Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Home for the Holidays ❯ Chapter 4

 

Home for the Holidays

 

Chapter 4

 

For Darksquall. Sorry this took so long.

 

All Characters borrowed without permission from SquareSoft will be returned, only slightly traumatized, upon request. Written for love, not profit.

 

`Hero' Universe. Hints of Yaoi, Road Trip from Hell, and foul language.

 

 

*

 

Panic jolted me to full awareness. “Why didn't you wake me up?”

 

“I fell asleep, too. It's not my fault you are a good lover.”  

 

I shut my mouth mid-rant. Not much I could say to that. I sat up and assessed the situation. “Shit. Selphie knows where we live.” Never for a second did I doubt her promise to hunt us down and do terrible things if we failed to turn up for Yule. The woman had been through childbirth, without drugs even. She understood pain. I ran my hand through my hair. “What are our other options?”

 

 “Take the next train, arrive late, beg for mercy.”

 

“No good, the next train isn't until Tuesday and if we're going to be that late, we'd be better off using the time to change our names and find someplace to hide.” Maybe with the White SeeD, Squall was still the commander, after all.

 

 “There is another way,” Squall suggested slyly. “We could drive up in the Torama.”

 

Oh ho. Now that I was fully awake, it was odd Squall slept through his watch alarm. “Let me think: certain debasement, destruction and eventual painful and humiliating death, or twenty-two hours in a tiny sports car driven by a maniac. Decisions, decisions…”

 

“I already loaded the car,” Squall said helpfully, sealing the deal with a kiss and some groping.

 

My eyes glazed over. “That was going to be my vote. Honest.”

 

 

*

 

 

Squall tapped his gloved fingers on the steering wheel and stared out at the thick fog. “You suck as a navigator.”

 

“Excuse the fuck out of me. This map is older than Doomtrain's wheels and it's written in ancient Centran.”

 

 “Do you even have it right side up?”

 

“Ooh, a funny. He can be taught. I suggest you leave the comedy to me, Laughing Boy.” I peered out at the claustrophobically murky darkness. “I can't tell you what road we are on because I don't think this even is a road. Just keep heading north. Eventually the Schumites will find us and we can trade them the car to hide us from Selphie's wrath.”

 

“Sorry, Seifer,” my love said insincerely. “I only mentioned it because we are low on fuel.”

 

I shifted in my seat to stare at Squall. “We are lost in Hynefuck north Esthar and about to run out of juice?” I ran likely scenarios through my mental panic meter. We were way out of range for the phones, and we didn't even have anything to eat unless you factored in the fruitcake Loire had sent along for Selphie, which I didn't, as food by definition must be edible. “Did I mention I hated survival training?”

 

“Every single time we had it,” Squall confirmed. “And for about a week after.”

 

“Right. We'll just go as far as we can, then drift over to the side of the road and get comfortable while Hyne's Bitch, Mother Nature, carefully erases any trace of our passing and thereby negates all hope of rescue.”

 

“At least we'll go together,” Squall said, in one if his rare bursts of romance. Or black humor, hard to tell.

 

“We aren't going together. Since all we have is fruitcake, I'm going to kill and eat you.”

 

“How can you think of sex at a moment like this?”

 

I leaned over to cuff him upside the head, and we both saw, off to the side of the road, something flash as the headlights passed by.

 

“Was that a sign?”

 

Squall immediately slowed, a miracle in and of itself. “No, those were bones.”

 

“Not a good sign, then.”

 

“I think that was a human rib cage.”

 

“No it wasn't,” I contradicted automatically. “It was a deer.”

 

He stopped the car. “You didn't see it, you thought it was a sign. I'm going to check it out.”

 

“Why? The last time I looked, once something's rib cage is reduced to bare white bones, it's beyond help. Trust me on this, I'm a med student, we know these things.” I was having a Very Bad Feeling about this.

 

“Aren't you curious?”

 

“No, because deer die all the time, and once they become bones, we can't eat them. For all we know, it was killed ten thousand years ago by Meteor. But we can't report the archaeological find of the decade, because we don't know where the fuck we are!”

 

Squall flashed me an amused silver glance. “Don't be scared, I can protect you from the bones… or the crazed hermit with the chainsaw, or whatever it is you think is out there that will get you.” He opened the car door. “I'll be right back.”

 

“Hell no you aren't going alone.” I unhooked the safety straps.

 

“You think I can't take a hermit with a chain saw?”

 

“No, Asshole,” I said wearily. “I think you'll take him with Lionheart. What I'm afraid of is you'll kill him before I get to ask for directions.”

 

We both clambered out of the Torama and attempted to look around. The fog was so thick it was smothering, and all we could really see were the clearly defined beams of the headlights. Squall reached in and cut the lights, probably thinking we'd see better once our nightvision kicked in, but all that did was heighten the sense of isolation. The fog muffled and amplified sounds oddly, so the ticking of the engine cooling was unnaturally loud, but everything else was muted like we were alone in the world. I moved around the car to be closer to Squall, comforted by the creak of his leather as he shifted and flexed.

 

“Stay with the car,” Squall commanded.

 

“And periodically call out Marco?”

 

“Polo,” he replied dryly, and trotted off, vanishing instantly.

 

 I couldn't figure out why I was so spooked. What the hell could old bones do? They were only a hazard if Squall slipped on the loose gravel and fell on them. Maybe.

 

Squall reappeared suddenly, startling me, and murmured `Polo' and something about looking ahead to see if he could spot a landmark. Suddenly it came to me what was wrong: the sound, or lack of sound, or more accurately the nonsound from up ahead. It was like that not noise you sense when you come into the room immediately after the television has turned off.

 

“Squall! Let me fling a Light spell.” When I took the Healer's Vow to harm none, I gave up my aggressive GF's and all my attack spells - Stop is a defense spell, thank you very much. I still had Helios, a warm, comfortable presence in my mind, and he had a few nice tricks, including a spell that flared and blossomed like fireworks made of pure sunlight. Kicked ass on zombies, too.

 

I cast Flara and for a brief moment, all the fog burned off. It was bright as midday, and I could see Squall, surrounded by bleached dragon bones, standing a bladder emptyingly short distance in front of the Torama, on the edge of a huge chasm that had once been the rest of the road.

 

Squall blinked, looked down, and said absently, “You were right, it was some sort of animal.”

 

“I'm prepared to swear it was Hyne's better half if it will get you to back away from the edge, there.”

 

Squall smiled faintly, musing as he returned to my side, “The same washout that brought up those old bones must have collapsed the bridge.”

 

“We could report it if only we knew where the fuck we were.”

 

We folded ourselves back in the car, and Squall paused before restarting the engine. “You never used to be so antsy.”

 

“I didn't have anything to lose, then,” I snapped, defensive.

 

That got me one of his rare, sweet, full candlepower smiles. He even backed up a goodly ways before turning around, just to sooth my nerves.

 

 

*

 

 

 

We lost a lot of time exploring Hynefuck Esthar that we couldn't make up even with Squall's death defying driving speeds. In order to minimize the sulks when we arrived late, we decided to dead head in and take turns driving while the other slept.

 

That proved to be one of those things that worked a lot better in theory. I'm slightly too large to ever get completely comfortable in the Torama. The only way to stretch out at all is to drop the seat back as far as it will go, which is still tilted just enough to leave me balancing on the tip of my tail bone. A few hundred miles of that, coupled with the feeling of zipping feet first down the freeway like I was on a luge board, and I'm ready to kill.

 

Meanwhile, Squall has become one with his beloved car, meaning, he only stops if we're out of fuel. Normal bodily needs of passengers, like food, a washroom, or a selfish desire to walk off a leg cramp and avoid accidentally kicking the dashboard through the engine block are summarily dismissed.

 

“We'll need fuel in 140 miles, we'll stop then.”

 

“I don't understand it. We both had the Abyss Boy Super Slurps back in Inbredville, why aren't you in agony?”

 

“Seifer, you are not in agony. You are just bored. Take a nap.”

 

“I can't sleep while you are driving. Years of training to stay alert in life or death situations.”

 

I woke up to full daylight, streaming through the last shreds of the autumn leaves. “You son of a bitch.” He'd cast Sleep on me, and I never saw it coming. I had to find out how he'd learned to suppress the visual effect.

 

Squall shrugged. “We'll be there in 5 hours. Let's get some coffee, we need fuel.”

 

“No coffee for you or you'll never get to sleep.”

 

“Don't need sleep. We're almost there.”

 

“A five hour drive is not `almost there'. You've been up 24 hours at least. I'll drive and you'll sleep, that was the deal. Don't make me put you out.” And fuck him if he was thinking of crashing when we got there and leaving me to make nice alone.

 

 “I'm junctioned against status effects,” Squall reminded me smugly.

 

 “Who said I was going to use a spell? I'm going to choke you out.”

 

“There are better ways to make me sleepy.”

 

I looked around. “Not in a moving car, there aren't.”

 

And miracle of Hyne, he pulled over.