"And you said
All the money in the world
Won't buy a bed so big and wide
To guarantee that you won't accidentally touch me
In the night"
The beeping is almost hypnotizing. Rhythmic. Even.
It's the only thing about him that has ever been predictable.
Footsteps approach quickly and a dark-skinned hand draws back the curtain. Quistis knows it is six-oh-five am, because the nurses just changed shifts, and Eva is taking over. Quistis likes Eva. She doesn't ask questions, or try and get her to talk or open up. She gives a warm good morning before turning her attention to her computer, and the beeping of the heart monitor is momentarily underscored by the clicking of keys as she makes notes on vitals, urine output, the adjustments she makes to the IV. She leaves with a smile, and Quistis hears her cheerfully greeting someone else in the hallway, asking about their kids, talking about those awful long red lights on the 5. Eva is not brusque or unfriendly. Quistis doesn't know why she respects her need for silence. She suspects the ramrod posture from too many years as a SeeD and the fact that she has never tried to make conversation herself has something to do with it.
Next come rounds. The pulmonologist, neurologist, and nephrologist listen as residents repeat the same information Quistis has heard for the last five days. The same injuries. The same surgical complications. She is a fixture in the room as they go through the motions, most of the interns itching to get to a more interesting patient, one who doesn't have an expiration date of the end of the week they all know is fast approaching.
After they leave, Quistis walks down the hall to the nurses' station and fills a styrofoam cup with weak coffee that burns her mouth when she takes her first sip.
Not like she can taste it anyway.
She takes her time walking back to the room, avoiding eye contact with the nurses and orderlies, looking instead at the canvases hanging on the walls. Sweeping scenic photographs of the arch, of the Caraway mansion. All the iconic spots in Deling City. All the spots Quistis has memories no GF could make her forget.
She's tried, after all.
Her footsteps slow as she approaches room 301 and she opens the door, careful not to spill her coffee as she closes it behind her.
There are so many memories she can't forget. And so many others she would give anything to have back.
She pauses at the side of the bed and sighs, and reaches for a hand that has lost most of its warmth.
On the bed, Seifer Almasy lays still.
And Quistis tries to remember.
.
3.
Her stomach hurts from laughing, and Seifer hits another chord on the ukulele, which only makes her laugh harder. He grins, green eyes flashing, and sings out nonsense Quistis can't understand, until he tosses the instrument to the side and pulls her down onto the bed.
She has missed this, missed him. Missed letting herself love him like she does right now, when they are not fighting, when he is once again the boy that taught her how to let her guard down. She kisses him and shrieks again with laugher when he runs his fingers up her leg and catches under the hem of her skirt. He stops and takes a breath, and when she looks at him, she sees a vulnerability they have not shown each other in ages.
It's a look that makes her forget why she has been so mad. Why he has been so distant. "Yes. Please," she whispers, and gasps as he moves his hand higher. They fall asleep tangled together, and when she wakes first the next morning (because she always wakes first), she is placed momentarily out of time.
It is the same bedroom. The same king sized bed he accused her once of buying just so she could sleep as far away from him as possible.
He wasn't wrong.
Last night they were young again, and now the years are back between them. Quistis feels the tightness settle in her chest, not sure if she wants to crawl back into bed and hang onto that levity as much as she can, or if she wants to stay quiet and leave the house before he wakes.
Instead, she goes to make coffee. Halfway through her second cup she hears him stirring, hears the shower running, and they go back to their silent dance.
I miss you, she wants to tell him. I miss us. But she is still too angry, and it's not like he ever talks to her anyway. He walks into the bedroom and they get dressed, and he goes to the kitchen as she heads to the front door, keys in hand. As she turns the knob, the ukulele on the hallway floor catches her eye, and she glances in Seifer's direction. He is already staring at her.
Seconds pass.
She turns just as he opens his mouth to speak, and the door closes on his words.
.
Eva comes in for another vitals check. Someone comes in and reviews with her again the directive Seifer signed, back when he was working private security after Laguna pulled some strings, back when he was still young enough to buy into his own hype.
One week.
Science, she argued, doesn't care about your week. Her directive called for life support for no more than 24 hours. If she was dead, she wanted to be dead. Something like deja-vu tugs at her. Seifer, annoyed that she wouldn't keep him alive forever. Her, aghast that he would want that.
"I understand," she tells the admin. She signs a few forms, and when he leaves she grabs her book from the nightstand. Maybe she can finally get through the end of it so Selphie will stop nagging, but for the life of her Quistis cannot bring herself to care about underground cities or the concept of faeries and mates. It's all too Sorceress and Knight for her, and she has lived under the shadow of that for far too long.
.
2.
Their first night in the apartment is marked by a fight. Quistis is ashamed, humiliated even, that it is even something they are fighting about, but the words come spilling out as if she is reading a script and can't stop saying the lines.
Seifer is, understandably, furious with her implications.
"If there's no truth to it, why are you so fucking angry then?" She gives him a level stare, daring him.
"Because it's ridiculous. Because it's been ten fucking years, and there's no fucking reason for you not to trust me."
"Unless it's because it's true."
He balls his fingers until his knuckles are white, but she knows she still has further she can go. Maybe, she thinks. Maybe we need this. To end it, finally.
"I have spent time in hiding. Spent time in jail. I have made peace with Ellone, rebuilt half of Edea's fucking house, and watched Rinoa get married and start a fucking family on the other side of the damn world. So I still talk to her sometimes. I still talk to her fucking husband too, and I'm not sitting around accusing you of carrying a torch. You stopped wanting to be a teacher years ago and your career is the better for it. What do I need to do to prove to you I don't resent you for not being a Sorceress? That I had my shot at being a Knight and it blew up in my face and it's not something I ever care to do again?"
"Because it's always going to be part of you!" Quistis shouts. The words hit Seifer hard enough to give him a physical response, but Quistis feels a weight lift off her shoulders in spite of the shock on his face.
"You," he says, too angry to speak above a whisper. "You spent…years. Telling me it was behind me. And now, you can't let me love you because it's not behind me after all? You're asking me if I regret this, but maybe you're the one who does. Here I thought you were worried I'd leave you one day to chase Rinoa, when maybe you're the one who just can't stand being saddled with a disgraced Knight after all."
"That's not what I meant."
"But it's what you said."
"No, it's—dammit Seifer. You've said, how many times have you said, she's still there. At night. When it's quiet, When you see Rinoa, when you see Matron. You are the one who says you can't escape the succession, so forgive me if I believe you on it."
"Then maybe believe the rest of it. Maybe believe that there is nothing about that time I want back. That I'm not jealous of Leonhart and the hell he doesn't even realize he's in for. Maybe believe…maybe believe that I love you. And this—" he gestures at the small room, still covered in the few boxes it took to pack up all their possessions, "—this is all I want. After having a psychopath in my head I'm…I'm grateful. I'm so grateful. You can never do to me what she did."
His voice drops, and the shame rises again, and Quistis fights with her pride on how to respond.
"You could have said that," she finally says, "the last hundred times we've talked about this."
"I didn't think I had to."
They sleep with the mattress on the floor that first night, and fuck as loudly as they fought.
.
Mid-afternoon, and it's the intern's time to check in. Quistis hates it when the interns come by. She misses the rote movements of the nurses, and the almost bored way the doctors speak of organ failure, of loss of brain function, of death. It's just science. Seifer always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. He would laugh, if he knew how close to that he got. And scowl, that he was a John Doe for six hours after the explosion, while the Timber police and SeeDs both swarmed the remains of the news station, tagging survivors with red, yellow, and green cards, not bothering to look at the IDs melted into most of the bodies.
Interns aren't bored with the ICU, though. They expect miracles, and seem surprised that Quistis does not. "Don't you have hope?" they seem to say, when they try and get her to talk about her…whatever he is. She's his emergency contact, and somewhere, sometime, they signed paperwork saying they could make legal decisions on behalf of each other in the case of death or permanent vegetative state.
Quistis does not rely on hope. She relies on science. And whatever the interns believe, science does not make her optimistic.
.
1.
One year after the war Seifer marches into Garden and shoves his wrists dramatically at Squall in the middle of the promenade, loudly asking for his own arrest. Squall is every bit as uncomfortable as Seifer hoped he would be, and leads him away, as SeeDs, cadets, and Garden staff watch.
One year after that, Seifer is released from the Garden brig. Rinoa says it was too long. That if he was going to responsible for Ultimecia's control, she should be too. Zell says it's not long enough. That Rinoa was a victim and Seifer was a willing participant. Rinoa does not like being called a victim.
A year after his release there is a party at the orphanage. At what is once again the home of Cid and Edea Kramer, restored under the design of White SeeDs, and built largely by Seifer himself. The party is in celebration of the Kramer's 40th anniversary, and it is the first time Quistis has seen Seifer since the day he left Garden as a free man.
She doesn't know what to say to him, when the last thing he heard her say was testifying against him. He did, after all, try and kill her more than once.
"Leonhart disappeared, so I guess you're the closest thing to an ally I have now in this bunch, instructor."
She looks at him, not sure if he is joking or not, and decides to play along.
"You need better enemies if I'm your ally," she says, and to her surprise, he laughs. He offers to refill her drink, and when he comes back, she is surprised at how easy he is to talk to. Maybe because he's been out of Garden so long. Maybe because the boy who used to heckle her in class was swallowed by hell and spat back out. Maybe because….
No, she thinks. But she can't ignore the slight flutter in her stomach, the same one she used to get when he would just watch her, no malice or taunting on his face, just a curious stare in green eyes that she could get lost in if she wasn't careful.
He says something that is drowned out by Zell and Laguna rushing into the house shouting about something that gets everyone else in the kitchen laughing.
"Come on," Seifer whispers in her ear. Nervous, excited, and certain she should turn and walk the other way, Quistis follows him to the quiet of a back bedroom, and barely recognizes it as the one they all slept in as orphans, and she forgets who she is with for a moment. She walks past a bed dressed for guests instead of children, and stops at the window that still overlooks the ocean. She starts when she feels him step behind her, close enough to feel the heat from his body. "A little different, from when we were kids," he whispers onto her neck. Not touching her. Not touching her, not…
"Yeah…" she breathes.
His kiss is as powerful as she imaged it would be, and his body so much stronger than the haggard man who spent a year buried under the Garden. Esthar has been good for him, and he knows it.
Somewhere in another room she is dimly aware of laugher and music, and then Seifer's bare skin is against hers and she is 18 again and he has complete control over her, and this time, this time she never wants him to stop.
.
Eva comes in one more time before the shift change. She makes notes on the computer, and tells Quistis goodbye.
There is no pity. That is why Quistis likes Eva. Most of the other nurses feel sorry for her. They are used to family members crying, bargaining, hoping. They are used to people who would see their loved ones hooked up to machines forever, if it meant they didn't have to let go. Eva knows that is not Quistis. And instead of pity, she looks at her with what, Quistis realizes, might be respect.
After Eva is gone, Quistis stands up and leaves the room again. She makes one trip each day outside of the hospital, where she can eat something that isn't a pre-packaged salad, and catch up on the emails and phone calls she ignores at all other times.
No change, no change, no change. With the exception of Rinoa, Quistis doesn't know why anyone else cares. Rinoa is the only other one who ever gave a damn about Seifer. Maybe that's why it took so long for Quistis to shake her jealousy and insecurity. Because at the end of the day, she believed in him before anyone else. When he was still a punk student, and when he was a fugitive, she never lost her faith. Even Quistis couldn't admit to that.
And she still denied Rinoa's offer to come for support.
Rinoa would not have let him die with so much left unsaid. And Quistis didn't think she could bear to sit in the same room with her because of it.
Her phone chimes when she is three quarters of the way done with her meal, and she checks it, expecting to see another message asking her how things have progressed.
Instead she throws a wad of bills onto the table and takes off running back to the hospital.
"Ms. Trepe—"
She brushes off the intern chasing after her and slings the door to room 301 open, cringing at the sound it makes when it hits the wall behind it.
"Quiet," a voice croaks, and for a moment she can't breathe. "There are sick people here."
"Ms. Trepe—" the intern catches up to her and Quistis ignores him again. She ignores the doctors, the night nurse, and walks to the narrow bed, refusing to cry, refusing to cry…
His lips are dry and cracked from the ventilator and his face is just as grey and sunken as before, but his eyes are open. Barely. Finally.
"You…"
She shakes her head and he cracks a tiny smile, and all she wants to do is lay beside him, and feel his heart beating under her cheek, feel his breath in his hair like it was that night at the orphanage, like it was so many nights, before they forgot how to talk.
So she does.
There has been enough distance between them.
"And I finally ask you, what was the matter?
Was it a matter of worse or of better?
You stretch your arms out and finally face me
You say I would have told you
If you'd only asked me"
-Amanda Palmer, The Bed Song