She opened her eyes. Shit. She was in Seifer's room. Vague memories flooded her mind. They were clothed; that much she had to be thankful for. They hadn't done anything, really, that she could recall.
She was wearing a pair of his sweats and a workout shirt. He was wearing pretty much the same thing. They were cuddled together.
She blinked, then quietly got out of bed and shed his clothing, struggling back into hers. She made herself presentable, and with a final glance over her shoulder at his sleeping form, palmed the door open and crossed the empty hallway towards her quarters.
Seifer awoke feeling warm. His feeling of vague happiness disappeared when he realized that Amy wasn't in the room.
He frowned. He remembered everything; he'd flat-out refused to do anything with her, other than some kissing. He had a fear, a fear that Rinoa was controlling either of them.
He sighed slightly. Too good to be true, I suppose. Standing, he got a shower and dressed, contemplating walking to the cafeteria to get something to eat. His fridge and cupboards were full of food, but he hadn't the faintest idea of how to cook it.
A ding at the door. He crossed the room and palmed it open, surprised to see Amy standing there. She looked like she'd done much the same thing he had; a shower and a change of clothing.
She walked in without saying anything. Instead, she opened his cupboards and removed cooking utensils and food. He stared, slack-jawed, as she prepared something.
"You can't cook, right?" She smiled; a hint of her former smile. Seifer felt something hard in the middle of his chest.
"Nope." He replied.
"Well, here you go." She caught his eyes, briefly.
"Look...Amy..." Seifer scratched the back of his head, uncertain of how to continue.
Amy saved him the effort, and walked out of the room before another word could be spoken.
They'd gone almost a whole day without managing to see each other, which was quite an achievement, considering the fact that they lived directly across the hall from each other.
Seifer was in the training center, angrily working his way through countless Grats and a few T-Rexaurs. He didn't know what was wrong with him; the fact that Amy seemed to be mad at him both confused him and pissed him off. He just didn't get women.
I thought she was different. He thought, giving the Grat a final swipe with Hyperion.
"Whoa, man, what's up?" Zell was walking towards Seifer. His girlfriend from the Library, Nona, wasn't too far behind him. She carried in her hands a set of throwing stars, so he figured they were here for training.
"Nothing." Seifer said shortly. He holstered his gunblade and started for the door.
"Dude, don't you normally practice with Amy?"
"Yeah, well, normal doesn't seem to cover her." He said, stomping towards the door.
Zell shot Nona a look. She smiled reassuringly and ran after Seifer.
"Seifer!" Seifer stopped, thoroughly irritated.
"Yes?" He inquired, in a voice he hoped would discourage questions. No such luck. She ran in front of him.
"Can I ask a question?"
He snorted. "I can't stop you."
She eyed him. "Will you answer?"
Sly. "Maybe."
"Why are you mad at Amy?"
Seifer felt a self-riteous anger building up in him. "Why am I mad at Amy?"
"Yeah."
"Maybe because when I thought I'd finally found a normal girl, she had to go and be like the rest of you." He snapped.
Nona blinked as he started to storm off.
"Did you tell her that?"
Seifer didn't dignify that with a response.
"So you see, sir, Ultimecia's meddling with time opened a doorway, via a black hole, from this time period into mine." Amy said. "This is actually very far in the future for my world."
"So finding your way back to the black hole would bring you back to your present?" Squall asked.
"There's no way to know for sure, sir." Amy replied. She kept her private assumptions, that this world was indeed the future, and that the future had somehow leaked it's way into the minds of creators of an ancient video game, secret.
"What do you want to do?" Cid Kramer didn't look pleased; they'd just spent about four months training her to become a SeeD.
"I'd like permission, sir, to work on the craft that I was found in."
Cid sighed heavily. "I don't suppose there's anything I can really do about it."
"Thank you, sir." She included Squall in her glance, and then walked out of the room.
"I take it things didn't turn out right with Seifer." Edea stated, quietly. She sighed.
"I guess not." Squall replied.
Amy woke up in her room. That was odd; her last waking memory was of falling asleep beside her busted spacecraft, fiddling with a harmonic tuning device for the drives.
She vaguely, when she thought about it hard, remembered someone coming in and carrying her to her room; when she thought even harder, she recalled sandy blonde hair and emerald green eyes.
She sighed, ignoring the ache in her chest and standing up. Back to work.
Seifer sighed early the next day. Three days without seeing her was too much for him; he had to apologize for whatever the hell it was he'd done and go back to the way things had been before.
He pushed the buzzer to alert the her that someone was outside of her door; instead, the door slid open, revealing a blank room. None of her things were there; the uniforms she'd worn were gone, her clothes were not in the closet, and her gunblade case was missing.
He heard the sound of an aircraft launching from outside, and felt his heart beating in his throat. "Oh Hyne."
He ran for the training field; where over two years ago he'd earned himself a scar dueling with Squall. A small group stood, watching the small aircraft take to the sky.
Oh....oh Hyne, no...please... Seifer ran to them. "Where is she?" He asked, panting.
"She left." Squall said.
"Where did she go?" He demanded, picking Squall up by his jacket collar and shaking him angrily. Squall's eyes flashed.
Startled with his loss of control, Seifer dropped the Garden Commander and backed up.
"She went home, Seifer." Edea said, quietly. "She thinks she found a way."
"And you let her go?" Seifer closed his eyes briefly, feeling as if his heart was going to pound out of his chest. He turned from them and started to walk, dejectedly, back towards Garden.
"Seifer..." Edea caught up with him.
"What do you want?" He asked, bitterly.
"Seifer, I hope you can learn from this.." She began.
"Learn from what, pray tell?" He turned on her. She stepped back, and he realized he was seeing his Matron, for the first time in his life, frightened.
He closed his eyes, inhaled, and looked at her calmly. "Learn from what?"
"That disagreements are part of matters of the heart." She smiled. "Seifer, you loved Amy and wouldn't let yourself..."
"I-I didn't say I was in love." Seifer stuttered.
"You didn't have to." Edea said, placing her hand on his arm. "It was obvious."
"Whatever." Seifer said, dismissing her and beginning his walk back to Garden.
"Seifer still hasn't returned." Squall said.
"That can't be good."
"No, Rinoa, it isn't." He sighed. "I don't know where he could have gone to."
Rinoa frowned. "You don't think he..."
"Committed suicide?" Squall snorted. "No, that's not really Seifer's style."
"What, then?" Rinoa asked, concerned.
"I wish I knew, Rin. I wish I knew."
Amy awoke from her unconsciousness with a start. She ran to the console of her spacecraft and did a scan.
"Unidentified aircraft, please identify."
"This is...Lieutenant Amy Durham. Please, tell me where I am." Amy said, panic begining to surface in her voice.
"Lieut....Amy? Amy , is it really you?" Amy recognized the voice. "Amy, oh my God, where did you come from?"
Amy looked down at her feet, where her things from the game world were piled haphazardly.
"I don't know, Control. I don't know. Please activate a tractor beam and bring me in; I don't think I have much drive power left."
For three months he'd been travelling; crossing the ocean on foot wasn't exactly an easy task. He'd had to stop a few times, work a few places, save up money for boats. First he'd tried Dieling City; that had been a bust, so he'd gone to Trabia, which was also bust. Next he went back to Timber. Nothing. He crossed the bridge to Fisherman's Horizon. Nothing there, either. Finally, he wound up in Esthar.
Of course. Why hadn't he thought of it before? The technological hub of the planet, and it was the last place he'd thought to go.
What an idiot.
He had to use his credit card to get the craft; that was, he supposed, how they found him. He bought it, parked it, and stopped to sleep. He figured he'd leave in the morning.
Instead, he woke up to a tapping on the window. He opened his eyes and looked into Squall Leonhart's stormy blue ones.
"What do you want?" He asked, haggardly.
"We want you to come back to Garden. Just for a few days." Squall said. He actually sounded concerned. Did I frighten Squally-boy? Too damn bad.
"Fuck you." Seifer spat, turning over where, he hoped, he could get some more sleep.
"Seifer, I'm not going to leave you alone." Squall actually sounded desperate. "Just a few days, and then you can leave again and do whatever the hell it is you wanted to do."
It took a few hours of prodding on Squall's part, during which he was severely tempted to break into the single-occupant spacecraft and cast Sleep on Seifer, just to get him to shut the hell up, but eventually Seifer conceeded. Selphie was brought from the hotel she'd been resting in, where she flew the spacecraft to the Garden.
Seifer was taken to his dorm room and sequestered. Squall told him to catch up on his sleep. Seifer took him at his word.
They let him sleep until he woke up on his own.
Thirty seven hours later, Seifer woke up with a start and looked at the chrono at his bedside. He swore. This was taking too much damn time.
The door was open. He dressed and walked into the hallway. His glance automatically went to the room that had been occupied by Amy three months earlier. His brow furrowed painfully and he strode towards Squall's office.
"Nice of you to knock." Squall commented. The entire welcoming committee was there; Squall, Rinoa, Cid, Edea, Selphie, Irvine, Quistis, and Zell.
"Someone please just tell me what the fuck is going on so I can leave?"
"Seifer, we want you to know some things before you go." Edea said calmly. "First, we have no way of knowing whether Amy made it back or not."
Seifer nodded. "I know."
Rinoa looked like she might cry. She leaned towards Squall. "Squall...he loves her so much he's willing to die for her."
"I doubt it. He probably wants to go save her or something." Squall whispered back. He focused on what Edea was telling Seifer.
"Second, we aren't sure exactly which black hole Amy was going to."
"I know which one." Seifer said, resolutely.
"Third, that's a world entirely different from this one. Para-magic doesn't exist. Neither do GF's. It's too far in the past."
"I know all of these things. You don't think I didn't have time to dwell on them while I was gone?" Seifer railed. "I had plenty of time. But none of that matters right now. What matters is Amy. I have to get to her."
Edea looked away. Seifer felt bad for snapping; she looked close to tears. "If that is what you truly wish..." She began.
"We will help you." Squall said. He stood up, and Seifer saw something in his eyes that he'd never seen before; compassion. Squall knew where he was coming from...knew what it was to think that someone you loved was lost to you forever...and knew what one was willing to go through to get that love back.
Seifer looked away. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning."
"We'll be there." Squall replied, evenly.
"Amy, why won't you talk about what happened back there?" Her friend, Kira, asked.
"I...just don't want to. That's all." Amy finished, lamely.
"You seem like you're just going through the motions, hon. Did something...bad...happen?"
"I don't know yet." Amy said. She frowned. "It was wonderful...." She sighed. "I don't know, I just don't know yet."
Kira looked at her friend sadly. "Well, we've been getting some interesting intel on that black hole you fell through. It's been getting more unstable. We think maybe a week and it'll collapse."
"That's...interesting." Amy said. "Very interesting."
"Ten seconds to launch."
"Begin countdown." Seifer spoke into the mic.
"Ten." Squall's voice said. Seifer brought nothing with him. Nothing mattered as long as he had Amy. Well, he did bring Hyperion, but he had to be able to protect her, didn't he?
"Nine. Eight. Seven."
Seifer closed his eyes.
"Six. Five. Four. Three."
Amy...I'm coming.
"Two. One. Prepare for liftoff."
Seifer toggled the liftoff sequence and watched in satisfaction as the interstellar drives kicked in and the ground fell away from his craft.
"Goodbye, ground control." He whispered into the mic.
"So long, Bahamut. I hope you find what you're looking for." And after that, there was radio silence.