Notes: Ahh! I've been away. What have I missed? Hm.. well, this is the prologue to my new FF8 fic. It's really more a teaser than a prologue, it's so damned short. No magic. No weird stuff. Just the team dealing with everything after Ultimecia's been gone for awhile. Don't let the pairing throw you off. It's a challenge, but I'll try my best to make it believable.

Dedicated to: Mike. With his beautiful shining soul, and his sad eyes. Never stop believing in the good, Mike. It's somewhere, even if we can't see it sometimes.

Warnings: Nothing special. No gore. No pointless angst. I only do mild angst. No males being pregnant. None of that. Just a real look, at characters who should have been real. Oh wait, there is a warning for yaoi fans. There are het pairings in this fic. If that grosses you out, deal with it. No smut. Unless Mike asks for it.

Nephelococcygia

Prologue - calm before the storm

By Sniffles

BEAUTY is a two dimensional thing. Like a painting. Stunning as you stare at it straight on, but ugly when you turn it around to get a look at it's roots. Maybe not ugly, that's a bit harsh. Perhaps just... undeveloped and not quite so polished. People are like a finished painting. What we see is the finished product. A product, that more often than not, took a lot of effort and time to complete. But that product is false. It's not real. It's the closest thing to the reality the painter wanted to create, but it's often not reality. The back of the painting is like the inside of a person. When we take them down from the wall and turn them around to see what they're really made of we find a sorely undeveloped, plain, white canvas that's been tucked around wood, with only shadows of the painting on it's outside visible. That's how I see people.

He is handsome, not beautiful, but it's the same thing. He's like a greek god pulled right down from the heaven's. Perhaps he angered Zeus and was cast amongst us mortals as punishment? I wouldn't be surprised if that was true. His name is Seifer Almasy, and I have had a crush on him all my life. As far back as I can remember I have found him intriguing, and that intrigue has led to the way I feel about him now. I know him better than anyone else. I've made it my business to know him. He doesn't know me. Hell, for the last few years he hasn't seen me, when I went to get a glimpse of him at Balamb, he never knew I was there. He was oblivious to me. We're at opposite ends of the looking glass. I see only him, and he sees only darkness. The darkness of his soul and his desires.

I love him. He loves her. I don't know when she appeared in the picture, I just know that he loves her. I can tell by the way he looks at her. When she enters a room his eyes sparkle, when she leaves, his shoulders sag. She is everything to him. The sun, the moon, the air he breathes, the smile on his lips... simply everything. I envy her. I hate her. I don't know anything about her. Rinoa Heartilly, the bane of my existence. Logically I know that it's wrong for me to blame her for him not noticing me. He didn't notice me before she showed up, partly because I wouldn't let him, mostly because he's not into guys. Not like that. He sees men as nothing more than competition and grudging friends. He sees her as a life companion.

Seifer and Rinoa Heartilly. Seifer and Rinoa Almasy. They both have a nice ring to them. Logically I know they make a nice couple, but emotionally I am so insanely jealous I could kill her.

I pull my sleeve up, turning my wrists. Slowly I begin to unwind the bandages I have taken to wearing around my wrists all the time. This constant obsession has led to a sick self-hatred that brews inside me. It grows every day that I ache for him. Everytime I see him I feel another little piece of me die. Everytime I see him laugh, for her, the stronger my desire to rip her throat out becomes. I'm so fucked up, but I don't care. It doesn't matter, not really.

The bandages drop to the floor, I stare at my wrists, not really seeing them. My vision is unfocused, and I know I'm doing this deliberately. I don't like to look. It gave me a sense of control, a release from this self-hatred that's festering inside me, but after, when I woke up not dead, but alive, I didn't want to see what I did. It makes me feel dirty, and abnormal. But then again, I am dirty and abnormal.

No one knows. I hide it well, but if they did know the thoughts and needs I hid in my heart they would butcher me. It would be a messy, brutal scene, and I'm scared. Scared of losing the only friends I've ever known. Scared of him hating me. Now he doesn't see me, and it's okay. I can deal. I can't, and won't ever be able to deal with him hating me. I don't have the resources.

He is the air I breathe.

He is my life and he always has been.

He doesn't know I exist. I run my fingers over the scars on my wrist. Grim reminders of the depth of this twisted emotion I feel. I shake my head, smiling. I can't change the way I feel. I can only continue to exist, pulling myself through the endless days and nights that lay ahead of me. Pointless gestures lost to an uncaring world that sees only what it wants.

Beauty is so deceiving. He is handsome on the outside, but inside he is beautiful. A double sided painting with edges that have been rounded and painted brilliant blue. Like his eyes.

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