Prologue: Ignorant Euphemisms
Nobody's perfect. Beauty is only skin deep. Treat others as you wish them to treat you. These were all ignorant euphemisms to Quistis. She herself strove to be perfect. She knew, however, that there was no perfect human. Hyne himself was imperfect. But it did not keep her from striving for a simplistic, but perfect life, where she would finally be given a chance to stop working so hard and just enjoy being young.
True beauty was only skin deep, but the world thrived on the superficial beauty that girls paraded around these days. And as for the treating others as you wish to be treated… She had spent her entire life, always walking on eggshells and swallowing fire for everyone else and she still remained the Ice Queen, the Instructor, and nothing more to anyone.
She spent her entire life, following a haunting obsession to be loved by Squall. Never a harsh word did she speak to him, never a hurtful gesture. She stood by his side, even in the times when he craved nothing more than to be left alone. When he suffered, she was there to hold his hand, even when he pushed her away. And when he was unable to go on any longer, she opened the door of hope to him and showed him that there was a meaning to life.
She always treated him the same way – with love. Yet the affections were never returned. As time crawled by, she began to look inward, towards her own self-doubts and flaws. She used to believe that she was treated the way she was because she was always looking to the wrong people for the wrong things. Yet as life continuously turned its back on her, she looked inward, realizing that it wasn't the world that was imperfect… It was herself that was imperfect. It was her fault that no love or luck ever came to her.
But as she watched from afar as Seifer single-handedly rose the most powerful sorceress to power and turned his back on the world and those he grew up with, she found another imperfect being that she craved to know. She desired to know how he turned his impurities into his strengths. And thus she battled alongside the others, never really fighting with them or for them. She was merely fighting to get closer to Seifer.