Author's note: Don't own and don't profit from anything related to Final Fantasy VIII.

This is an attempt at first person narration. I don't think I do it well and I would love any advice on how to "get in a character's head." I hope you enjoy.

It's a bit of a curse that I'm completely unable to resist reading any bit of information that's new to my eyes. Instruction manuals, nutrition labels, dedications on buildings, et cetera, et cetera... Sure, it's come in handy on some occasions, but more often than not it's just a way to pass, or waste, the time. On this particular day it was a work order that my eyes couldn't pass up.

I was walking after a short session in the training center late in the evening. After denying the impulse to snack in the cafeteria, I made my way back toward the dormitories to shower and retire for the night. By some small miracle, none of my friends had physically determined my plans on this night and was lying in wait to thwart them. It had been just a few days since Ultemecia's defeat and the orphanage gang had been inseparable since. I took notice of the sign on my right, a bold, red header, followed by an assignment order number, taped haphazardly on the door.

Since these were pretty rare (things just didn't seem to break down in the dorms) and since I have the aforementioned obsession to read everything on which my eyes alight, I read the note.

Tomorrow 5/17

Remove all non-furniture items

I didn't make it any further. The only real reason items would be removed was when a SeeD or cadet was killed and their personal effects were sent away to family, if they had any. My eyes traveled up to the room number and that's when I realized that I stood in front of Seifer's old dorm.

Had anyone been around to see it, it might have been a comical sight; a former instructor and publically pronounced heroine standing in an old tee shirt, floppy grey sweat pants that read 'SeeD' across the butt like some lewd invitation, a small sheen a sweat about her neck where a small duffle bag hung, and replete with an absurd, glasses-free, open-mouthed gape in front of the former home of her biggest failure. A thousand thoughts fought furiously to take the forefront of my mind, but only one succeeded, so after a moment I punched in the universal code that unlocks all of Balamb Garden's doors, and stepped inside Seifer Almasy's dorm. Former dorm.

The door slid shut behind me and I took a look around after I set my duffle bag down on his desk. Everything was as it was, I imagine, when he broke out of the brig after failing his last exam. When he goaded me long enough about favoring Squall that I felt some guilt, and he pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered that favoring him wouldn't have been wasted. That was just before he took advantage of my confusion, shoved me hard into the wall and opened the door, locking it behind him with the keys he snaked from behind my waist. From there he went swashbuckling away to rescue some rookie SeeDs and the town of Timber...

Standing there, I found it was hard to think of Seifer in the past tense. It just didn't seem possible that someone so irrepressible could be thought of as not being, doing, living. Much as Squall had likely thought after we were informed of his false death in Galbadia Garden, before his life's only tirade... I sat in his chair and snorted derisively at myself, the instructor still in me coming out. You've been thinking of him in the perfect tense, not past. I silently cursed the instructor in me: she was right. Linguistics made perfect what history could not.

His room was Spartan, very little in the way of decoration was shown. Surprisingly, it wasn't all that messy either. Only one day's outfit was strewn on the floor, many others cleaned in a basket, waiting to be put away. He had a few books on a shelf and one on the coffee table next to a months old cup of desiccated brew. It was an historical account of prior sorceresses and knights with a few tabs sticking out. I'd have to look at it later. Some homework was strewn about next to the book, and the instructor in me noted that what little was done was correct. On the wall opposite his bed he'd posted the testing results from his failed SeeD field exams. I sighed.

Conduct: 47
Judgment: 0
Attack: 100
Spirit: 100
Attitude: 71

The numbers didn't change much over time. So much wasted talent. So much wasted life. He never was scored on the Judgment portions because he never opted to complete his prerequisites and obtain a guardian force, not to mention that he exercised a bit too much judgment in the field. He always expected his companions to keep up with him, even when he defied or ignored orders and put them in danger. Underneath the results rather brazenly out in the open was a bottle of whiskey, unopened. It had a note attached, scrawled in his distinctive impatient handwriting, "to be opened by a SeeD."

I set down the bottle and took a look at the top of his dresser. Almost as an afterthought there sat a picture of him and Rinoa, framed against a brilliant Timber sunset. He was holding her and she was smiling widely looking up at him.

Suddenly I felt waves of guilt dragging me with an undertow force into the depths of depression. I felt guilty for looking through the personal life of a dead man, who was spending what was effectively an eternity in Time Compression. I felt guilty that, when I'd had the chance, I hadn't known him personally. I felt guilty that I hadn't favored him, or at least treated him fairly, and that I hadn't stopped him before it was too late. I felt especially guilty that I hadn't remembered that even an invincible, confident-to-a-fault man, was once someone's boy; or in his case no one's boy, and all boys need help to become men, no matter how capable they are. He was a boy I once knew, And a man that I never did. Never would.

I pushed through my guilt, swallowing threatening tears, rationalizing the need to know him better now, through his personal items, before they were all gone. But what I saw next pushed my guilt into another realm entirely. In the top drawer of his dresser was a decade old photograph of six young children standing in front of a young woman with brown hair, and an older couple, smiling contentedly. Cid and Edea… Ellone holding Squall's hand, Zell sticking out his chest and sporting a huge grin, Selphie, clutching a glum Seifer's neck affectionately, me, looking like I was trying to better arrange the row of children, and Irvine blowing a kiss to the camera. Where did he get the photo? None of the other orphans had a copy that I was aware of. It dawned on me then.

He remembered. He's always remembered us.

It was a sobering thought and it made me want to get drunk. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey and removed the corked top; after all, I was a SeeD, right? It looked and smelled like it was a fine top-shelf liquor. I took a draught, felt the pleasant warm pain as it slid down my throat, and set it on the nightstand next to his bed with the picture, coughing a little. With the whiskey, I tried to drink in the man.

I opened his closet. Inside there were a number of cadet uniforms, neatly pressed, that were probably never worn. Some of his casual clothes hung on hangers, copies of his charcoal slacks, and the royal blue vest, a sweatshirt and sweater here and there. And on the end; his second trench coat.

What compelled me, I don't know, but I felt I had to put it on. I appreciated the coat instantly. It was pleasantly heavy, subtly woven with high strength fibers that made an effective armor, in the length it could hide main and side arms, it captured body heat but remained ventilated surprisingly well. Moving in front of the full-length mirror, I looked ridiculous: the coat dragged along the floor, my fingers just peeked through the sleeves, and the lapels stretched up to my nose, where I deluded myself into thinking that it would still smell of him. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't, but I didn't trust my senses just then.

On impulse (but then, what had I done in the past ten minutes that wasn't on impulse?) I checked the pockets and found a steno pad with a pen. I opened the pad of paper, started to the read the text… The List! The infamous "List." I still remembered when he ordered that Raijin put me on it after I wished him luck twice.

Sure enough, "Instructor Trepe" was written at the bottom. I smiled despite myself.

I moved over to his bed, his coat still draped over my shoulders, weighing heavily on them, and lay down. Taking another swig of the whiskey, which somehow tasted even better than it first did, I perused the rest of "The List."

Doughnuts from that bakery in Balamb, Zell's T-Board, all signs for the Garden Festival and Trepie sign-up sheets, Zone's stupid news press, Rinoa's hairbrush… It went on and on. But what the hell was it for? It looked like a mixture of a grocery list and a countdown of the things he probably hated, plus a few "to-do" items as well.

Pushing the list back in the pocket from whence it came, my thoughts turned to Rinoa. I wondered if the girl who had known Seifer for less than half a year had known him better than I did, unknowingly knowing him my whole life. I still remember the way she held him with such reverence when we all discussed his supposed death. She had loved him once. Had seen him carry his confidence over to her in his efforts to get her to reach her dreams. In retrospect, it seems clear that she saw a lot of things in him that I never did, and now I doubt whether I didn't see them because they weren't there. I just don't think I was looking.

He'd turned away, probably, long ago, sometime after we'd turned our backs on him.

The room became for me some strange combination of museum and mausoleum and I continued to work on the bottle, an offering to a god who wouldn't consider it a sacrilege. I let my head settle in his pillow and convinced myself that I could really now smell him. A pleasant mixture of sun, sweat, and citrus. I drank it all in. The scents. The whiskey. The pictures. The memories.

I think that the alcohol helped me to bridge the two halves of my brain and think retrospectively on the events that had transpired in the past several months. Hyne knew there wasn't time to think about those things when they happened.

The person so many are calling a traitor was infallibly loyal to the only person he could ever count as family. He protected matron. And… Probably us too. Our clashes seemed more like pretty flashes for the camera, or sorceress, than life-or-death struggles. It suddenly became hard to believe that the man who reversed the Zantetsuken fell on his proverbial sword when facing us. And the Aura spells we drew from him were a godsend; without them I'm not sure we could have survived our final battles. He was the only person I knew who could perform a limit break if something so much as hurt his feelings let alone when lying near death. He must have gone easy on us.

I laughed, possibly causing anyone nearby to think the room was haunted. Wasn't it? I could feel him. As I took another drink to his memory he laughed with me and not at me as it seemed in the past.

Pushing the covers down, I got fully in bed, wondering idly how many other women had been in this bed. How many had left to find it cold in the morning like I would? Not as cold as I would find it.

How many climbed too close to the sun, when I had refused to see it shine or feel its warmth?

I was getting too sentimental, and tired, so I capped the liquor after one more drink, and pulled the covers up to my chest, still wearing his coat. I savored the smell and let what memories come that would, thinking that they would disappear whether or not I experienced them now, and wanting to take the ephemeron for granted.

I'd always taken Seifer for granted, just like the sun. That night I took him for granted one last time, all selfishness and with a newly acquired sense of respect and affection.

On that night I let the warmth and strength of the sun envelop me.