© 2002 Original storyline by Gold (E-mail: goldenstarlight@hotmail.com)
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII belongs to Squaresoft. This story is in no way connected to Squaresoft or its subsidiaries or partners.
The Dish : An Angsty Seiftis
Part 12: Light
"—love you!"
Seifer found himself back in the hospital room, by Quistis' white bed. To be more accurate, he was on the floor by the bed. He knew without being told. He had failed. He whirled on Edea Kramer, his fists curled in rage.
"Why? Why did you pull me away?" he screamed, still kneeling by the bed. "I couldn't reach her—I might have—I'd go with her—" He choked on his grief as his voice died away into a shaking whisper. "I didn't get to tell her…"
He hadn't told her—he hadn't told her that he loved her—
"I'm sorry," whispered Matron, her hands pressed against her cheeks, tears rolling down her cheeks. "She told me she—" She told me that she loves you, she wanted to say.
But Seifer wasn't listening. He was staggering to his feet, tear tracks still glistening on his cheeks. And then he was hurling furniture across the hospital room. He threw a chair across the room and watched as it crashed into the glass window opposite, tearing the curtains from their hooks. He then ripped out the telephone, tore the wires from it, and smashed it into the ceiling. He flung the medicine glass on the floor, and it shattered. He swept everything off the bedside table and sent the bedside table skittering to the other end of the room, where it careened through the door and out. Eyes wild, breath choking in his throat, he looked about for more things to destroy.
Squall's expression dared him to move a step closer. Rinoa's exhausted form was clasped in Squall's arms, her head lolling on his shoulder as she slept, dead to the world. Seifer narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Blast Squall. He'd sent Quistis to her death—
"That's enough."
Dr Kadowaki was surveying the damage with an annoyed expression on her face. She looked at Seifer.
He glared back ferociously. "It's never going to be enough!"
Dr Kadowaki stared back at him. "Right. And Quistis would want you to start destroying most of the furniture around to show your love for her."
Seifer drew his gunblade, snarling. "You're treading on thin ice, you idiot woman."
"So are you, you &*$% @#$%^&*%," Dr Kadowaki informed him, standing her ground and swearing with the best of sailors.
There was silence in the room.
"Seifer, Quistis told me that she loves you." Matron's voice shook. Inwardly she quaked. She had broken one of the cardinal rules: a secret entrusted to you is sacrosanct. She fervently hoped that Seifer would take it the right way—and judging by the colour of his face—
Seifer's heart just about tore out of his chest when Matron made her astonishing announcement. He froze and the words spun round in his head. Quistis…loves you…Quistis…loves you…But there were a thousand kinds of love, and the one that mattered, the only one that mattered—
Dr. Kadowaki cleared her throat and nodded to Matron, Squall and Rinoa. Obediently, Squall and Rinoa left, and Matron gently herded a still dazed Seifer out of the room.
Quisty…
He sank down against the wall, and tried to make sense of things. Quistis Trepe…Quisty…loved him?
"More than you can imagine," said the familiar voice of Matron Edea, and he looked up. "More, perhaps, than life itself…" Her voice faltered.
He was silent for a long time, and when he spoke again, his voice was strangely hushed. "What—what kind of love was it?" He tried not to sound too hopeful, too despairing.
"The kind a woman has for the one man of all the world," was the answer. "The kind they call a love that lasts a lifetime, and beyond…"
Seifer leaned his head against the wall, lost in thought. When had he fallen in love with her? Gradually, yes, that must be it, but when exactly? Was it the first time he'd seen her as that pretty, blonde child with the wise blue eyes that seemed to judge everything so gravely and impartially? Or the teenager he had met, whose gifted record was only eclipsed by her own students later in life—one a Sorceress' Knight and the other, a World Hero? He remembered her at sixteen, then seventeen, then eighteen, growing into a woman as the years passed, and her body tried to catch up with the incredible mind. Then, when his own life was dark and he came back, drawn to the only place that still held people who had loved him long ago, she'd seemed like a distant star.
But Rinoa had been light to him, and the power she held as sorceress still called to him, once Ultimecia's Knight, and once her sweetheart in a time when it was still spring and a young man's heart turned to love. He had always known that there was a light in his life, even in that dark period when he was trying to live again, but he had thought that the light was from Rinoa. Who'd have thought that the light was already with him, by his side always?
Quistis had given him enough light to live—and more than that. It seemed that in giving him light, she had kept very little for herself. He remembered those very blue eyes, grave and strangely opaque on the day she left for the suicide mission—opaque with a loneliness and surrender that had cut him to the heart, but that he had not recognised, despite his own experiences. He had wanted to give up so many times and let darkness take him where it wanted, but she had come in always at the critical moment, and fought to tear him away, to rouse him away—and she had succeeded.
At what cost? Her own strength? Her own—light? She hadn't been a distant star. If she was, she had burned herself out to dazzle her way through to him when he had believed that Rinoa was the sun. He'd left Quistis with a hollow shell of herself, aged years beyond her real age…the Quistis he had seen in her mind, a brittle, frail spirit, straining to hold body, mind and soul together.
He—had—abandoned—her.
He remembered now.
When she had left once for a long mission, without him, for three weeks, he had been lost, and wandered from girl to girl, trying to seek light, and thinking that it was because Rinoa was away on a visit to Timber. But it hadn't been Rinoa he had missed. It was Quistis. And the day she had come back, he saw her standing there, talking to Rinoa—and the light had returned. But he did not go to the light, and tried instead to stay away from it while he went in the wrong direction, searching for more light. And how difficult it must have been for the light to find him where he did not want to be found! But Quistis had always been there…she had always been there…And if she slipped away now, all the light in his world would drift away with her.
Slowly, Seifer rose to his feet. He watched silently as Irvine held a sobbing Selphie in his arms, and helped her out of the room. They had just been in to see Quistis. Behind them came Dr. Kadowaki, and she looked straight at Seifer, with all the philosophical calmness of a doctor to whom death was something familiar, to be battled but also accepted as the final inevitability. He wondered how she lived with it.
Dr. Kadowaki spoke matter-of-factly. "You can see her again."
One last time.
The unspoken words hung in the air. He didn't know what to do. By right, he should have been on his feet, running to the room, but somehow, leaning against the wall was all he could do at that moment. He had already been bereft; was there any real need to go in there and see her again? It would not change anything.
He opened his mouth. "No," he croaked, his voice soft and raspy.
Dr. Kadowaki blinked at him in surprise. She was about to say something, but then there was a sudden flurry of activity, and white-coated doctors and neatly-uniformed nurses began dashing in and out, all around them.
"Kadowaki!" called someone urgently.
The doctor turned. "Here!"
"Vitals just improved! We might have a chance! You're needed—come on!"
Dr Kadowaki's eyes flashed. She hurried to follow, but Seifer lunged at her.
"What—chance—what—"
The doctor turned back to him. "Her vital signs just altered, maybe for the better. We might have a chance to save her. I don't know."
Seifer drew a sharp breath. "Can you—is it possible—I thought—"
Dr Kadowaki shook his arm off impatiently. "Like I said, nothing's certain. But now we have a chance." Abruptly, she whirled and ran.