She looks around the train platform, stomach knotted up and fighting tears, and grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him down and kisses him before she loses her nerve. It's short. Chaste. Nothing like the excitement and passion of the last three months, and she is still slightly embarrassed because it's so public, and what if someone saw them?
"I'll write," he says.
"You'd better."
She watches the tracks long after the train has pulled away.
He writes, sort of. A picture of him and his two best friends, dressed up for Witches' Night. A card celebrating the return of the sun, which makes her smile, because he never struck her as the card type.
On her birthday she receives a letter. A short apology, and a ticket for the SeeD Graduation Ball. He'll be there, he says. He'll finally be a SeeD. And then he can help her free Timber.
But she is once again fighting tears in front of a crowd, and she blows a soft kiss at the explosion of fireworks, a goodbye, an understanding of what was never meant to be, before she follows the glow of the lights back down to the ballroom, and her life changes forever.
.
She doesn't get a chance to say goodbye when he dies. She takes it as she thinks she should: sad, composed, unwilling to cry in front of the SeeDs, and then Squall has his outburst and the attention is on him. But before they leave leave G-Garden, she excuses herself to the restroom, and standing in front of the mirror, looking at her bloodstained clothes, and dirty, messy hair, she sobs, until Selphie finally comes for her, worried she's sick.
She doesn't cry on the parade float. He is back. He is not dead. But he is not Seifer.
She watches him from the cold road beneath the Arch, cradling Squall's unconscious body, as the Sorceress steps up behind him. From high above her, he brings his fingers to his lips and lowers them, slowly. He looks like he wants to say something, and she doesn't know if she wants to hear it or not. And then they are gone, in a cloud of purple smoke.
.
She breathes a kiss into his ear she won't remember, and he rises as she falls.
.
When she is awake, when they are standing together again and Adel is glowering before her, she looks up at him, blood dripping from his face and a half-crazed look in his eye. She sees them as they were on train platform, at the end of something, unsure if they will ever see each other again.
"Seifer," she says. Remember me, she thinks.
He hesitates. He hesitates. And then Squall runs in and it is the only time since she's met him she wishes he would have waited.
Seifer spins her back around roughly and whispers a gruff, "Sorry. But we both made our choices," against her hair. He presses his lips against the back of her head before he throws her to the ground and shouts, "The sorceresses as one!"
.
It is years after the war before she sees him again. Months of searching, months of insisting to Squall, when it's only the two of them and no one else can hear, that he's still alive, that he didn't get lost somewhere in Time like everyone seems to think. He was a Knight, once. The same power that Ultimecia held now flows through her, and they are connected. The Succession, she says, is a mobias strip. His Sorceress is dead. His Sorceress hasn't yet been born. But he is there, somewhere, still tied to the dark red wisps of magic that float through her mind.
She is about to walk into the lobby of the Balamb Hotel with Squall when she is overwhelmed with the presence of him, of Ultimecia, of times long past, and she turns around and sees a shadow slipping down a side street.
She squeezes Squall's hand, and he stops, looks at her, and knows without her saying anything. He's here.
"Are you sure?" is all he asks. She says she is, and he pauses beside the doors of the hotel, and she walks around the side of it, conspicuous in her long white gown, and scared out of her mind.
The alley looks empty, but a voice speaks from the dark shadow of the hotel's loading bay, empty so close to sunset on a weekend. "I'd have come to the ceremony, but I didn't want to steal your thunder."
She lets out a laugh that is half a cry, and walks towards the bay, and leans her back against the wall, barely a foot from where she knows he is standing.
"I knew you weren't dead," she says, fear, joy, anger, relief in her voice. "But you could have found us sooner."
"You seem to be doing alright."
She looks at her hand, where her mother's wedding band finally rests on her finger instead of a chain on her neck, and twists it around. It makes a gentle click against her engagement ring, and the sound is swallowed by the thick silence of the alley. "That's not the point."
"Rinoa, I'm—"
"—don't."
She closes her eyes, and balls her fists at her side, and wonders if it wasn't a mistake, letting him lure her back here.
She jumps, when his fingers brush against her fist. And after a moment she relaxes, lets him take her hand, standing on one side of the wall while he is on the other. They are an almost perfect picture of the wedding portraits she and Squall refused to take, a bride, hiding her dress while she sneaks a last minute touch with the man she is about to marry.
A bride, hiding her past.
"I forgive you," she says.
"Rinoa—"
"I forgive you."
He is quiet, so quiet, for so long, that if his fingers weren't still laced into hers she would have thought he had walked away, disappeared into the shadows as quickly as he'd appeared.
And finally,
"Thank you."
He starts to draw back his hand but she grabs it and steps back from the wall, turning to face the shadows, and blinks back tears when she sees him. He is taller than she remembers, and his clothes are loose and baggy. His old scar from Squall is faded, and there is another one, one she doesn't remember, a long white line running down his jaw with the tell-tale markings of her Shooting Star. She reaches for it, but he catches her hand.
"I earned it," he says. "Anyway. Now I've got marks from both of you."
He grins, and she gives him a level stare. "That isn't funny."
His grin softens into a smile, and he lets go of her hand, and brushes his fingers against her cheek. "You look...absolutely beautiful. Leonhart better realize how lucky he is to have you."
"He doesn't…he doesn't have me, Seifer," she says, and at once realizes the difference, understands why she fell for Squall and fell hard, despite the timing of when they met. Why she became the Sorceress, when all Seifer ever wanted was to be a Knight. "We have each other."
She watches him for a response, her stomach knotted up and fighting tears, and when he parts his lips to speak she puts her hands against his chest, and leans up, and kisses him before she loses her nerve. It's soft. Chaste. Nothing like the tenderness and passion she has with Squall, and she is not ashamed or embarrassed because this is her wedding day, and nobody can see them anyway.
"I'll write," he says, after she has broken away, before he has a chance to kiss her back.
She smiles, and lets her hands fall to her sides. "You'd better."
She walks away, and they both know this is goodbye.
Initially written for the drabble prompt "Goodbye Kiss" from irishais.
I was on the fence about the title of this one, but a Linkin Park song seems appropriate considering current events. All the feels.