"Squall," His voice was quiet, unchallenging.
The commander turned to look at him, puzzled by the change in his one-time rival. "Yes?" He asked, simply. He talked more, at least, but he wasn't one for flowery speeches.
Seifer looked him up and down with a bittersweet smile. The scar across his face, still the same, the leather and the belts, of course, had not changed. The same, slightly mussed up brown hair. And the same eyes, just a touch more emotional now, grey steel, as they had always been. "I've missed you."
"You've been fighting me all this time," Squall said, a little confused.
Seifer took a step closer to him; perhaps drawn by the subtle differences in his ex-rival. "I've seen you, but it's not like I've been able to have a casual trading of insults with you." His mouth edged upwards, into a little smile.
"Why have you missed that?" Squall asked, arching an eyebrow. Seifer resisted the urge to just break and beg for forgiveness from this man. He knew it wouldn't do any good anyway, and it would go against everything Seifer was.
"Would you believe me if I said I love you, Leonhart?" Seifer asked, almost idly, the question coming out of nowhere, designed to shock Squall. But also the truth, well-hidden beneath a rather mocking look. "Squall?" He said, again in that soft, unchallenging tone, when Squall didn't answer.
Squall looked at him, his face a mask of indifference. "No."
"Ah." Seifer turned away, waved a nonchalent hand at Squall. "I'll see ya 'round."
But he knew he wouldn't. Having said that - the closest he could get to a confession of how he'd felt for Squall since... forever, it felt like forever anyway - Seifer had nothing more to do with Garden. He walked out of Squall's life, and left him to whatever made him happy.
He wasn't one to mope about, usually. But even he had to admit that from that day, he was a much more subdued, sadder man. Too proud to beg, too proud to admit, he'd let the one thing that could have made him feel truly happy, truly forgiven, slip out of his life.