6Chapter 11 – Memory Never Dies (Part 1)
A/N: Lengthwise, this one turned out to be a bit of a monster… So I cut it in half...more or less.
When reading, please take note of when something is in italics or not. It helps when keeping track.
The floor under her prone body still radiated heat; her elemental defence junction gladly drunk it in, filling her with energy. Fujin climbed to her feet, surveying the damage.
"Hey, Fuj…" Seifer was there, brushing ashes from the bottom of his trenchcoat; the remains of the stool which he'd beem sitting on was naught but a still-smouldering pile of coals and ash on the floor behind him. He must have junctioned himself to absorb fire as well, for which she was incredibly thankful – she had been able to spare him no warning earlier. "You all right?" Fujin nodded confirmation to the posse's leader.
The only furnishing which had survived Phoenix's holocaust was the cot to which Squall remained strapped (because what use a Phoenix Pinion if it set the target's bedding on fire?). He was still unconscious… but the alien jubilation exploding within her skull told Fujin that Pandemona was satisfied – and Gilgamesh's absence told her that he was as well. It was done.
She turned to regard Ellone, who was swaying and glowing with the bright green aura which betrayed her use of her unique power. In front of a sorceress? Looking behind her, she could see Zena and Zamal, slumped against one another just inside the next room. They were unconscious or asleep; either way, they were in no position to observe what Ellone was doing. She sighed with relief; presumably they were merely exhausted due to overuse of their magic, as only Fujin had actually entered the room to use the GF-summoning item.
Behind them stood others. Selphie and Irvine, Quistis and Zell; they gaped at Ellone, weapons hanging slack in their hands. A matronly woman who was probably Zell's wife if she remembered correctly; she was furiously dashing down notes. Nida – and he was looking at her, a brilliant smile on his face at seeing her alive and well. Fujin grinned back at him, triumphant.
And Ellone breathed out, that aura fading, as she turned to the party outside the door with a smile almost as radiant. "It worked. I found him!"
—ox-oxo-xo—
The hunter looked around, scarred brow wrinkling in puzzlement.
His surroundings were… no more real than the stygian battlefield from whence he had somehow come. Yet they seemed…familiar…
Beds. Rows of beds, most of which held sleeping children. The room was darkened so that they might sleep, curtains drawn and door closed; but as in that insubstantial battlefield, it didn't hinder his sight. It didn't occur to him to wonder where The Lion was. After all (he would have shuddered, were he the type to do so), he had eaten The Lion.
This, it dawned on him, must be the result.
The children were in all manner of positions – curled into foetal positions, spreadeagled, arms wrapped around – he looked more closely – what appeared to be dolls of some sort. Some sort of monster…? Then he recognised one of the clutched figures. That's… a Tonberry…
("All right children, it's time for bed."
"Awww…" Their disappointment rang out in a chorus.
Zell asked, "Can yoo read us a story, Matwyn?"
She sighed, pretending to be put-upon. "Oh alright…" Most of the children appeared to perk up. In the corner, a lonely boy dragged his attention away from his missing Sis. Matron always had told good stories. "How about… a Guardian Force fairytale?"
The children cheered; Sefie yelled out, "Tell us the Tonberry one!")
He blinked. Was that…? These were… Sure enough, 'Sefie' was clutching the Tonberry doll. She in turn was being clutched by another child. That would explain the empty bed…
Another child climbed slowly, almost silently out of his own bed. The lonely child from before looked around, eyes wide in the darkness, as he sought to make certain he hadn't woken the others. His bare feet traversed the wooden floor without a single creak, carrying their owner carefully to the door. He followed the child outside, his own footfalls making not a sound.
The boy came to halt on the porch, staring miserably into the rain. He stopped beside the boy, looking down at him; presumably this was something he was meant to see. The boy was talking to himself, tears running down his cheeks. "…Sis… I'm…all alone. But I'm doing my best… I'll be OK without you, Sis. I'll be able to take care of myself." Wiping his eyes, the boy looked through the rain, following the path of a searchlight from a nearby lighthouse. The hunter smiled slightly; the kid was tougher than he looked. "…Sis Elle…" Well, for a four-year-old. It was odd, though – it seemed familiar…
(The lonely boy mused moodily for a few minutes. And then, as a child's mind does, it drifted to something of more interest.
He really did enjoy Matron's stories, especially the Guardian Forces ones. They were so brave, and noble, and Matron assured them that unlike many of the other stories she told them, the Guardian Forces were really real.
His head snapped up, as a sudden idea occurred to him.)
"Hey! Maybe a GF will help me find Sis!" Now this, the hunter mused, was truly strange. It was like seeing something from two positions at once – from inside and outside one's own head…
(Lost in childish fancy, he decided that since he was unlikely to actually find a GF anytime soon, he should make one up until he could… and it was then that his new GF friend appeared. It was beautiful, its movements majestic and sure, its eyes kindly and proud and resting with loving benevolence upon the boy who had created it…)
The hunter examined the strange, ghostly apparition which approached. It looked like a big silver cat with wings, or something along those lines. The boy must have been relatively sheltered here, wherever 'here' was; had the child seen even a fraction of the wildly varied array of monsters that he'd seen over his travels, the 'GF' could have been far more impressive. The boy greeted the imaginary creature, and it responded graciously, informing him that he should be the one to name it.
("I'll think of one later, if that's OK?"
"That's all right. I wouldn't want to have a bad name, you know…" The boy chuckled quietly. "You know, you should go back to bed. It's really cold out here."
The boy nodded, tired. He turned round to head back inside – but paused at the door. "Oh, sorry!" He rushed back for a moment. "I didn't tell you my name… It's—")
:Squall.:
Squall nodded, ignoring the head-splitting sensation of the alien being's deafening call. "These are my memories… Eden." He looked around at the memory-scape, which was beginning to acquire a distinctly washed-out, faded quality. "A GF, yes?"
:Yes. Once your memory has been reconstructed, you will awaken.: Its pulsing mental tone, similar in a way to The Lion's incessant growling and grumbling, buzzed painfully between his ears; it was presumably that similarity which had caused him to miss the fact that Eden had been with him all this time. :This is your path; my role has been served.: And then, like a tide sweeping out to sea, its presence began to dwindle. :Until we meet again…:
It was gone.
For the second time in what he yet regarded as his memory, his head harboured no passengers. For the first time, he had the chance to appreciate it.
Squall straightened, taking a deep breath. He had a feeling this would take a while… The young Squall headed back inside, as quietly as he left. He also had a feeling, deep inside, that what he found would be very, very painful.
He shrugged. It was that, or never wake up.
The girl inside, the one who had asked for the Tonberry story… she'd been remembered at the time as 'Sefie', and she had green eyes. Her full name, he realised, was Selphie Tilmitt – now Selphie Kinneas.
He remembered, in the mine, how she had regaled him with tale after tale about the people he had apparently known. If he could have blocked them out of his mind at the time, he no doubt would have. That did not mean he didn't remember most of her words.
The dream around him began to shift, clicking between disjointed depictions of the events she had mentioned. (An adolescent girl in a white dress, dancing with an adolescent, uniformed Squall. A concert held in the centre of a strange, rusted town, and a romantic moment there with the girl. A kiss shared on a balcony at a festival some time later. Her name, he remembered, was Rinoa.) A slew of them, mostly from that period of adolescence; many of them were remembered a little differently to the way she told them, but her reminiscences served their purpose nonetheless.
It was some time later – no way to tell how long, not that he particularly cared – when he returned to that porch where his younger self had loitered. This time he looked around with eyes that were a little more knowledgeable.
For instance, he now remembered that his imaginary GF friend had not been named, and that he'd went on to forget about it.
More or less. For a while.
The young orphan's mild obsession with Guardian Forces carried over into his time at the newly converted Balamb Garden. Squall spent a great deal of time in the library, avidly perusing everything the school's rapidly expanding archives contained regarding the GFs – what they were, how they worked, what they thought, how they came to be, and especially where one could find them. Maybe if he could master GFs, he reasoned, his Sis would be so proud of him that she'd come back. That slightly older (but still so young) version of Squall had largely forgotten the 'imaginary GF', Squall recalled, but the boy had retained the original reasoning.
By and large, what he found was disappointing. Most of it was in the form of the same fairytales which Matron had told him; and what he had accepted at face value from Matron, he was rather suspicious of when it came from a book written by some person he didn't even know. Until one day…
("Excuse me sir?"
"Keep your voice down! This is a library!"
"Yessir, sorry sir. But I have a question…"
The faculty member shuffled over to the young boy, his bright red-and-yellow robes flapping about in a most amusing manner. Squall managed not to laugh. Squall had more difficulty; beyond his complete lack of awe regarding the adult, he simply could not fathom the utility of such outlandish garments. "What is it?"
"This book, sir…"
"What about it?" The faculty library manager leaned forward to take a closer look at the book. "I'm pretty sure that one's too mature for you, boy…"
"No sir, it's really interesting. But it says I should go read other books, and I can't find any of 'em…"
The faculty member carefully picked up the tome, examining the title. Froze for a moment. Flicked through to the page which Squall had left it at. Froze again. Squall bristled at the clown's behaviour, which was manifestly suspicious. Squall didn't notice. "I was right…" the faculty member finally said to him, "this one IS too mature for you.")
And when he returned the next day, the book had been removed. Never to be seen again.
It had been about GFs – and the memory loss associated with their use.
Interesting, Squall mused. Two memories – and they're both about GFs… Noting the shift to another memory, he returned his attention to the business at hand.
More beds; a dormitory. He smirked very slightly; before he'd blacked out, he would not have had a clue what a dormitory was. The young Squall was sitting on his bed, arms wrapped round his knees, trying not to cry. "Stupid Seifer… always getting me into trouble…" He sported a bruise on his cheek.
("Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"Well make me!"
Squall ran at Seifer, pushing him off the hapless kid who had been pinned under the blond; he ran away crying as the bully and young Squall disappeared into a cloud of dust, fists and feet flashing round the periphery, completely ignorant of the growing audience.
"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?")
"…Sis…Elle… Matron…even Uncle Cid hates me… I'm…alone… Why…why must I always…" A single tear seeped out of his scrunched-shut eyelids, ran down his nose. "…Too much…too much pain. Why can't I…forget?"
"…Ah." He could see where this one was going, he thought.
His eyes suddenly snapped open, stunned. "Of course! The GF…I can forget with a GF!" The boy frowned. "But I don't have one…not a real one, anyway…" His face took on a ferocious mien of concentration for a few moments. "…Whatever."
("Whatever…") (…Whatever…) ("…Whatever…") (Whatever…) ("Whatever!") ("Whatever.") On and on and on… Squall blinked, trying to clear his head. That had felt like hundreds of 'whatevers' – each with a miniscule snippet of memory attached to them… all out of his own mouth, all in the space of a moment.
("…Not even a 'whatever'…?")
He was beginning to see Irvine Kinneas's point.
"I probably don't want a real GF for this anyway. What if I forgot really important stuff, like how to read? …Yeah, that might work…it's worth trying." His eyes snapped forward… And the imaginary GF appeared. It was, he noted, a little more detailed now; if he remembered correctly, there had been a lot of monsters' descriptions in those classes. Now it looked more like an adolescent chimera, still silver.
"What is your wish, master?"
"You're going to take my pain. You're going to help me forget it. Sis…Matron…all of it. You're going to eat my memory of them. Until I'm strong enough to forget them."
The GF's mouth dropped open. "No, no master, that's not the way… What if Elle comes back?"
"Shut up! Elle…" The boy swallowed, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, their depths were hard, cold. His voice… "Ellone is gone. She will never come back." …His voice, for the first time, began to approach the emotionless, ragged timbre of his observing older self.
A quiet sob ripped, echoed through the scene, which seemed to ripple with sympathy.
A woman's sob.
"…Who is that?"
"…Me. Ellone." She took form to his right, eyes rivetted on the younger Squall. The elder Squall looked over at the woman who was apparently his sister. Brunette, brown eyes (watery at the moment), a goodly amount of flesh on her bones – standard middle-aged woman, apart from the unusually high quality of her green silk dress. Fairly unremarkable.
Then again, if she was turning up in his dreams… "How are you here?"
She looked over at him for a moment. "It's a unique power I have. It's the reason I left all those years ago, because others wanted to use that power for evil purposes." Her attention turned back to the unrolling tableau around them. The imaginary GF's fur began to crawl with tongues of oily black fire, staining, tarnishing that beautiful silver fur with streaks of corruption as the emotion gradually drained from the boy's face. "I never saw this, you know…" He just looked at her. "…I can take someone back into someone else's past, as long as I know both of them. But I guess you've forgotten that too…"
"…Not for long."
"So I see. Your memories?"
"I will awake once they have been fully reconstructed."
She darted a quizzical look at her brother. "How do you know that?"
"Eden. It remained for long enough to tell me what I must do."
"Ahhh… Fujin said he'd be gone now."
"Fujin?" The scenery flickered for a few moments, depicting a moderately entertaining battle somewhere in a large room. On one side was Squall, along with a short blond man set in a pugilist's stance and a short girl who he recognised as Selphie. On the other side was a giant, dark-skinned man wielding a staff, along with— "Ah. Her. You sent her there?"
"Yes." The battlefield rippled and faded to regress to the dormitory memory once more. "It was the only way to get Eden to you."
He shrugged. "Where am I?"
"Your body, you mean? You're in the infirmary at Trabia Garden. Selphie and Irvine and the others got you out. They're all fine, by the way." He nodded, unsurprised. With the path out having been cleared of most of its monsters, they would have had little trouble making it back. Ellone chuckled suddenly. "You'd better be ready for a big celebration once you wake up…"
"…Whatever?" For some reason, it just seemed right to say it. She jumped, trying to glare at him. And failing miserably.
"…Well," she shook herself, "the sooner you're done here, the sooner you'll be up. So I'll leave you to it. See you later, Squall." And she faded away.
Eventually, he broke the silence. "I've thought of a name for you."
He remembered now, the consequence following the fact, that he had eventually done away with the 'imaginary GF friend' itself. What was important was that, after a fashion, the method had worked. Squall had taken all his memories and wishes and feelings and dreams, and fed them to the 'GF' like parchment to a flame. The memories had remained, of course – along with all the rest of it – but they could no longer touch him. He could ignore them. And, over time, forget them.
In the beginning, there had been a great deal more intent than reality in that plan. But as first habit, and then interaction with the two GFs which Balamb Garden had procured the services of had their way, the intent slowly became the reality. He forgot to continue the purging of his memories. But subconsciously, he offered no resistance to Quezacotl and Shiva when they claimed the price for their use.
It had been this which had led him down the cold road. It was this which put the events surrounding his briefly-outlined adolescent encounters with the others into context.
"What is it, master?" Its gentle voice had acquired a timbre which hinted at a great sorrow; it seemed only right.
Eventually, the 'GF' had become more of a goal, a symbol of what he wanted to become. Strong, proud. Untouchable. He forgot that it was ever meant to be a GF, let alone an imaginary one.
He did, however, remember enough of the original idea to commission Balamb's Junk Shop, using gil painstakingly collected from looting monsters, to craft a platinum keychain and ring in its image.
"…Your name is Griever."
He had been fourteen by the time he could afford to collect his purchase. By then, he had forgotten the truth behind its commission completely.
—ox-oxo-xo—
Oh-three-hundred hours, Trabian Central Standard time. The Garden had finally calmed down. In fact most of its occupants were dreaming.
There were exceptions, of course, though not many. Mainly the night patrols, the SeeDs and staff who kept the curfew and guarded against threats from without and within. (Though the ones which had stood guard on the ex-Commander were now tucked thankfully in their beds, or at least in someone's beds.) A lone couple in the Secret Area (an idea which Selphie had liked so much after seeing the one in Balamb Garden that she made sure to have one installed when Trabia was rebuilt), debating whether or not to just sleep there and miss class the next morning. An instructor or two, churning through some late marking. And Mary Dincht, who was still feverishly jotting down notes while her husband dozed in their bed, dreaming about endless hot dogs and salad dressing (1).
Irvine was dreaming about old memories – Sefie, and Squall and Rinoa, often bittersweet; burrowing into his chest, Selphie was dreaming about the celebration they'd throw when Squall woke up. (Dreaming about that instead of anything else had taken some work, but she'd managed it…) They slept in the Headmistress' quarters; even if Quistis hadn't relinquished the usurped post with alacrity following the inevitable explanations, she would hardly have kicked her out of her own bedroom.
(The explanations had been rather short; after all, they were all tired, and so they had been cut off after it was made clear that Squall would no longer turn into a giant monster and try to kill everyone. Perhaps it was for the best; if Fujin had been allowed to explain fully, their dreams would likely have been a great deal heavier…)
Quistis and Ellone were sharing a room. Ellone was another who wasn't dreaming, but that was only because Ellone had learned a long time ago what could happen when she was silly enough to let her sleeping mind wander uncontrolled. In any case, it would be several hours before she followed through on her plan to send Quistis into Squall's past. Meanwhile, Quistis was dreaming about President Zone…and a whip.
By a strange coincidence, Seifer was also having a dream involving whips; alas, he hadn't managed to find one in time. Oh well, there was always tomorrow… Nida and Fujin were dreaming about their days in White SeeD, back when they were an unbroken posse of four. Such were usually Raijin's dreams too; tonight, however, he was dreaming of flying to the moon. Zena was dreaming of Squall, and fairytale romance; Zamal was dreaming of very, very little, fully immersed in the rest of the utterly exhausted. Neither case would be particularly surprising to the other, if they weren't too busy sleeping to enquire.
The nurse in the infirmary wasn't supposed to be dreaming, but she'd dozed off behind her desk. If she hadn't, she might have noticed the faint glow radiating from the ward in which Squall rested. Specifically, the actinic luminescence radiating from his left fist, which by now was clenched so hard that the glove was becoming saturated with blood.
—ox-oxo-xo—
"The most powerful GF… …You shall… …SUFFER…!"
The Sorceress Ultimecia threw her head back and laughed in traditionally maniacal fashion as she summoned a monstrosity into existence above the party. Seated unseen on the ornate throne which the sorceress had vacated to fight them (it was the only place to sit, really - and for all its insubstantiality, it remained surprisingly comfortable), Squall looked up at the GF she had summoned. He was slightly interested to note that it wasn't one the party had encountered in their travels. It was somewhat similar in shape to an elnoyle, only far larger. Grey and black and red, gold eyes, claws drenched crimson with the blood of countless enemies, blackened wings…
If the younger Squall was surprised to see the emblem of his ring come to life and fight them, the elder Squall was staggered to see the 'imaginary GF' taking solid form to turn against its creator. Clearly, these 'sorceresses' could be even more dangerous than he had heard. Squall shook away the shock almost immediately, darting in to slash at the monstrous Guardian Force. To his left, Zell and Selphie – for he had been subjected to the long and drawn-out story of the Second Sorceress War, of which this appeared to be the final chapter – didn't even hesitate, leaping in to land their own blows. He nodded with a grunt of approval. Much as his companions of that time annoyed him – both elder and younger selves – with their meaningless shows of emotion and their inconvenient tendency to pry into his affairs, they obviously knew how to put it aside when it truly mattered.
It might have surprised his younger self to have known that Squall felt very little in the way of shame for his own past embarrassments. Then again, the younger Squall – like most adolescents – remained largely convinced that he was an adult. Thirty years on, Squall knew better. The whole 'Rinoa' thing, which he knew in a distant sort of way could not have worked (after all, how else would he have ended up like he had today?), had caused him only slightly more embarassment (lust in its various forms being another thing which tended to fascinate adolescent creatures).
Why was he feeling so uneasy?
He watched on as Griever performed its signature attack…and then as Ultimecia junctioned herself to the monster. Why would a human…join with a monster? Willingly? Unwillingly, he could forgive – after all, what else could The Lion be classed as, if not a monster?
A dark suspicion began to squirm in his gut.
Everything went dark. And then Ultimecia appeared once again…in a twisted form of herself. "I am Ultimecia. Time shall compress…" That exotic, crawling accent, strangely, had vanished. "…All existence denied."
("Today, we are going to start on a new book." Lina, a White SeeD, was telling a pair of children a story. Squall found the scene startlingly domestic, for all that it was obviously a history lesson rather than a story told merely for entertainment. "It's a story about a very wise man named Vascaroon. The title of the book is 'The Legend of Vascaroon'." The children, clad in their little white uniforms, leaned forward to better listen.
"Once upon a time, there was a person named Hyne. Hyne was the ruler of the world." Lina looked down at the children, her face serious. "He was the ruler of the world. He became lazy and decided to make a tool to make his life easier. Hyne made a neat tool. His tool could make more tools by itself. Soon there were a lot of tools in the world. These tools were actually people.")
("…I should tell you this before I go." Rinoa paused to frame her words; the two aides and three soldiers of Esthar kept a discreet distance, still within earshot, but far enough away to give at least the illusion of privacy. "I was possessed out in space. There was a sorceress inside me." She turned away, unwilling – perhaps unable – to look him in the face. "Ultimecia, a sorceress from the future. She's trying to achieve time compression."
Out of the corner of his eye, he distantly noted the leading aide, nodding significantly to the other.
"She's the only one who would be able to exist in such a world. She, and no other.")
("…Hyne cut his body in half and gave the people half as promised. Then, another war started. People began to fight over the power Hyne offered them through his body. This war lasted for decades. Finally, King Zebalga and the Zebalga tribe emerged victorious and demanded Hyne's body-half to get its powers. But the body ignored their demands.
"Then, Vascaroon came to the rescue. He appeared before the confused Zebalgas and revealed to them that Hyne's body-half was corrupt and possessed no real power. The body-half was actually Hyne's cast-off skin. The Zebalgas were angered by this truth, and decided to hunt down Hyne.
"The Zebalgas never found Hyne. People began to call him 'Hyne the Magician' and continued to hunt him for centuries to come.")
(Squall and Rinoa descended down the ramp, to be confronted by two aides and three soldiers of Esthar. He dully wondered whether they would try to fight them.
Then the leading aide bowed respectfully. "Sorceress Rinoa. Hyne's descendant." So they had decided to try for diplomacy first…)
Ultimecia began to mutter under her (its?) breath. She (it) had taken massive damage, including the full brunt of several Lionheart limit breaks; the monstrous, nominally invisible vehicle below her had been slashed to ribbons long ago. "Reflect on your… Childhood…"
Squall knew, he knew, that his younger self had not made the connection.
("Hyne…" Squall looked up through the ceiling, sprawled on his bed. His eyes burned, his stomach roiled. But his head was clear, crisp, beyond ice. "You… Will… Pay.")
Not until much later.
Squall staggered to a stop, looking down off the precipice into infinity. Then turned around – only to find himself on a small island of featureless desert-scape, floating in the void. He'd been caught in a time warp.
Unlike the younger Squall, struggling amidst his hallucinations, the elder Squall could see the ethereal presence which attempted to entrap his soul; it looked rather similar to that time when Ultimecia had been rendered visible through Ellone's efforts, her hand wrapped cruelly round Rinoa's neck. Shorn of all other options, the controlling presence behind the final sorceress had taken his last gamble – scrabbling for purchase round a far more dangerous part of him than his neck…
But his soul had been claimed already, and Rinoa wasn't letting go.
Squall Leonhart was numb, watching once more as she kissed his younger self on the balcony of Balamb Garden. He saw that smile on his clean-shaven, virtually unmarred visage, a smile which he had never seen there.
He realised, then.
That callow, capricious sorceress girl…had been the love of his life.
Painful, indeed.
Ending A/N: (1) The 'salad dressing' is a VERY loose reference to a fic called 'Meal Ticket', written by LoverOfSilverHairedBishies and posted on FanFictionNet. (Use 'Squall' and 'Zell' as filters to find it quickly.) Personally, I don't regard my mention as detailed enough a reference to count as potential plagiarism – but since LOSHB seems by their profile-page to be particularly sensitive about the topic, let me note that (a) Zell's liking for salad dressing on his hotdogs in this story has nothing to do with 'Meal Ticket's plot, and (b) 'Meal Ticket' is a light-hearted, rather humorous story and I recommend that you go and read it. (If you're reading, LOSHB, I hope that satisfies and placates you…because if it doesn't, I'll just laugh.)
Next chapter: I finally start delivering on that 'tragedy'...