It was a pretty painting, he concluded. So delicate, so… tragic.
Hazy green eyes flicked over what was and wasn't there, taking in every stroke, every slash – every violation that tore deep into the grainy flesh, wounds that bled openly for all to admire.
Pretty.
Red faded into crimson, white into ivory, and black into the polished canvas of obsidian night.
"You loved her."
He could misdirect her, he supposed. Lie without compunction and put the matter to rest. He owed her nothing. He could send her astray, send her wandering among the debris of half-truths and memories he had forsaken for another life. Would she be able to stomach a return to the past, he wondered. Or more importantly, would she be able to understand how one could become completely exiled from life itself? From any potential future that didn't involve regret?
He knew he could choose not to speak at all and leave her in silence, following the beaten road of his estranged enemy. He had many options, all of them selfish, and it was strange he chose to do the one thing he himself did not expect.
He replied. Told her the truth.
"Yes. I did."
Set to rest the demons.
The candlelight flickered, offset by her breathing, displacing familiar shadows into haphazard mosaics on the walls.
Rage seized him without warning, and he curled his hands into hard fists. They couldn't allow him a moment of tranquility, could they? Just pitying looks and contemptuous glances, smiles halfway petty and sullen faces filled with only remorse. He was poor Seifer, evil Seifer, puppet Seifer strung to wooden beams with metal wires, dancing Seifer prancing to and fro before his Queen in a billowing suit and eyes too hollow to be real.
Raise his arm, bring it down – again and again until the stage ran red, until his skin turned white, until his vision went black – twist the knife until the laughter died, the audience dispersed, and the lights finally dimmed.
Let the final axe fall and the world splinter to pieces.
Yes, he had loved Edea. And yes, he wished he could have ravished her with affection. But he never gazed upon her with the intensity of a lover, and never once did he want to take her gloved hand and bring her down the path of Eden. He had only wanted her to revel in her power, to free herself from the confines of a body so bitterly weathered from age and from a mind that had spent too long dwelling on broken vows. Love created fairytales for no one, and Cid… had been a fool.
She remembered the day well, she'd told him about it many times. When Cid had turned away from her and left, full of stern purpose, his mouth saying that he loved her but his eyes belying the empty nature of that love.
So he defended her, revered her, offered her a different love. For Edea had never been his mother. She'd been something more.
She'd been his savior.
"You're a sick man."
At first, he thought her voice held only disgust. But then he realized there was something more there, something akin to distant curiosity.
"You want to know why, instructor?"
A pause. She was groping for words, he knew, though why he cared about whatever she might say was beyond him. He was no longer her student, no longer her responsibility. No longer a sordid reflection in her fucking mirror of pride.
"Let's not pretend I give a damn about your obsessions."
"But of course, you spend all your time preoccupied with your own."
A devilish grin. A familiar dance.
She hissed, and for a few moments she said nothing. Trepe was all talk, really; he'd known it from the start.
"Fine then. Go ahead and enlighten me."
That surprised him, though he didn't know why it did. He should have expected this of her. So like the Trepe she was years ago, always trying to play the schoolteacher, always extending grubby hands with superficial offerings; always trying to pick at his brain like a thieving child.
But she was no child, he realized with a start. She saw the world for what it was and not what it could be. She was bloodthirsty for knowledge, for understanding variables over which she had no control. Trepe was a tactician, plain and simple. The Triple Triad Queen, the ever present strategist; if she didn't like her cards she would pursue her enemy, tirelessly and without rest until she knew exactly what they held in their hand. Then she would either fold or up the ante, a pre-victory smirk on her face as though she knew for sure that she had won the war. Bring on the festivities, set off the fireworks.
But Squall had had a poker face that she could never penetrate. Seifer knew that she had been more than obsessed with the gothic moron, though now he suspected it had been for reasons that went beyond a mere childhood crush and the compatibility of her whip with his black leather. Trepe was never what she appeared to be, and she had a sadistic streak to her which never ceased to intrigue him.
So far removed was she from his romantic visions that it was a wonder that they could've once been friends. What was it she had once said?
Never grow too emotionally attached, right instructor? It undermines professionalism; makes one go soft on the enemy?
When he didn't answer, he heard her sigh.
"I just need to know, Seifer," she said softly. "I need to know why for her you risked everything, why you turned your back on Garden…"
The unspoken question was left hanging in the air.
Why you turned your back on us?
Finally, he tore his gaze from the painting and turned around to take a good look at her.
She stood stiffly, her face expressionless and only half way visible in the dim light. Her hair wasn't quite as golden as he had last remembered, and she looked older somehow. Smaller, and weary; something about Quistis had changed, and it was just enough to remind him that this woman was just a woman after all. That she wasn't a hero, that her body was filled with mortal blood. That she was flawed.
Calm blue irises stared back at him, challenging him to reply.
He looked her pointedly in the eye and said, "Yes."
"But you knew she wasn't matron," she accused, her eyes regaining their old fire, "that Ultimecia had possessed her body, and yet you still--"
He cut her off, viciously slammed her back into his reality. Lifted the phantom blade to her neck and pressed hard on the jugular.
"I knew that a part of Edea was still in there, and that I had to protect her." He glowered at Trepe, rising to stand at his full height. "I loved her, because she was the only one ever willing to love me back."
For a few seconds he just stood there, breathing heavily, surprised and angered by the way she'd stolen the truth from him. But what was done was done. There were many things in life he could never change.
I hate you.
He watched a wide range of emotions play out across on her features, switching fluidly from astonishment to sadness to guilt then back to astonishment all over again. In that instant a wall rose up between them, and for a moment, a moment so brief he nearly didn't acknowledge it, he wondered what it was like to be her. To have her beauty, to possess her strength – to live her life.
His eyelids dipped down, and for several seconds he reveled in the quiet darkness behind his eyes.
"I will never forgive you."
The words sliced through him cleanly, their sharp edges digging deep into emotions long since buried. He blinked, then looked back towards her, ready to snap back with some sharp retort, when she suddenly withdrew and said,
"But I think I'm finally beginning to understand you."
He snorted. He didn't know whether to laugh at her or to make some snide remark. Both were equally tempting.
"Edea is none of your concern, Trepe," he said coldly. "Neither of us needs your pity."
"And I'm not offering you pity," she said, exasperation evident in her voice. "Must every attempt I make at having a decent conversation with you, every semblance of goodwill that I show be an affront to your bloody pride?"
He sneered at her, but words eluded him. He could only stand there as she launched her next verbal assault, realizing with each passing second that he was losing the war.
"Did it ever occur to you that she might have just used you? You speak of love, Seifer; you put it on a pedestal and shower it with all these worldly notions of what it might mean, when in fact you don't know this woman you profess to love. You know Ultimecia, you have only known Ultimecia. Edea… she is a stranger. I see her walking through the halls every day and… I don't even know this woman I might have once called mother."
Fear gripped his heart suddenly, the color of blinding white.
"Shut up."
"No. It's time you heard the truth Seifer. You haven't once spoken to Edea since the war ended. Why is that? Why do you refuse to see her? All this talk about fighting for love is from the mouth of a boy with too much envy in his heart. She took what little good you were capable of and used it against you, can't you see that?"
To that he said nothing, and an uncomfortable silence passed between them. Seifer alternated between looking at the wall and looking down at his hands, unsure as to what nameless emotion ran hot through his veins. Desperate, he looked back up at the painting.
It was all there. Cowardice, mortality, betrayal – the brush never lied.
Had Edea saved him… or had she killed him?
As he would realize later on, that singular thought almost destroyed him.
It can't be. Quistis is lying.
"What happened to you, Seifer?" He heard she whisper somewhere in the background. "What happened to the kid I trusted, to the childhood that we shared?"
It had disappeared; a castle crushed beneath the surf, buttered ribbons of dreams unraveled by the chant melody of the falling rain.
He willed himself to remember, just like he had once willed himself to forget.