[FFVIII] Personality Drift (Irvine, PG)

[wallwalker]

Title: Personality Drift
Author: wallwalker
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Rating: PG
Characters: Irvine
Word Count: 816
Warnings: Minor spoilers
Summary: The changes in the others were most jarring when Irvine watched them fight.

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Irvine was no scrapper. Sure, he knew how to fight - Galbadia Garden wasn't going to let one of their assets go into the field without making sure he could protect himself - but even in small-scale combat he'd been taught to stay behind the close-combat specialists and shoot at a target until it went down. It wasn't a new thing; he'd never been much of a fighter, always preferred to talk his way out of trouble, even as a kid. He remembered being called a coward, or worse, but it wasn't that he was scared. He just didn't want to fight when he didn't have to, and frankly he thought that the world would be a better place if everyone thought that way. Don't fight unless you have to. When you do, though, don't mess around. End it quickly. That was the sharpshooter's philosophy, and he whole-heartedly believed in it.

He wished that the others did, too.

It was painful, watching them fight. It wasn't just that they knew how; Irvine had been prepared for that. He'd been paying attention to the roster of new high-level operatives from Balamb, so much so that Headmaster Martine had started asking him if he was planning to apply for a transfer once he thought that they had an opening for advanced SeeD training. Irvine hadn't been interested, though - even if he'd thought that Martine would ever approve a transfer for his favorite whipping boy, he had heard rumors about what it meant to be a SeeD, and he'd wanted no part of it.

SeeDs had to be efficient. They had to be ruthless, when the situation called for it. And they all made sacrifices, whether they knew it or not.

His old friends were all of that. He could still see the ghosts of their old personalities when they did battle, the echoes of the kids that he had known, warped and twisted. Quistis was still bossy, able to cow the monsters that they fought, and he'd caught a look of smug superiority on her face while she lashed out with her whip that frankly made him feel a little sick. Zell was still hyper - kid hadn't been able to hold still even when he'd tried - but now all of that energy seemed to be centered in his fists, and he hit hard and fast. Squall, in contrast, was serious and controlled, even a bit withdrawn - he would pick his own target and take it out with quick strikes from his gunblade, brutally efficient with both blade and bullets.

Selphie, in a way, disturbed him the most. No one so happy should know how to fight that well. And it was the way that she fought, both with her magic and with her nunchucks, that really nagged at him in a way that he hadn't been able to put his finger on for a long time. He'd been sickened by it, the night that he had finally put it together, remembering how she'd taken down one particularly nasty beast that afternoon. There was method to what she did, but not the same sort of ruthless efficiency that he'd seen in Squall. No, Selphie used the same sort of method that a child on a playground might use, teaching her friends how to play a new game.

He hadn't been able to look her in the face for a whole day after he'd realized that they'd taught her to fight the same way that most kids had learned hopscotch or jacks. And as much as he'd hoped that Selphie would notice and ask him what was wrong, she never had. He shouldn't have been surprised, though. He was still just a stranger to them all, thanks to the way that SeeD "outfitted" their operatives. That stung too, in a different way... but as much as he hated it, he knew that wasn't what had caused them to change. Not entirely, at least. They'd grown up, but they'd forgotten how they'd gotten there. And that meant they were still kids in a way, because they didn't remember that they'd grown up.

Eventually, Irvine thought, it was going to be up to him to keep them together. He didn't know exactly how or when, but he was sure it was going to happen one of those days. You didn't put strangers together with those sorts of personalities without issues, and Irvine was the only one who remembered that not all of them were strangers. He just hoped he'd be ready when the time came.

In the meantime, he would keep doing what he had been taught to do - stay back, and when the enemies came, take them down as fast as he could. That helped too, at least a little bit. The faster he took them out, the less he had to watch the others fight.

Comments

[lassarina]

oh, ow, Irvine. *pets him* Yeah, I can imagine that'd F with your head.

[stealth_noodle]

Ooh. I've always liked how fucked up the whole SeeD situation is with teenage soldiers and GF-based memory loss, and this nails exactly why. Oh, Irvine, yours is the most awkward of situations.

And that meant they were still kids in a way, because they didn't remember that they'd grown up.

Love this line!