Ellone wanders into her dream right as there's a knock at the door that is that man she met earlier at the harbor. She is expecting battle wounds, or a marriage proposal, or even a cocked and loaded gun, but she is not expecting him to speak with a feminine voice, dark with urgency, "We're outside Balamb. I need you. Get here fast."
The door slams and Quistis wakes so sharply she wonders for a moment what she is doing in bed, forcing boots on under cotton sleepwear because taking the time to change seems superfluous. She grabs her whip on her way out, and isn't surprised to almost knock Zell to the ground when she throws open the door.
"She called you, too?" He stares.
"Let's just go." Selphie is already waiting at the entrance in the driver's seat of a Garden emergency skiff.
.
She is prepared, ready, expectant, she tells herself. It's the moment they've feared, they always fear whenever one of them is away.
"Should we call Rinoa?" Zell is squirming, clenching and unclenching his fists, one foot tapping erratically against the floor.
They don't answer, because there is no need.
.
They're outside Balamb in five minutes, maybe less since Selphie is driving, and they can see the diffused glow of the barrier before they've finished curving around the forest. It is a sphere, large enough to cover the skiff and thicker than Quistis has ever seen. She cannot see inside thanks to a haze, a smoke of purple and black and dark blue and she swears there are feathers, now caught in a current, now clinging to the inside wall, reaching out as a slight brunette steps through the barrier.
"Elle-"
"Don't," she shakes her head. "Esthar-they had no warning. Squall...I'm sorry I can't show you all." Quistis stumbles forward, eyes closing as the video starts to play across the plains, live action double exposure.
.
She is Squall, driving from the Memorial along with Elle and Laguna and realizing for the first time why Rinoa insists upon going, even though he's always found it morbid and risky. She-Squall-turns to say this when it hits them, launching him into the air and when he lands she is yards away, screaming.
He is at her side in an instant, holding her, covering the gash that runs down her face with hands that issue healing light and looking for his weapon.
He finds it in her chest.
.
Quistis is awake again, gasping and staring and running, because it can't be-it can't, not her. She knows she has spoken out loud because she can feel Zell and Selphie freeze behind her.
"Quistis-"
"Elle, how? She can't-She's a-she's..." And she turns, because she understands the feathers.
.
"I would have taken them, had I been able," Ellone whispers at breakfast, though no one is hungry. They know this, anyway.
"Who was it?" There were three, and they vanished. The same exit magic Ellone used to bring them to Balamb.
"Laguna...he's leading the investigation." Paralyzed from the waist down and missing an eye, and Quistis shudders at the brief glimpse of him she got through Squall's memory.
"Squall?" Irvine asks, because he arrived after.
They glance across the quad as one, to the gardens outside the infirmary where a man blends into the shadows.
"He contained... It's never been done before..."
Quistis sees now her little brother, a black dot against the horizon before they realized he was heading to Esthar on foot.
He'll stay this time, because he is already gone.