x.
She pays for the lucid days in spades.
When she falls asleep they have spent the night walking, laughing, chasing each other down the beach, drinking wine straight from the bottle, and they lay sweating and tangled together on the pile of sheets they call a bed.
When she falls asleep she is back at the lotus pond, and Seifer floats in it face down.
no—
She runs forward, and he is there, just at the edge of the shore.
please—
Seifer moves with the gentle rippling of the water and every second is a second too long.
i just want to talk to you. His voice is a hiss, a howl, a thousand things with a thousand legs crawling just under her skin. Her shoulders burn again and he holds a hand up to stop her—not this time.
bring him back.
The world shakes and the water with it. Seifer bobs in a taunting rhythm, and Rinoa feels panic taking over. Lightning cracks between her fingers but the man before her does not flinch.
stay with me.
no.
He laughs again and she turns would-be tears to anger, the crawling in her skin to a simmering rage, and lets the whole of her magic (his magic, your magic, the magic you gave to them, to us, to me) collect beneath her chest. The bright blue spirals around her eyes radiate just outside her field of vision and she will not show, will never show that she is afraid.
this is the last time i will ask you to stop.
She raises her hands and he disappears, and she screams when the rush of energy collides with the water and it alights with blue flame. She pulls the magic away bit by bit to the sound of laughter and when she is done Seifer is a shadow beneath the surface, sinking, sinking, sinking—
The bottom of the pond glows now and the body of the man she loves so much is caught between blue and gold.
stay with me.
please—
you cannot save him without me.
She feels the twisting inside of her that is the slow severing of the bond between Sorceress and Knight and she knows that he is right.
She nods. The twisting stops, and somewhere she hears the finality of a lock closing between lengths of chain.
.
Seifer wakes her choking and sputtering and gasping for air.
.
"I love you," she tells him, as often as she can.
She says nothing of the dream.