xi.
She is drowning by degrees.
Sometimes, he looks at her, and sees nothing but a shimmering facsimile of this woman he professes to love, a cheap replication seen through twisting sheets of rainwater. Seifer runs his hand like a knife through the illusion, pulling it asunder and it is only when she reaches out to cover her hand with his own that he realizes that he's going crazy.
They stay in their little cottage in Centra, and days slip into months into years.
No one cares about them here, no one knows they exist, and she takes to walking along the stretch of abandoned beach with wings unfurled, white feathers turning gray as she lets them trail through the sea.
Cid tracks them down one day, and the conversation is brief and stilted and there is something unholy written in Seifer's expression. His father leaves the long-range radio from his boat and programs it to Garden's frequency, mobile and hovering off the coast of Esthar now.
At two in the morning, Seifer watches Rinoa lay her hand flat on the radio, and smells burnt electronic fire fizzling in the air.
.
He wakes up with water in his lungs and cannot shake the image that he was dead.
{hhhhhhhhhhhhhhyne—}
It comes out between blue lips and chattering teeth and it doesn't matter how often Rinoa says that she loves him.
She has been stolen by a god.
.
He sits in the darkness of their bedroom, in the safety nest that is their tangle of sheets and blankets, of pillows stacked haphazardly in a corner, and his hands rest on Rinoa's throat.