Chapter Text
Wanderlust
By Darksquall and Race Ulfson
Rating: PG for now. We’ll get it to a mature rating eventually.
Prologue.
“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”
Dag Hammarskjold
March 17th
I could just about manage to perch on the third rung of the maintenance ladder, if I was careful.
The street lamps cast little light this far back into the alleyway, but even so it was more than enough for me to count the small amount of cash I had left in my wallet. It also meant that I was away from prying eyes and anyone who'd try to take it from me. Not that they would be able to – I still had my gunblade junction at my hip, no one would ever take my blade from me - but with Esthar still out looking for me, it would be better if I didn't draw any attention to myself if I could help it.
Even if it was to teach an opportunistic thief a lesson they deserved. Even if it gave me the briefest reminder of what I’d had to leave behind.
The evening was already turning cold although, fortunately for me, not as cold as it had been some nights. There wouldn’t be a frost tonight at least. If I found the right spot, I could probably sleep out in the open with the few supplies I'd picked up along the way so far and save myself some money. The next bus out didn't leave until mid morning. Hell, the ticket office didn't even open until the morning, maybe I could curl up in one of the ridiculously uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room and get some rest in the station itself. The sound of them opening up would wake me and I'd be sure to get my ticket and get back on the road. It would at least keep me off the street.
Two weeks. I'd been on the run for two weeks and I was already rapidly running out of what little money I'd been able to withdraw from my remaining unlocked bank accounts.
Even lost in Time Kompression, I’d felt less lonely than I did sitting on a ladder in an almost dark alleyway.
Back home, in Balamb, it would be a little after lunch. Zell would have turned up with a platter full of cakes for his birthday and Selphie would be proposing toast after toast, following people around with a camera at an impromptu birthday party – just as she had for Irvine back in November, and Quistis before that. She'd probably be wearing Irvine's hat and making Zell open birthday presents. He'd be laughing and grinning, probably hamming it up for the camera. Choking on a hot dog.
They didn't need me at all. Not anymore. My work was done.
I folded up my wallet and stuffed it back into my pocket. I didn’t need one of my friends around to remind me I was being a melancholic asshole again – I needed to stop thinking like that. They would welcome me back eventually, when I was eighteen and there was nothing Loire could do about it. They wouldn’t forget me. Really, I wasn't sure what I would do when the time came. Going back to SeeD sounded almost impossible. Especially after what had happened when I'd been marched out of the building like a prisoner, I didn't even know if I'd been discharged permanently or temporarily, and whether I could reactivate my membership either way.
Whatever. I wouldn't be finding out for another five months or so anyway.
I was alone. Again.
To think, months before I'd wanted it that way. Now all I wanted was to go back to having my friends around me. I was absolutely pathetic. Not to mention an idiot, and I needed to shake myself out of that way of thinking because this time I didn’t have Rin, or Selphie to do it for me.
I swung down from the maintenance ladder and picked up my backpack. That was starting to feel worryingly light as well. I should pick up some more rations as soon as I could, there were a couple of larger towns on the next bus route and in a week or so I'd be in Deling city before I moved south to get lost again. It'd be cheaper and safer to pick them up in the larger towns. If I timed it right I wouldn't even have to leave the bus station and risk Esthar's spies seeing me in Deling.
As I pulled the backpack onto my shoulders, I straightened just in time to see Seifer Almasy walk past the mouth of the alleyway. For a moment, my heart leapt into my throat. Seifer. Here. What the hell was he doing here? He hadn’t noticed me, at least, not just yet. That was good news, I really didn’t need him to notice me, so I kept to the shadows. Seifer and I meeting after some time apart almost always resulted in a violent clash and I didn't need that any time soon. I didn’t have the healing magic or the potions to deal with it anymore.
Three garden kids – not from my garden, not my kids - followed him past the mouth of the alleyway a moment later, one already drawing a sword. Trabians, maybe? Difficult to tell in the odd light, but I thought it might have been their colours on the sleeve. They must have been down here for a test or AWOL or something. They couldn’t be after him - Seifer wasn’t on Garden’s capture list anymore, I’d taken care of that. Unless Xu had meddled with that as well.
Hyne, what had he gotten himself into this time?
Fine. If I kept out of sight, maybe I could just find out what was going on. I didn't need to interfere unless I had no other choice.
Dragging the maintenance ladder back down, I climbed up it to the roof and edged my way along the bricks behind the steel facing work. Crouching low, I could see the three students, and Seifer. He’d led them down another little alleyway, the buildings here were thrown up in a higgledy piggledy mess, leading to dead ends or locked gates between maintenance and outbuildings lurking behind the bus station. A good place to hide and a good place to kill someone.
I tried to get a good look at Seifer, as he reached his own dead end. He looked... tired. Different. He wasn't wearing the trench coat any more, not even the tattered one that he'd had in the last days of the war and oddly, he didn't really look like my Seifer. His shoulders were hunched, as though he were curling in on himself, trying to make himself look a little smaller, not the tall, strapping golden god he’d made himself out to be so often at Garden.
He looked... He looked broken.
I crept as close as I could to listen.