tears
[llyse]
You are crying, shoulders shaking, arms wrapped tightly around your body. You sit in the corner, hidden by the bed and the wall, and she would have missed you, with your soundless crying, if she had not been a sorceress, senses and feelings heightened. She has felt your distress from three rooms away, especially with the curious ability-enhancing quality of this aptly named Lunatic Pandora, and she comes.
Tears, she says, reaching out with one pale hand to touch equally pale face. You jerk away, defensive amidst the ragged ruins of your pride. She is a ghost here, drifting formless through the corridors and walls with calm abandon, looking everywhere, keeping watch on her loyal knights and fighters--who now number three. Does it seem surprising that she should look in on you?
What are you doing, you say, the fierce pride still evident in your voice even through the tear-rough sound in it. You remind her of someone, do you know that? –Someone buried in the mists of her memory, her past. These mists are thick and sluggish, and nothing penetrates them, but names and memories float out once in a while, thoughts on which she stakes all her actions. Matron (are you all right?), Cid, Squall (silence), Rinoa (I promise you this, I will--), Sorceress (...and they'll use you and leave you, and where will you be, lost and...), Seifer (...you'll take care of me...), time compression--
Watching, she replies. Watching always watching she's been watching ghostly for five thousand years and more--she was there when Hyne died, she knows, and she has watched herself watching this girl who feels like herself--no, that's not right. She cannot be watching herself... watching herself... watching...
It hurts when she thinks. She is Ultimecia, the Watcher. It is enough.
Leave, you say, and the anger is rising to replace the teary edge. Sharp, like the edges of her shuriken. No, not hers. Yours, yet it seems she can almost remember it, its heft, its weight, the way it slices the air when she hurls it--Ghosts, ghosts all. Go away! Trouble her no more with their false memories, or she'll... she'll... She does not know.
And now you stand, anger burning a flame into the core of your heart, leaving ice behind. You are inexplicably furious, though when you think of it it does not seem so inexplicable, with this... this Woman (perfectly deserving of the capital letter, she), this Sorceress roaming the ship like a ghost, and Seifer too looking like one, or sometimes like a little lost haunted child, lost in dreaming, and her the source of it all. You hate her. You despise her with all the fury of a girl who considers a boy hers only to have him snatched away. And it is selfish, you know, but you love him.
Why do you cry, little girl, she says, voice silky smooth. The rough timbre is obvious in yours, worse even than those accentuated c's she throws around when she gets mad, smokeharsh voice wavering as tears are fiercely dashed away. Show no weakness. She smiles at you, your heights perfectly matched although she always seemed taller, dark gown swaying and that long silver hair shimmering in the otherworldly light from the whitestone lamp sitting on the table. But then so does yours, do you know that?
Business, none. It is habit, and you slip back into it easily, feeling its comfort even through you know there should be no comfort to be had here in her presence. Overwhelming, she is, but do you realize that you too are haughty and proud and brave, and no less than she?
She laughs, tinkling bells. Of course not, she says, but I do so want to know--want to understand you, but she says not that last, quietly smiling at this enigmatic girl, this you, who is strong yet weak, brave yet shy, selfish yet selfless, and strangely familiar in a way she cannot fathom. You are, but what are you? Are you crying for yourself? Your fate, as it is, in this cruel world? Her voice is gently mocking.
You halt, arrested. Your eye flashes as you ponder the answer. No, finally, and I don't know why I'm saying this, but I'm crying for him. And I shall not, anymore.
She watches you go, and she smiles. There will be another day, to unravel this mystery.
