Categories > Games > Final Fantasy 8 > Adventures of the Dirty SkirtLecher

Chapter Two - City Blues Child

by sumthinlikhuman 0 reviews

Irvine's life through a looking glass. ~A Series of Shorts for Fated_Children on LiveJournal~ (Rating for future chapters; warnings include sex, alcohol/drugs, language)

Category: Final Fantasy 8 - Rating: R - Genres: Angst, Drama, Humor, Romance - Characters: Irvine - Warnings: [!] - Published: 2006-07-24 - Updated: 2006-07-25 - 621 words

0Unrated
I was nine when I watched Martine and Mom break up. Mom was always saying stuff about how Martine spent too much time at Garden and wasn't paying any attention to me, and that it had been his idea to adopt in the first place, so shouldn't he be the one paying the most attention? Martine kept going on about how Mom treated me like I was a baby, and that when he was a kid his father had been even more distant, and she should be supporting him.

I didn't know what to think. A week before my birthday, I asked Mom, "Is it my fault?"

She cried, and sat by her window box, and told me with a smile, "Of course not, Irvine. Nothing's your fault. You haven't done anything."

I didn't really understand. They broke up on my ninth birthday, and my only present that year was to watch Mom cry and to try and tell her that everything was going to be alright, even though I didn't know or believe that.

She'd send me back to Matron, I figured, and then, in a few years, somebody else would 'try me out'. I was used to that.

She tore up the window box first, saying to herself that they were Martine's flowers and she had to get Martine out/, now that he was gone. Then, she sold the apartment, and we moved across town to a new, smaller apartment. Only two bedrooms, and one bathroom, and painted all in blue and green. Me and Mom, we built a /new window box.

One day when I was ten, when we were sitting together by the window box and I was reading out loud to her, she stopped me and said, "I think you should enroll in Garden."

"Why?" I asked. She hated Martine /so much/, I knew, and it didn't make much sense that she would want to send me over to Garden.

"Don't boys like to play at war? You could become a soldier; they have a good program there." She shrugged, and ran her fingers over the leaves of a pretty red flower that I didn't know the name of as she shrugged. "Or you could stay here with me. It's your choice, Irvine."

"But I-." I was /ten/. I didn't know if I wanted to become a soldier, but I did know that I loved Mom, and that I wanted her to be happy. If sending me to Garden made her happy, than I'd do that. But I knew she'd be sad if I left, too.

It just didn't make any sense.

A week later, a few senior students came into Deling City to talk at a venue in the park. Mom saw a flier, and said I should go and see if I might like it. She said she'd go with me, and we could hear about Martine's program together. And then, when we got back home, we could talk about it.

That meant she had made up her mind. Short of me running away from home, I figured, I was going to Garden.

If it made Mom happy, I'd do it. She didn't smile any more. I wanted her to be happy. And if me leaving did that . . .

A month after the venue, I packed a single suitcase and caught the train out to Galbadia Garden. Even just leaving Deling City, I was struck with a strange homesickness-it was the first time I'd been anywhere /on my own/, really, and I knew Mom would be standing in the station for a long time after I'd left.

It worried me, leaving Mom behind. I wanted her to smile again.

But I didn't think she would.
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