wind… and the Voices… hadn’t they warned him -

Dying. Someone was dying, and…

But who they were, he could no longer remember; he could only remember the feeling that he knew, and the way his heartbeat waxed raw with it, the way his pulse turned to an ice-floe; the bitter gall of betrayal, so unmistakeable…

And fury. Unadulterated, all-consuming fury.

Still breathing deeply, he fell back again, wiping the moisture from his eyes and staring up at the stone ceiling. It had all been so vivid - like waking life, that he wasn’t even completely sure he was awake yet. The tangle of emotions left behind remained like fading imprints on his skin, the nature of their maker still a mystery, but the withdrawal had been so much more painful than the pressure; a sudden, tearing, wrenching away that left him stunned and winded.

So much sadness… and anger…

And he’d never felt angrier in his entire life than he had in that… that dream. Like a red mist, blinding him to all else… filling him with something terrible, a bloodlust, a fatal hatred, a forbidden ire so savage it frightened him, it hurt, more than the Light, more than the Eyes ever could -

The Light.

…Eyes…

He caught his breath. He remembered the Eyes. Hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them; blank slits of piercing light within light, all moving as one, deadly, sharper than the keenest spears of purest agony… the eyes none could withstand. The keepers of The Light, concealed, bringers of Truth and Death, all turned upon him at once, all-seeing, incurable, the eyes of the Greatest of all enemies. Unable to tear away, unable to flee, he had done what none other had ever dared to do – he had looked back into them. He had resisted. Defied. Challenged. If only for a moment, he had plumbed their depths with his own and glimpsed the infinite… glimpsed the Truth.

Yes, he remembered it; being so small, so very small, and the Great thing, the enemy, was all around him; its vast, dazzling, ethereal span unfolding, unfurling, like a monstrous, wraithlike fresh-born moth, a thousand eyes opening and every one of them set upon his soul.

In them, the Truth… like a void without life, without love, without pity.

So cold…

So very cold; but the infinite had tried to tempt him with promises of its own.

Come…

Without pain…

Without fear…

How freely that part came back to him as he lay there, trying to collect himself, struck him immobile. Yeah, he remembered that Voice well. Of all the bodiless ‘Voices’ to have visited him, it was without doubt the most powerful, rendering all others lesser; its very presence a fearful command, its words demanding submission, compliance, its wish a thing his very soul seemed geared - no, desperate to obey. Dread emanated from its source, filled him with a mind-severing fear; and yet, he defied, even when he knew – somehow - that fighting was useless. The Voice had commanded him to die, and he had not. And then those hands had reached out from the vast, vaporous, featureless face with its countless Eyes, and dug themselves into his flesh, burning like fire and venom – and still, he’d held on. Still alive…

Pointless.

I must.

I have to. Because…

Because he had wanted to save him...

And he wanted to help her…

Because he hadn’t wanted that Truth; that much was evident, because it shook him to the root of every nerve, though he couldn’t imagine now what it was... or who he had wanted to save or help so desperately.

A single tear welled at the corner of one eye, unbidden, slowly growing and bursting to trickle in a warm river down his cheek. It’d been so painful… the Eyes, the Deadly Voice, his own fury… but most of all, what he couldn’t remember. Because he knew; knew a rage that deep could only have sprung from his greatest fears. Something terrible, something… unthinkable.

His tremulous grasp of memory itself was painful enough.

Closing his eyes, he swallowed hard and tried not to think. If there was anything worse than waking up, shaking, in a cold deathly sweat, it was waking up in a cold deathly sweat with that Voice ringing in his ears, the empty shell of those horrible sensations, and not being able to figure what it was that’d made him feel such rage, such guilt, so overflowing with suppurating grief that he still suffered the absent force of it grinding, splitting, fracturing something vital inside.

Just a stupid dream, he repeated calmly to himself, over and over, like any other I might’ve had...

Nightmares were nothing new to him. Why then had this one filled him with such presentiment, such loathing?

The morning was as bright and hot as it’d been the day before, and the gulls yapped and yelled in their harsh voices from the clouds as they always did, and nothing seemed amiss; but he felt strangely reluctant to get up, even though the dream had unhinged any real desire to lie there, thinking. Flicking his gaze to his friend’s bed, made-up and looking untouched, Squall wondered if anyone had been there at all. Zell was an early bird, though; perhaps he’d been up for hours already.

Not that there’s any reason to get up early, his mind added with relief, because he felt exhausted; hardly like he’d been to sleep at all – for a thirty-mile run, more like. The clinging bitterness of the nightmare, too, made him unwilling to dress for breakfast till he’d shaken it off some, at least. Letting himself sink back into the cool pillows and the wayward hair tumble over his face, he listened to the gulls’ incessant cries as they scattered his thoughts asunder, and his muscles loosened up for the first time in what felt like days. It was going to be another searing, languid day with nothing to do, and he was trying not to wonder how boring it would be - because that was precisely what he’d come here for… to do absolutely nothing; to be left perfectly alone.

Alone to deal with my thoughts.

…And dreams…

He snorted weakly. Yeah, just what he’d wanted… to be dreaming of eyes and disembodied voices, and hands, and death…

Shifting a little to loosen the stiffness settled in his hips, he frowned. Something was sticking the covers to his abdomen, something warm and still slightly moist…

Oh, great.

He winced and groaned as his fears were confirmed. He was completely naked, and… yes, someone’d somehow managed to make his morning even more uncomfortable from beyond the waking world.

Not that he fully remembered getting completely undressed for bed. And it wasn’t as though he’d had any reason to - end up this way, after a night spent drowning in delusions of pure terror and wrath, he reflected blankly. Those weren’t the sorts of dreams that normally resulted in stained sheets…

Head heavy, he lay back down and blew a sigh from the side of his mouth that fluted his bangs in resignation. He didn’t even want to think about getting up and having to do something furtive about those covers.

But it had been such a strange dream; and had he forgotten some more pleasant part of it, lost as it might’ve been in the pain at the end…? He didn’t often have dreams like this, but it was even less often he had ones of complete abandon, of pleasure…

…Pleasure…

He still found it hard to allow himself much of it. Even these days, he noted sluggishly.

That unrivalled feeling of hot skin against skin…

A burning mouth upon his neck, tasting, devouring…

Rarely so vibrant, even in dreams...

So hungry…

…Ravening…

No-one’s lips had ever visited his own with this much lust…

Fingers, real fingers, lacing with his own…

Loving without shame…

His own name, whispered… a plea… an exhalation…

His own body, yielding all too gratefully to its primordial weakness…

Pleasure… running through him like a live wire, building from the epicentre, rising -

With a jolt, he felt the truncated feelings course suddenly through him, passing as swiftly as they came; and they had been part of the dream, he was sure of it -

Somewhere between the dead place and the Light…

He frowned again, eyes still closed. Rinoa had been the only other he’d been with so intimately… and something told him it wasn’t her in the dream who’d given him such… such want. For a while he wondered, fruitlessly trying to remember more, more about the owner of those lips, those fingers… and whoever was responsible for making him do what he would have to do in the end with those damn sheets… and why he couldn’t recollect the Voices at this point, or the identity of this unknown other. An other of flesh and reality, that was, for sure - one of the few things that had seemed truly tangible in that whole horrible, lurid fancy - save all the pain.

He sighed again.

…Just another stupid dream.

Another stupid dream that felt so damn real… he thought jadedly.

* * *

“You mustn’t sleep now…”

His still-damp eyes cracked open. Had he just heard – or rather felt - one of the Voices again? At once his stomach knotted, though he remained perfectly still, feeling for that familiar taint of another mind within his own. On the brink of slipping back into a dreamless sleep, unexpectedly awakened, an unpleasant rush of blood to the head and a tingling assaulted him.

Why? he demanded mentally. Then, who are you, anyway?

…No answer. He wondered if he’d even felt anything at all, if it wasn’t just some trick of his tired brain; but then he felt it again.

“They may be in danger... find him...”

…Find who?

He sat up suddenly, attentive. If something was there - unlike in the dream - he couldn’t feel it at all. His vision swam with little translucent tiredness-motes, the silence hummed loud in his ears, but the scene hadn’t altered in the slightest… the gulls were screaming and the sun still pouring in thin shafts through the gaps in the shutters. The rhythmic snick of the electrical clock on the shelf went on snipping the seconds away.

…Who are you? Tell me! Tell me what it means...

Stillness. Nonetheless, he refused to ignore it. If he was hearing real Voices, it meant one of two things – he was either going nuts, or… that the dream might not have been a dream at all.

He swallowed. It didn’t bear thinking about; was it too much to hope the room would stay quiet, along with his head, too…?

Momentarily, he felt extremely ridiculous: sat up in bed - no doubt a look of complete bewilderment and concentration on his face, hair flopped crazily over the front of it – still covered in the guilt of his uncanny reverie and listening for voices in his head, of all things…

That’s it, I’m getting up, he decided irritably. Like I’m gonna get any rest anyway if this carries on -

Cringing slightly as he extricated himself from the tousled covers, he grabbed a towel from the nearby chair and wrapping it around his middle, made woozily for the bathroom, wondering how it was that he’d gone to bed stark naked and just what he was going to do about the rest.

*

TBC…

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A/N: My brain hurts...
‘See fer details’: Had a good laugh at the expense of my friend who likes to say “Seifer” as ‘see-fer’, getting a leetle uptight about my insisting on the ‘sigh-fer’ pronunciation… I am sorry, dahling. Read it however you wish, it doesn’t change a damn thang... ;D