Chapter 35
Life
(Rinoa)
Squall was dead.
That's what any doctor would have told Rinoa. Squall's heartbeat had stopped, brain activity had become undetectable, all signs of life had ceased. Any other sorceress would have told her the same. The invisible life force that once surrounded Squall was gone. The feeling of his presence had faded, the intangible pressure of his existence no longer exerted itself upon the world. Medically speaking, Squall was dead. Magically speaking, Squall was dead. He had departed now to whatever rested beyond the environs of science and magic.
But she didn't give up. She lacked that ability. The ability to let go, to move on. To allow what is done to be done. To accept what was plainly apparent to all her senses.
She couldn't give up because she had been trained not to. Because her experiences with Squall and all her friends had taught her that anything was possible so long as she believed and so long as she kept fighting.
And therefore she believed, and therefore she fought.
(He won't die.)
(I won't let him.)
Squall—technically dead but not allowed his final rest just yet—lay stretched out on the hard metal bench on one side of the escape pod. Two bullet wounds pierced his chest and one marred his shoulder—ugly, ragged red wounds on his torso with three matching holes through his jacket and white undershirt. His formerly white undershirt, which was now soaked through with so much blood it was impossible to tell it had ever been white.
The Ragnarok's airtight escape pod bobbed up and down in the ocean waves, disturbing Rinoa's concentration, constantly shifting beneath her as she knelt beside Squall and struggled to pour life back into him. The interior smelled of the industrial-strength cleaners Esthar had used to wipe down the ship after its many years in space, mixed with the tangy rust scent of blood.
In the ceiling of the pod was the outline for a door and a thin metal handle covered in safety devices to keep it from opening by accident. There was one tiny porthole in the side which allowed Rinoa to peer out to sea, but there was nothing there that could help her. No ships, no land, no signs of rescue. Only endless blue in all directions.
In a way, the seclusion was a good thing. If there had been someone else on board the escape pod, they might have pulled Rinoa away, tried to stop her, made her give up trying. She didn't want that. She wanted time and room to work, and the isolation of the sea ensured that she had ample supplies of both.
Her first attempts at curative magic were met with failure. She didn't understand how the magic worked—having never undergone the extensive magical training that SeeDs had to endure—so she didn't realize that cure magic required the subject to be alive, because the magic worked in unison with the person's existing restorative powers. It did not cure wounds on its own; it amplified the body's ability to heal itself. Without a beating heart to supply fresh blood, or platelets in the arteries, or living cells to divide and form new tissue, the magic simply washed over the body as if it was an inanimate object.
She had the ability to use a type of magic commonly referred to as "life" magic, but she already knew that the spell was poorly named and would be useless here. Life magic did not revive the dead as the name suggested. Rather, life magic was only good for awakening those who had been knocked unconscious, and even then its powers were severely limited to a handful of circumstances. Perhaps if she had used the spell before Squall's heart had stopped beating the magic would have had a chance to accomplish something, but now it was just as worthless as the cure magic.
Zombie magic had the same problem, as it had nothing to do with actually reviving the dead. Instead, its purpose was to counteract curative magic and turn the healing properties of a cure spell into harmful ones. Moreover Rinoa was horrified at the idea of casting such a spell on Squall, for fear that it might somehow work anyway, reanimating Squall as a shuffling, mindless creature, rather than as himself. Despite all the advances in magic and para-magic, no spell had been invented that brought the dead back to life.
(He's not dead…)
"Come on," Rinoa said.
She pressed her hand to his chest and tried once more to pour curative magic into him. She hoped that because she was a sorceress, her abilities would exceed those of the average SeeD, infusing her magic with properties that it didn't normally possess. Maybe she could surprise herself and do something that others would have said was impossible.
"Come on," she said again.
She pictured all the movies she had watched growing up, all the stories she'd heard about as a child. People surviving despite terrific wounds. Patients who had been pronounced dead by doctors, only to spring miraculously to life hours or days later. People who were so obviously dead, they had been buried and mourned, yet who woke up in their graves—frightened, but healthy as ever.
She imagined all those stories, and hoped that she was living in a tale just like them.
The magic wasn't working. The curative green energies flowed into Squall, then passed through like vapors, heading into the metal bench, then through the escape pod walls and into the ocean, where they dispersed into nothingness. She tried again, harder this time. More focused, more angry, more determined.
"Come on," she said. Tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away.
(No!)
She refused to cry. Tears came from grief, and grief came from loss. But she had not lost anything yet, because Squall wasn't truly dead. He was just injured, she told herself. There was no need to cry over a little injury like this. Squall would be fine.
And if he woke up to see her crying over him, he'd give her an annoyed look, as if to say, "I've been through worse. You're crying over nothing." He'd give her that look and he'd say… would he say anything at all? No, she decided. Not Squall. He'd just give her a look, climb off the bench, and start coming up with a plan for what to do next. Squall didn't dwell on his injuries. He was always thinking ahead, unconcerned with the present moment. Maybe he'd let her heal his wounds, just to make sure that they didn't slow him down later, but that would be the extent of it.
She pictured this scene so vividly in her mind that she thought she saw his eyelids flutter. Her heart froze and her eyes lit up. She leaned in closer to his face—still dumping green energy into his wounds—and stared at his closed eyes, waiting for him to do it again.
(Blink.)
(Blink.)
(Please.)
But his face was a mask. Frozen, lifeless. She redoubled her efforts, putting in more of her magic, more of her desperation into him.
(Once, I was like this too.)
Squall had told her about the time after Ultimecia had possessed her, how she had fallen into a sleep so deep it was almost like death. Her body had turned frigid, and nothing anyone could do would awaken her. She couldn't even remember any of this time in her life. And yet, still, she had come back from that.
(If I can do it…)
She'd heard once before that as long as the heart was beating and the lungs were pumping air, a person wasn't truly dead. As long as someone stayed beside the other person, pushing on their chest to beat their heart and breathing air into their lungs, that person was technically alive.
She wanted to believe that the same held true with her magic. As long as she kept trying, as long as she filled him with energy, he couldn't possibly die. He couldn't be dead, because he was still so full of her energy.
An ocean wave hit the small escape pod, this one easily three or four times the size of its predecessors. The one side of the pod suddenly lurched upwards, tipping Squall towards Rinoa and threatening to knock her backwards. She caught her balance and then grabbed onto Squall with both hands, keeping him from falling off the bench.
Something fell out of his pocket during the commotion. When the wave passed and the pod's rocking subsided, Rinoa turned to see what it was. At first, she saw nothing, until she spotted the glint of metal on the floor. She picked it up and examined it.
(The ring. The Odine Ring.)
Now she remembered. Squall had tucked it into his pocket after Rinoa and Ellone had tested it. He'd said that, since he was the only one who hadn't suffered adverse effects from the ring, he should be the one to carry it. He'd stuck it in his pocket, where it had remained up until that very moment.
Rinoa held it in her hand and gazed at it.
It was just a little circle of coiled wires surrounded by a hard, clear case. At the one end was a large green piece that looked like a circuit board, covered with conduits and shiny metal bits. The ring didn't look special, or magical, or useful in any way. But Rinoa remembered what had happened when she had slipped it on, how it had taken her back into her own past. She wondered if she could use it again.
("You can't change the past.")
That's what Ellone told Squall, and what Squall in turn told everyone else. Ellone had tried and tried again to alter the course of history, to make it so that her Uncle Laguna didn't stay in Esthar after rescuing Ellone, so that he could have been around to stay with Raine before she died. But despite Ellone's every attempt, nothing had changed. The past remained fixed, immutable.
(But what about Ultimecia?)
It was true that Ultimecia hadn't been able to change anything by going into the past. In fact, her trip back in time had only served to guarantee her demise. But still, Ultimecia had gone back in time. She had possessed Edea, Rinoa, and Adel, and warped and twisted their bodies to suit her will. Even if, overall, the past did not change, those minor events had been altered by Ultimecia's interference.
Rinoa would have never gone into space if Ultimecia hadn't possessed her. Edea wouldn't have left to become the Galbadian Ambassador if not driven by Ultimecia's commands. And the destruction of Trabia had been Ultimecia's fault, not Edea's. The people Ultimecia had killed were unquestionably dead—and Ultimecia was responsible, no one else. When Ellone said, "You can't change the past," did she mean to say that all those people who died at Ultimecia's hands would have died anyway? That the events of the past few weeks would have happened regardless?
Rinoa didn't believe that. Maybe Ultimecia hadn't been able to stop her own death, but she had changed the past. Maybe only slightly, and maybe only for a select group of individuals, but the timeline was different because of Ultimecia's intervention. That meant that it was at least possible for Rinoa to do the same. If Ultimecia could travel backwards in time and kill hundreds of people, then could Rinoa go back and save one?
(I have to try.)
She had already begun to lose faith in the idea that she could save Squall in the present. At that moment, he was growing colder and farther away from her by the second. But in the past he was still alive. In the past, there were opportunities that she could exploit. And so she abandoned the hard, uncertain present and escaped into the familiarity of the past.
She slipped the ring on her index finger.
(Take me back—
—To before this started.)
The ring obeys, and she finds herself back aboard the Ragnarok.
It works perfectly. Unlike Ellone's powers, which could be unpredictable and hard to focus, the ring seems to know exactly what Rinoa wants, as if it is intimately attuned to her mind and her desires. She arrives well after the trip to D-District, after the confrontation with Ciel, and after Squall has discovered that Seifer has escaped. Exactly the moment she wants to be in.
Rinoa is in her own body. She watches Squall travel up the elevator to the bridge. His head disappears to the upper level, then his body, and his legs. It's nice, just seeing him alive again for that instant.
(He's going to get shot up there.)
She exerts her will upon herself, demanding her legs to turn around and head for the elevator. Don't bother going for Ciel, she tells herself. Ciel's already gone, possessed by the Sorceress Ultimecia. Go after Squall and go into the bridge. Together, the two of you can take down Seifer, and Squall won't get shot the first time.
But her body doesn't yield to the desires of her future self. The past will not be changed so easily. Her past self turns away from the elevator and heads through the door into the hangar. Her legs move of their own accord, her eyes flick back and forth, hunting for danger as she heads into the wide open area. She feels her heart beat faster.
(Turn around.)
(It's not too late.)
But it's like watching a movie of herself. No matter how loud she yells, how desperately she cries, past Rinoa doesn't hear her and rushes down the steps, casting protective spells around herself as she heads into what looks like an impending battle.
Future Rinoa tries another tack. She thinks back and remembers what was going through her mind as she ran down the steps. She seems to recall that she was talking herself into being brave, into doing what was necessary to protect everyone aboard the Ragnarok. She knew she needed to get to Ciel before Seifer did, that the two of them could not—under any circumstances—be allowed to join forces.
Rinoa remembers these thoughts and then tries to alter them. Instead of encouragement, she places doubts within herself.
(But what about Squall?)
(Was it really a good idea to split up?)
(Maybe I should go back.)
Past Rinoa hesitates on the bottom of the steps, and for a moment, Rinoa thinks that she has broken through. Has her past self heard these thoughts? Is she beginning to question herself? Has the past changed?
But no, the Rinoa on the ship has merely hesitated at the bottom of the steps in order to glance around underneath the stairs, to make sure that Seifer isn't crouched and waiting to ambush her. When she sees that the way is clear, she rushes from the steps towards the door of the storage room, heedless of the cries of her future self.
(Stop! It's too late!)
Her warning to herself goes unheard. The door slides open as Rinoa approaches it, and an Esthar soldier steps into view. Past Rinoa is relieved. She believes that Ciel is still safely under guard, that the Esthar soldier in front of her poked his head out in order to ask what all the commotion was about. Rinoa stops running, and the Esthar soldier raises his rifle and points it directly at her. She is stunned and confused.
"Hey, Rinoa!" the soldier says cheerfully. Even with his voice muffled, she recognizes Seifer's mocking tone, and she realizes that everything has gone horribly wrong.
Seifer pulls the trigger, and the hangar erupts in the sounds of gunfire. She yelps out in surprise and brings both hands up to defend herself. At the same time, she collapses to the side, trying to avoid the spray of bullets. She hits the floor hard, scraping her knees and elbows as the bullets ricochet off her magical defenses and embed themselves in the walls behind her.
She tries to roll on the ground and smoothly transition back into a standing position—like she had seen the other SeeDs do in the middle of combat—but when she tries to put her feet back under her, she's hit by a blast of magical energy, a thunderbolt so massive and bright it makes her blind for a moment.
Once more, she is saved by the power of her shield, but only just barely. The worst of the energy is absorbed by her spell, but the force of the lightning striking her shield hurls her backwards, almost clear across the hangar. She lands hard, rolls out of control, and slides to a stop on her stomach, whimpering with pain.
(Get up! Get up!)
Rinoa, witnessing the past, tries to pour some of her magic into her past self. She tries to heal her own wounds, augment her shield, and get herself back on her feet. But nothing seems to work. The past Rinoa lays on the ground for far too long, dazed and hurting. Across the room, she hears voices, shouts, and gunfire. Past Rinoa is too stunned to focus on any of this, but from the safety of the future, Rinoa is able to witness much of it through her past self's blurred vision.
Esthar soldiers—including two androids—burst into the hangar and step onto the walkway that spans the higher level. They begin firing down at the Sorceress Ciel and Seifer, trusting in their higher position to defend them. Seifer ducks behind the stairs for cover, while Ciel brazenly stands in the open, the bullets flicking around her and beyond her like bothersome flies. She raises her hand, and a bolt of lightning connects the palm of her hand with the soldier's chest. The electricity then leaps from him to the nearest two soldiers, throwing them all, screaming, off the walkway. She repeats this with the other soldiers.
The androids fearlessly hold their ground, aiming superhumanly perfect shots down upon Ciel with no effect. Ciel strikes first one android, then the next, reducing them to sparking piles of charred metal. They buzz and whirr and fall twitching to the floor.
The last living guard shouts in panic and tries to run, but Ciel holds him in place with some spell that Rinoa cannot identify. She climbs the stairs casually and approaches the imprisoned soldier.
Rinoa props herself up with her elbows. A thin trickle of blood pours over one eye. She thoughtlessly brushes it aside and uses a small amount of energy to seal closed the wound.
Above, on the walkway, Ciel approaches the soldier and presses the heel of her hand onto his head. He jerks spastically for a moment, moaning and whimpering, but then he goes limp. He becomes pliant. Obedient.
"Go to the bridge," Ciel says. "Kill everyone there. All SeeD must perish."
"Yes, Ultimecia," the soldier says. "All SeeD must perish."
He rushes to obey this order, stepping through the automatic sliding door and disappearing from sight. With all the soldiers gone, Seifer breaks cover and dashes up the steps to rejoin his sorceress. Meanwhile, Ciel sets to work dissolving the dead soldiers and the ruined androids into nothing more than clouds of particles, which get sucked into the ventilation shafts and disappear.
Rinoa is too dazed to process everything that is going on, but a part of her understands that an Esthar soldier has just been dispatched to kill Squall. Something primal and furious awakens inside of her, and her pain and delirium seem to vanish. She stumbles to her feet, her jaw clenched.
The sorceress and Seifer are saying something to each other, but Rinoa cannot hear them. Nor does she care. Instead, she summons the greatest, more terrible burst of wind she can envision and hurls it at the two. They're both thrown off the walkway like leaves. They fall towards the floor of the hangar, but Ciel recovers in time, using magic to slow their descent to almost nothing. They seem to hover in the air for a moment with Ciel gracefully descending like an angel and Seifer thrashing madly in the air and shouting curses.
Rinoa doesn't give them a chance to strike back. She hits them again, just as hard, with another wind spell that sucks the air out of her lungs and makes the hangar feel like an empty vacuum for a moment. Ciel and Seifer are blown back into the far wall, against the door leading to the boarding ramp. The door automatically opens when it senses people approaching, and Ciel and Seifer drop, stunned, to the floor just inside the room.
In a fury, Rinoa rushes towards them. She intends to blow the pair out through the Ragnarok's front opening, sending them both hurtling into the air and plummeting down to the ocean. She doesn't care about forgiving Seifer, or protecting a fellow sorceress anymore. Rinoa is nothing but rage, and she uses that anger to power her next spell.
One more blast of wind and the two are blown back to the closed ramp that opens to the outside. Rinoa knows that she can't use magic to open the door from a distance—her abilities lack that level of precision—so she has to physically go inside the boarding ramp and push the button manually. She runs out of the hangar and the massive door that divides the hangar from the boarding ramp slides shut behind her.
She looks for the controls to open the door, but in her heightened state of emotion, she has forgotten where they are. In that moment of hesitation, Ciel recovers herself. Another deafening burst of lightning cuts through the air and slams into Rinoa's shield, blasting her to the side and throwing her against the wall. Rinoa's fury is interrupted by a flash of pain as her bones hit hard against the metal wall.
Stunned, Rinoa drops to the floor. She doesn't feel anything broken, but she can't be sure.
"Go to the bridge," Ciel commands Seifer in a neutral tone. "Ensure that the other has completed his task. Return when all are dead."
"Gladly, Ultimecia," Seifer says.
He's already on his feet and running for the side door when past Rinoa recovers enough to look up at him.
(Stop him!)
(Stop him PLEASE!)
Once more, her cries from the future go unheard. Observing this event for the second time now, future Rinoa watches as Seifer—in full Esthar uniform—exits out the side door. The door slides shut with a sense of finality. As if the last best chance for Rinoa to change the past has slipped through her grasp.
Nothing has changed. Rinoa's anger and fury have not altered anything. Everything has proceeded exactly as it had before, step for step, moment for moment. Her attacks were all the same, her motions were all unchanged. The only difference is that now Rinoa has watched it happen a second time.
The lightning bolt that future Rinoa knew was coming—yet past Rinoa was unprepared for—strikes her. Once more, her shield saves her life, but the force pushes her along the ground until she's squeezed in a corner.
"Focus less on the boy and more on me," Ciel says, in a dark, twisted voice. "There are, in this room, two sorceresses. One is fit to be my vessel in this time period, and the other is worthless and shall be disposed of. Which are you, I ask?"
Ciel approaches her, halving the distance between them in moments. Past Rinoa looks up and sees that the controls for the door are on the opposite side of the room. She can even see the exact button she needs to press to open it.
(Maybe there's still a chance to change things.)
Squall first got shot somewhere on the bridge, but that was just a shoulder wound. He was hurt, but he seemed to be okay. It was only later, after the battle in the boarding ramp, that Squall received his fatal injuries. If Rinoa can change the course of this battle, alter it just a little, then perhaps Squall won't get shot a second and third time.
(Maybe things will be different.)
"Stand and prove yourself," Ciel says. "Prove that you are worthier to receive my strength than this current vessel. Do not disappoint me."
Future Rinoa thinks only of that control panel that operates the door. If she can get to it, she can open the door of the Ragnarok and perhaps blast Ciel outside with a burst of air. But past Rinoa thinks only of survival. She sees Ciel approaching her and she panics.
She sends out another blast of air, but Ciel is prepared for that. Easily—almost spitefully—Ciel waves aside the wind and continues advancing.
"Pathetic," Ciel says. "Is surprise the only weapon in your arsenal? Are you unable to fight a foe who faces you? Stand up!"
Rinoa gets to her feet, shakily. A million aches and pains torment her from every part of her body, but she barely feels them. All she is aware of is Ciel standing before her, and the hammering of her own heart.
(The control panel! Get to the CONTROL PANEL!)
"Prepare yourself!" Ciel says. She draws back both hands to her side, as if preparing to launch a burst of energy from her waist. Past Rinoa braces herself for impact, but at the last moment, she has a better idea.
Rinoa shapes her shield—not to stop the energy—but to deflect it. She curves the shield inward towards herself, forming a shallow, invisible bowl. She never knew she could do this before, but desperation has forced her to try the impossible. The fury from Ciel's spell hits one side the bowl, rushes into the middle in a current of blue and yellow, and then pours out harmlessly on the other side, blasting the walls and ceiling. Rinoa can feel the intense heat and pressure of the attack, but at least she is not blown off her feet this time.
Ciel smirks, and then makes a fast and broad "come here" motion with her whole arm. Past Rinoa hesitates, thinking that this is a taunt designed to trick her into making a foolish move.
(NO! DODGE!)
But once again, past Rinoa is deaf to the cries of her future self. Ciel's arm motion wasn't a taunt, but another spell. This time, she has formed the magic behind Rinoa, and sent it back. A blast of electricity emerges from behind Rinoa and slams into her spine, throwing her across the room and around Ciel, where she hits the far wall. She collapses in another corner and rolls into a ball, pouring all her energy into her shield. Past Rinoa has given up on fighting. She devotes everything to pure survival.
"Useless girl!" Ciel yells, both furious and triumphant. "Die!"
Spell after spell assaults Rinoa's shield. She curls into a tighter ball, putting all of her energy into protecting herself. It seems like the assault is going to last forever but then, mercifully, it stops.
(This is it!)
(My last chance!)
Future Rinoa concentrates hard on the moment, visualizing it, feeling it, immersing herself in all the sensations. If she can reach her past self in this one last moment, she can still save Squall. If she can only just…
"All SeeD must perish!" Ciel yells, and the next bolt of lightning goes, not for Rinoa, but for Squall, who is standing at the far side of the room, clutching his gunblade and bleeding from the shoulder.
The light from the attack blinds and deafens Rinoa for a moment, and when her senses recover, Squall is crumpled on the floor, stunned, injured, but alive. Frantically, future Rinoa shouts and screams and dumps energy and focuses and does everything she can, but it all goes exactly as it had before.
"Wretched SEED!" Ciel yells, raising her hand for another attack.
Past Rinoa thrusts forth both of her hands for another attack, hurling wind magic into Ciel and tossing her across the room before she can get the attack off.
(It's not working.)
(It's all happening again!)
Squall gets to his feet. Both past and future Rinoas witness this all happening, and it seems to occur in slow motion. Squall stumbles forward a couple of steps, raising his gunblade to deliver the killing blow to Ciel. And behind him, the door silently opens. Seifer steps through, clutching a bleeding stomach wound and snarling with pain and rage. In his one hand is a small pistol.
"Squall, look out!" Rinoa yells, just as the gunshots echo through the room.
(…)
Rinoa has failed twice now. Once in the present, and once in the past. Somehow, even though she knew this was going to happen, it hurts even more the second time around. Perhaps it was because she wasn't expecting it the first time. The first time, she felt only shock when she saw the twin red dots form on Squall's chest. The second time, she feels only the death of hope. Her last chance, squandered.
"Not this time, Squall," Seifer says through clenched teeth. "Not this time."
Squall drops his gunblade. It clatters to the floor, and his body follows a moment later.
And Rinoa—both in the past and in the future—abandons all restraint.
One time, when she was very young, Rinoa had seen a troupe of martial arts performers in the streets of Deling City. A couple of the masters were performing in a city square a few blocks down from her home, and she had walked to go see them. They were demonstrating how to break boards, hockey sticks, and even concrete blocks with their bare hands.
The oldest member of the group spoke to the audience as the others chopped the blocks. He said how there is a subconscious element to the mind that protects the body from hurting itself. He said that the human body is actually much stronger than it seems, but that our brains prevent us from using one hundred percent of our strength, to save us from injury. If one can learn to override this function, that person can tap into incredible amounts of power. He proved his statement by chopping through an inhuman amount of solid concrete with the heel of his hand.
And there, in the boarding ramp in the Ragnarok, whatever inhibits Rinoa to keep her safe, to keep her from hurting herself, vanishes completely.
Her past self is not aware of any conscious thought, any plans, any directions. She sees only two things: enemies and allies. Seifer and Ciel are enemies. Squall is an ally. She must protect the ally, and destroy the enemies. There is no negotiation. There is no compromise. There is only death and life.
She reaches out a hand towards Seifer and pushes with her mind. What comes out is not wind, like she is accustomed to, but something else. Something nameless. A pure, white energy with no relation to any of the ordinary magical elements. It fires from her hand in one straight beam, aiming to utterly annihilate Seifer.
But Ciel has recovered from Rinoa's earlier attack. She gets on her knees and counters, managing to deflect the attack to the side with her own magic, so that Seifer is spared. The energy of Rinoa's attack strikes the interior wall of the ship and puts a charred dent in the reinforced metal. Had that attack hit its intended target, Seifer would have been liquefied.
Rinoa turns to Ciel and turns her fury upon her. She sends out another pure beam, trying to crush Ciel this time, but Ciel is braced and ready. With her two fists, she punches upward, deflecting the spell into the ceiling.
"Yes!" Ciel yells in maddened elation. "Show me your power! Prove yourself!"
Rinoa isn't listening. She swipes her hand horizontally across the room, and a thick trail of white energy rushes from one side of the boarding ramp to the other, sweeping Ciel and Seifer along like swimmers in a sudden riptide. Ciel blunts the worst of the spell with her magic, but still the remaining force is enough to throw Seifer and Ciel to the far wall, leaving them stunned. Seifer's stomach wound has been torn open wider by the attack. His mouth is open in a silent scream as blood drips from his gut.
(Finish them off!)
(Kill them!)
But past Rinoa once more ignores the command. She sees Squall bleeding and laying on the floor, and her fury dissipates into heartache and sorrow. She moves towards him—not running, but floating, it seems—and scoops him up, lifting him as if he weighed nothing at all. Her only thought is of protecting him, of keeping him alive. Whatever remains of her conscious mind thinks only of escape.
She goes through the side door into a small hallway, leaving Ciel and Seifer behind. From there she goes to the escape pods. The door to one of the pods slides open at her approach, and she steps inside. She stretches Squall on the nearby bench and slams the big red button that reads, "Detach."
The door closes, and together they fall from the ship and plummet towards the ocean.
The ring clattered to the floor beside her. She ignored it and scrambled to look up at Squall.
(How long was I gone?)
There was no way to tell. Nothing seemed to have changed. The sunlight poured in through the narrow porthole at the same angle as before, but that didn't mean much to her. It wasn't as if she had a great deal of experience in telling the time by checking the sun. The best she could do was hope that her time spent in the past roughly corresponded to time spent in the present, which meant that she had only been gone a few minutes at most.
But even then, a few minutes of absence was an eternity to spend away from Squall. Just as there were no changes to her surroundings, so too were there no changes to Squall's condition.
(I failed.)
Despite replaying the entire sequence of events leading up to the current moment, Rinoa had been unable to change even the slightest detail of the present. All she could do, it seemed, was witness the past. Not change it.
(What am I doing wrong?)
She was convinced that the ring had to be of some use to her. Rinoa didn't necessarily believe in fate per se, but nor did she believe that the world was a chaotic series of random events. The ring was in Squall's pocket for a reason. It had fallen out at exactly that moment for a reason. Rinoa knew of the ring's abilities for a reason. There must have been some way she could use it to her advantage.
(But how?)
She sat upright and pressed her chin into the palms of her hands, wrapping her fingers around her cheeks as she stared at the floor in contemplation. Ultimecia was able to travel backwards in time and still have enough strength of will to overpower and possess her victims. And yet, when Rinoa attempted to do the same thing, nothing happened, even when she tried to possess herself.
She struggled to find the answer. Was it just a matter of power? Was Ultimecia so incredibly superior to Rinoa that Rinoa could not even begin to emulate her abilities? She didn't think that was the case. After all, Ultimecia had been defeated. How superior could she really be if she fell to the combined efforts of six teenagers? Rinoa felt that with her current abilities she should at least be able to influence the past a little. Maybe change a few minor details, or add or remove tiny elements.
But she had done absolutely nothing. Her efforts didn't even register on the past. As far as she could tell, not even a single strand of hair on her head had been moved by her efforts.
(Wait!)
She gasped when she had a sudden revelation. It was a minor detail, spoken of only briefly several weeks ago. When Squall, Rinoa, and the others first came to Esthar and met President Laguna, didn't he say something about there being "people in his head" whenever Squall and the others were connected to him? Rinoa was sure that he had. And didn't he also say that whenever they were around, he, Ward, and Kiros became stronger in battle?
(He did say that! I know he did!)
Ultimecia could change the past directly by possessing the bodies of other sorceresses. Ellone—although she didn't know it—managed to alter the past slightly by giving her uncle and his friends a power boost in battle. Granted, that boost didn't seriously alter the timeline, but Laguna remembered the change, and in turn he mentioned it to Squall and the others. It wasn't much, but that did count as changing the past, as far as Rinoa was concerned.
(That means it's possible.)
(You can change the past.)
She only needed to find out how to do it.
She had all but given up on trying to revive Squall in the present. At that moment, her hopes rested entirely on her belief that she could change the past. Squall was dead, and a silent part of her had accepted that fact, but that didn't mean that he had to stay dead. Perhaps there was another way.
Rinoa thought harder.
(How come Laguna felt Squall's presence in the past, but I didn't feel my own just now?)
She was certain that, throughout the entire battle aboard the Ragnarok, she had never detected anyone else's mind connecting with hers. Was it because it was her own mind linking to itself? Could people only detect when a foreign mind intruded on their own? If that was the case, then did that mean that only a foreign intruder could change the past?
If so, then her hopes were already doomed. It didn't seem like the Odine Ring had the ability to connect her with other people. Granted, she hadn't yet tried to connect with other people, but she got the impression—after using the ring twice now—that it wouldn't send her to anyone else.
(But I don't think that's the problem.)
It didn't feel right. The idea that Squall could give Laguna additional strength in the past just because they were different people seemed unlikely. Why would the energy care whose mind it was entering? Still, she logged this thought as a possibility, and reminded herself to try connecting with other people using the ring, if all other options failed.
(What else?)
(What's different between me and Squall?)
Squall was a boy, but she didn't think gender made any difference in this case. Rinoa was a sorceress. That was a fairly big difference, but if anything, Rinoa thought that being a sorceress should have made it easier to convey power to herself in the past, not harder.
(But Squall junctions. I don't.)
Rinoa's eyes widened. That answer had an air of truth to it. Maybe when Ellone was connecting Squall to Laguna, she was also uniting Squall's Guardian Force to Laguna as well, and the additional power that Laguna was sensing was actually the power of being junctioned to a GF. It made sense, and all the evidence indicated that she might be on to something.
If that was the case, then if Rinoa junctioned a GF, she would be able to go back into the past and try again, this time fueling herself with additional strength from a GF. Maybe that would be enough to turn the tide of the battle, even if Rinoa couldn't reach herself in any other way.
(That might work!)
Renewed hope washed over her. She scrambled to her feet. She was forced to tilt her head a little to keep from bumping into the low ceiling, but she was too excited to care. First, she would need a Guardian Force. And luckily, there was one right in the room with her: Squall's GF, Quezacotl. And furthermore, Squall had taught Rinoa how to junction, and even how to draw a Guardian Force from a living being or an object.
Everything was lining up. She had the Odine Ring, she had access to a GF, she had an instance in her past where flooding her body with additional power might change the course of history. She felt like she was finally on the right track, because it appeared that fate was on her side. Coincidences were piling up and they all seemed to be pointing one way. With renewed motivation, Rinoa set her plan into motion.
The process of drawing a GF was fairly simple, really. Rinoa had always been under the impression that SeeDs junctioned using complex machinery, years of training, or something like that. But in truth, junctioning was more of a mental technique than a technology. All it required was the right mindset and the proper knowledge and theoretically anyone could do it.
She pressed her hands once more against Squall's body, but this time, instead of pouring energy into him, she used her own powers to seek around in his body, looking for the invisible energies that composed his GF.
She searched for several seconds, and couldn't find it. She lifted her hands off his body, steadied her hands, and focused, then tried again. Still, it wasn't there.
(Where did it go?)
(It couldn't just leave…)
(… Could it?)
She didn't know if a GF could leave a person of its own accord or not. And not knowing terrified her. Maybe, after death, the Guardian Force was no longer bound to the life force of the human and was then free to wander the world on its own. Maybe Quezacotl was long gone, having dissipated into the ocean once Squall's life force could no longer contain it.
(No!)
She tried one last time, exploring every part of his spirit that she could envision, yet still there were no signs of his Guardian Force anywhere. It simply was not there. She collapsed into a sitting position on the floor and stared sightlessly out the porthole and to the sea. She felt sick.
(I thought that was the answer…)
She clenched her teeth, fighting down the growing wave of despair that was forming in her stomach. She wasn't going to give up on him. Not now, not ever. Maybe she couldn't get at Squall's GF, but there were plenty of SeeDs who junctioned, and probably a few spare GFs floating around Garden that she could borrow.
But that would require her to wait for rescue, then return to Garden, junction, go into the past, and then change everything there. It was an all-or-nothing plan. If she embarked on that path, then there would be absolutely no chance of saving Squall by any other means. By the time that plan came to fruition, Squall would have been dead for days, maybe weeks. And if her plan failed after all that, then there would truly be no more hope of saving him.
She wanted an answer now. A plan she could put into motion immediately, without having to wait days while Squall's options grew fewer and fewer.
For the moment, she decided to ignore Ellone's angle to the problem and focus on Ultimecia's side. So what was the difference between Rinoa and Ultimecia that allowed one to manipulate people in the past while forbidding the other from doing the same?
She racked her brain, but the only thing she came up with was power. Raw, destructive power. That is what Ultimecia possessed that Rinoa lacked.
(And where can I get…)
Before she even finished forming the question in her mind, she already knew the answer. Hyne's Fount. The incredible source of fresh energy, located somewhere within the planet. Fueled with the vitality of thousands or millions of dead monsters. If the Fount had the energy that Piet claimed it did, then perhaps even an insignificant sorceress like Rinoa could gather enough energy to copy Ultimecia's time-warping techniques.
Was this what fate wanted? Had she and Squall been destined to go to Esthar? For them to go to Odine's Lab and meet Piet—seemingly by coincidence—who would explain to them about how Hyne's Fount worked, and how it had just recently been primed by the last Lunar Cry? And was it now fate's plan for her to travel to Esthar, to take the power of the Fount, and then use it to go back in time and change history?
Rinoa remembered Adel. The rush of elation she felt when she first absorbed the power of the Fount. The triumph and fury as she slaughtered her tribe. Those feelings sickened her.
(But I'm not Adel.)
Just because Adel had used her powers to murder, destroy, and conquer, didn't mean that Rinoa would be forced to repeat Adel's mistakes. The power of the Fount was inherently neutral and could be used for good or for evil.
But Rinoa couldn't shake the feeling that there was an eerie similarity between what Rinoa was trying to do and what Adel and Ultimecia had done. Although Rinoa's purpose wasn't to destroy anyone, she was—in a way—trying to destroy the past. To radically change one event for her own benefit at the expense of all other events.
If she altered the past, what else would change? Would her changes then go on to harm others? Would she save Squall, if she knew that others would have to die in his place? And if she answered "yes" to that last question, would that make her as bad as Adel? Or Ultimecia?
(I don't know.)
She was terrified of Hyne's Fount. She had seen the way it had ravaged Adel, slowly turning her from a normal teenage girl into a towering monstrosity with sickly skin and claws for fingers.
Of course, Rinoa wasn't so vain that she was only worried about how the Fount would affect her appearance. More than that, she feared that her mind would be corrupted along with her flesh. She wondered if, once they had absorbed the Fount, Adel and Ultimecia had been compelled to commit atrocities. Maybe the power had twisted their minds, making them helpless to do anything but destroy, destroy, destroy.
After all, the power of the Fount came from the slain bodies of countless thousands of monsters. It made sense to assume that anyone who took from that power would then have no choice but to become a monster as well.
(I won't take from the Fount.)
(I won't.)
(But…)
She looked at Squall. He needed her, and she needed him. Now more than ever before. Was she going to allow him to die, just because she was afraid of something that she didn't even fully understand? She shook her head.
(Maybe I can still use the Fount…)
(… But only as a last resort.)
She decided to try the ring again. Without the aid of a GF, without the power of Hyne's Fount. She didn't expect anything different to happen this time, but she didn't want to resort to any other plans until she was absolutely convinced that all other possibilities had been explored and exhausted.
She picked the ring up off the floor and set it around her index finger. As she did, she closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to replicate exactly what she had just done the last time.
(Take me back to before this all started.)
She opened her eyes. She was still in the escape pod. She closed her eyes again, squinted hard in concentration, and thought the same words again.
Nothing.
She was still in the escape pod.
And then she remembered what Ellone had said. How she couldn't send the same person back into the same time twice. Since this ring was built by copying Ellone's power, it stood to reason that the ring would be limited by the same rules and restrictions that Ellone herself had to obey. Which meant that both the plan to get the Fount and the plan for getting a GF were already hopeless. She couldn't repeat the critical moment of Squall's death, and therefore couldn't change it.
Rinoa's jaw slackened, and her mouth fell open.
(Maybe…)
She slumped down hard and leaned back, her shoulders hitting the cold wall of the escape pod.
(Maybe…)
The ocean waves picked up the pod gently, then set it back down in a steady rhythm.
(Maybe…)
But there was no "maybe." Not anymore. She had just used her only chance. Her plans hinged on her being able to use the ring to go into the past, into that specific moment on the Ragnarok. And now, she couldn't even do that.
She grabbed the ring once more and shut her eyes.
"TAKE ME BACK TO BEFORE THIS ALL STARTED!" she yelled. Her voice sounded huge in the tiny escape pod. "TAKE ME BACK! TAKE ME BACK!"
The ring refused.
(Maybe if I go back further?)
"Take me back to when we—" she said softly.
(—Just figured out Seifer was gone.)
And she is back.
She tries to breathe a sigh of relief, but once more, past Rinoa dictates any and all actions she takes. She sighs, but only mentally. She has proven two things. One: that the ring still works. And two: that the ring cannot send her back to the same time twice.
Past Rinoa stands in the passenger bay, looking at the dead Esthar soldiers and the petrified Esthar android in the room. Squall wastes no time. He grabs a radio from one of the Esthar soldiers and presses it against his mouth.
"All soldiers, alert!" he yells. "Seifer is loose! Ellone, do you read me? Put Seifer down now! I'm coming for you!"
(Maybe I can change this moment.)
(Maybe I can tell him not to split us up.)
Squall tosses the radio to the side while Rinoa stands in the room, saying nothing. Waiting for his order. He crosses his arms and disappears into thought.
(Don't let him split us up.)
She pleads with herself. Her increasing despair and hopelessness adds greater urgency to her thoughts.
(Stay with him!)
Squall snaps out of his reverie after a few seconds.
"Get to the sorceress," he says. "I'll go to the bridge."
(NO!)
But past Rinoa doesn't obey. She nods, spins around, and rushes out of the room. Squall follows a step behind her, and they both exit the passenger bay. Squall jumps on the elevator and—
The memory ended.
Like watching a movie that suddenly ran out of film, Rinoa opened her eyes and found herself once more inside the escape pod. She couldn't relive the same moment twice, and when she approached a moment that she previously experienced, the ring automatically disconnected.
Wordlessly, soundlessly, Rinoa laid down on her side on the cold floor and stared at nothing. She didn't think. She didn't talk. She didn't move. She barely even breathed.
The escape pod bobbed along in the ocean, carried by the currents. Perhaps someone would eventually come by and find them and rescue them. Or maybe not. Rinoa didn't care at that moment. She had completely and utterly run out of ideas, out of energy, and out of hope. Fate, instead of offering her a solution, had instead only given her multiple reasons to hope, and then systematically dashed each one apart.
She had nothing left.
She didn't know how long she laid there, motionless. It could have been a minute. It could have been a year. All of time had stretched into a singular yawning abyss of black, making it impossible for her to discern one moment from the next. She only knew that it was some time later when she felt a familiar prickle in the back of her mind.
At first she thought that she was crying, and that her tears had run across her face and tickled her ear. Then she thought she was lying on her hair. But then she realized that the feeling was coming from inside her skull, and she sat up with a terrified start.
She remembered this sensation. She had experienced it once before and would never forget it. It had been after the second battle against Edea, when G-Garden and SeeD had clashed above the fields of the Centra Continent.
When Ultimecia had come to her, and taken possession of her body.
She knew she had only a moment to react before Ultimecia's will completely took over and rendered her helpless. She didn't know exactly why she was afraid, since Squall was already dead and Rinoa felt like she was dying herself. What was she bothering to protect? Let Ultimecia have her. It didn't matter. But some animal instinct within her kicked in, demanded that she fight to preserve herself, fight to stay alive, even if it meant living in a world without Squall.
Her first thought was the ring, still on her finger. She focused on it, and at that exact moment, Ultimecia's energy came flooding into her mind.
It was as if Rinoa had been standing in a cavernous room beneath a drain in the ocean, and someone had pulled the plug on the seas, emptying out the entire weight and fury of the ocean upon her in a single, crushing torrent. Such was Ultimecia's incredible power.
(Take me back—)
Her thoughts grew scrambled as Ultimecia took control, and the only thing that Rinoa could think of was…
(—Ultimecia)
And the connection forms.
Rinoa—the past version of herself—is standing beneath the tall stage inside Galbadia Garden's auditorium. The Sorceress Edea, formerly possessed by Ultimecia, is collapsed over the podium overlooking the rest of the room. Squall, Rinoa, and all the others are breathing hard after the battle. Torn seats and burn marks and patches of ice linger around the battle site, remnants of the intense magical battle that had just taken place. Rinoa stands well off to the side from the rest of the group, keeping a wary eye on Edea, in case she rises for another round of battle.
(WHO ARE YOU?)
The voice stuns Rinoa. It's feels like she had her head inside a massive bell, and then someone rung the bell. The voice fills her mind, making her head ache.
(I ASK AGAIN. WHO ARE YOU? ARE YOU THIS GIRL?)
(… Ultimecia?)
It's confusing. So many things are going on at once. Rinoa, her past self, stands and watches the scene unfold in front of her, unaware that now two voices in her head are conversing with each other.
Edea lifts her upper body from the podium. She appears to be almost drunk, after her exertions and the wounds she has received. But nonetheless, she smiles upon the group, as if nothing is wrong. She raises her arms, as if to embrace everyone standing below her on the floor.
"Squall, Quistis, Selphie. Irvine, Zell," she says. Her words are no longer slanted with Ultimecia's peculiar speech patterns. "You've all grown so much and become so strong. I have waited for this day to come. And also feared this day would come. Is today a joyous day? Or an odious day? Where is Ellone? Have I protected Ellone?"
She seems like a woman recently coming out of a dream. Bits and pieces of memory come back to Edea, and she becomes more aware with every passing second. She looks around her.
(YIELD.)
Too tired to fight, too despairing to care, future Rinoa disconnects from the scene, allowing Ultimecia's power to flood into the body of her past self. Rinoa watches as the energy takes hold in her past self, making her eyes widen with shock and her body seize up. She draws a sharp inhalation of breath, but all the others are too focused on Edea to see Rinoa's distress.
Yet another presence suddenly enters Rinoa's mind. Unlike the crushing coldness of Ultimecia's mind, this new arrival is warm, filled with concern, and familiar. Ultimecia doesn't notice this new arrival.
Now in total control of Rinoa's body, Ultimecia commands her to kneel down beside the fallen form of Seifer. She bends to place her mouth beside his ear and she whispers.
"Oh, my loyal knight, Seifer," Ultimecia says, using Rinoa's mouth. "The sorceress is alive... The sorceress demands. Find the legendary Lunatic Pandora, said to be hidden beneath the ocean. Only then shall the sorceress provide you with dreams again."
Seifer weakly staggers to his feet, still deeply wounded from his battle. He takes one step away from Rinoa, heading for the exit. He gathers his strength and manages to keep walking.
"As you wish, Ultimecia," Seifer says, still stumbling towards the door. The others don't see this happen. All eyes are watching Edea, wondering at this sudden change in her demeanor. They don't notice Seifer leaving the auditorium.
Future Rinoa's mind is aware of a sudden pressure, as if the new arrival is fighting something or moving around or expanding. This draws Ultimecia's attention for the first time.
(WHO'S THERE? GET OUT!)
Ultimecia shouts at this intruder and exerts her willpower. Even without access to her body, Rinoa can feel the mounting pressure as Ultimecia forces out this person.
(Squall?)
As soon as she thinks this, she realizes it is true. Somehow Squall managed to form a connection with Rinoa in this time period, and right now Rinoa and Squall's minds are practically touching. It is an odd sort of reunion, but Rinoa clings to it anyway, refusing to let it go.
(SQUALL! DON'T GO!)
And the future Rinoa wakens from her despair, once more full of fury and desperation. She pushes against Ultimecia with all of her energy, but she is helpless in this battle. Now and only now does she truly begin to grasp the enormous gulf of strength that divides Ultimecia from herself. It's like trying to move a mountain using a garden trowel.
Squall's presence fades, and is then gone. Rinoa was unable to keep him connected. But her efforts have produced an unexpected result.
Past Rinoa has frozen. The connection between her and Ultimecia has been interrupted. Experimentally, future Rinoa pushes harder, sending Ultimecia even further out of her past body. Somehow, despite the massive difference in power, Rinoa is able to keep Ultimecia at bay—at the expense of locking her own body in a sort of stasis.
Quistis is the first of the group to glance over to the side and see that something is wrong. She moves over to Rinoa, but Rinoa collapses hard on the floor.
"Squall! It's Rinoa…" Quistis shouts and finally everyone breaks their attention away from Matron and looks at Rinoa, but by then it is too late. Rinoa is already unconscious. The battle of wills taking place between her future self and Ultimecia have forced her to black out completely.
Rinoa doesn't remember anything that happened from here on. After she collapsed, everything was darkness and solitude until she woke up in outer space. Her past self, at the time, was only aware that she had become a sorceress, Ultimecia had taken control of her body, and that she could do nothing about it until Ultimecia released her.
But apparently there was much more going on internally than anyone could have known.
Rinoa feels an intense pressure, as if Ultimecia is trying to physically force Rinoa out of her own body, but she refuses to leave. Ultimecia shoves again, but Rinoa holds her ground. Inside her head, an impossible battle of wills is taking place, but the others around her only see a limp and lifeless Rinoa stretched out on her stomach on the floor.
After a few moments, Ultimecia relents. She begins speaking. Her voice is terrible and painful.
(HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?)
(I don't know!)
(YOU HAVE A RING, DON'T YOU? YOU HAVE USED IT?)
(…)
(ANSWER ME!)
(Yes! I do!)
(FOUL, WRETCHED THING! RELEASE CONTROL! OBEY ME!)
(Why?)
(BECAUSE I DEMAND IT!)
(Or else what?)
Ultimecia doesn't have an answer.
(You can't do anything, can you?)
And that is when Rinoa realizes the truth. Ultimecia, after all, can only possess one sorceress at a time, and at the current moment, Rinoa's mind is split in two. Ultimecia can keep her grip on the past version of Rinoa, but can do nothing about the future Rinoa. Conversely, if Ultimecia seized control of the future Rinoa, it would mean losing her power over the past.
Then it all begins making sense. Rinoa had wondered what Ultimecia was thinking on that day in Galbadia Garden. Why take control of Edea and go on a rampage and try to destroy SeeD, then possess Rinoa and do nothing? What was the purpose of putting Rinoa in a coma? Did Ultimecia somehow know that Squall was going to carry Rinoa all the way to Esthar? That he would take her to the moon? That she would then get a chance to free Adel, and complete her plan for time compression?
No. No one could have planned that far in advance. But here was the answer. Ultimecia put Rinoa in a coma because Rinoa herself had jammed the connection, preventing Ultimecia from manipulating her body. And everything that followed after was just serendipity on Ultimecia's part.
(I'm doing it.)
(I'm changing the past…)
(…Or…)
(… Am I?)
Once again, events are proceeding exactly as planned. Even though Rinoa's hand is manipulating past events, nothing has changed, because her future self had already done this. It's all intensely confusing for Rinoa. But she wonders, if she were to let go, would the past truly change this time? If she stopped fighting and allowed Ultimecia to take control of her body, what would be different?
She decides that she cannot afford to risk it. After all, these events occurred before Squall, Rinoa, and the others defeated Ultimecia. She cannot take such a dangerous risk, so she holds on to herself and her mind, preserving this moment. Ensuring that events will play out exactly as they are meant to.
Ultimecia speaks again, but Rinoa is no longer afraid. She realizes that now, in this moment, she is the one in control of the situation. As long as she keeps pressure on Ultimecia, then the sorceress from the future can do nothing.
(YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE DOING)
(I understand just fine. Better than you, even.)
(I know what's going to happen next. You don't.)
Ultimecia laughs.
(YOU SPEAK TO ME OF THE FUTURE?)
(FOOL.)
(I HAVE SEEN THE END OF SEED. I HAVE WITNESSED THE CRUMBLING OF THE WORLD'S GOVERNMENTS.)
(I HAVE WATCHED THE LINE OF SORCERESSES END.)
(I HAVE CAUSED DEATHS BEYOND COUNTING.)
(AND YOUR DEATH WAS SO INSIGNIFICANT IT WAS NOT EVEN WORTH RECORDING IN THE ANNALS OF TIME.)
(YOU CLAIM I DON'T KNOW THE FUTURE?)
(I AM THE FUTURE.)
(NOW RELEASE CONTROL.)
(… No.)
Ultimecia snarls like an animal. But despite her growing rage, she is still helpless. All her threats and her taunts are merely words.
(YOU ARE LAYERING TIME ATOP ITSELF.)
(USING THE RING. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS.)
(Then tell me. I wanna hear more.)
(I AM NOT YOUR INSTRUCTOR, HERE TO TEACH YOU LESSONS.)
(I AM YOUR MASTER, AND YOU ARE HERE TO OBEY.)
(Make me.)
And Ultimecia is silent. Rinoa suddenly realizes that through all this conversation, she has lost track of herself. Her past body. She tries to focus, but with the interference coming from Ultimecia, she is only able to see bits and pieces of her past self, wheeling through time and space with disturbing speed. She feels herself being carried from the auditorium and back to Garden, but the feeling comes only in a quick flash. Later, she is in a bed, and someone is talking. There is more talking. Everything seems more like a series of images rather than a complete memory. It's nearly impossible to concentrate on a single moment.
(What's going on here? Tell me.)
(RELEASE CONTROL, AND I SHALL TELL YOU EVERYTHING.)
(C'mon. How dumb do you think I am?)
Once more, Ultimecia doesn't respond. The images of the past continue to whirl around. Rinoa focuses intently on a single moment, and she manages to make it stop and proceed at a normal speed.
Squall and Rinoa are on the Horizon Bridge. The sun is setting in the west, and Squall is carrying her limp, almost dead body on his back. The jostling motion of being carried on Squall's back have opened her eyes a tiny amount, allowing her to see what is happening, even if her past self is still locked in a coma.
(I don't remember this.)
But then again, she had been unconscious at the time, her mind locked away in some dark, hidden place. She hadn't seen anything from this section of her life. Rinoa holds her focus, continuing to gaze at the memory. She watches Squall intently, soaking in the details of his body, savoring this moment together.
He sets her down in a sitting position against a side wall of the tracks, then goes and sits at the edge of the Horizon Bridge. Rinoa is turned away from him and can no longer see him. He sighs, lost in thought for several minutes.
"What do you think?" Squall says after a long pause. "To tell you the truth... I worry too much about what others think of me. I hate that side of me... That's why I didn't want anyone to get to know me. I wanted to hide that side of myself. I hate it. Squall is an unfriendly, introverted guy. It made it easy for me when people perceived me that way. That's a secret between you and me. Got that?"
(Got it.)
Rinoa feels warmer, more at peace. She feels that she has reached some sort of epiphany, a revelation that she cannot quite articulate yet. Nevertheless, she feels empowered by this memory, newly strengthened, newly enlightened.
(STOP WASTING TIME. RELEASE CONTROL IMMEDIATELY.)
Rinoa unfocuses, allowing time to once again distort into a flurry of rapid images. The images rush by, until Rinoa finds one where she is laying in a plastic medical bed, with a glass shield over her body. She remembers this, because this was the time when she partially awoke from her coma and Ultimecia seized control. She focuses on the moment, slowing it down to regular speed.
(I do know more than you, you know.)
(IS THAT SO?)
(Yeah. I know you're gonna lose.)
(No matter what you do.)
(You can't change the past.)
(GIVE ME CONTROL. ALLOW ME TO SHOW YOU YOUR ERROR.)
(Gladly.)
And so Rinoa does. She leaves the past, allowing Ultimecia to remain behind, to wreak the inevitable havoc that Rinoa knows will happen. The connection between Ultimecia and her past self remains intact while the future Rinoa—
Rinoa woke up on the floor of the escape pod, her eyes sticky with dried tears. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her shirt and sat up.
(The answer isn't in the past.)
(You can't change the past.)
It was hard, but Rinoa had finally accepted that fact. She wasn't going to save Squall by going backwards in time and undoing everything that had happened. If it wasn't impossible, it was at least unthinkable. She could not allow herself to take the first step towards becoming like Adel, or like Ultimecia. That road led to her own destruction.
The answer, she realized, was in the present. She pulled the ring off her finger and placed it in a small pocket in her black shorts. Perhaps it would prove useful later, but not now.
Ellone had said that the past couldn't be changed. But Ellone's efforts had not been wasted. According to Squall, Ellone had said, "I was able to see how much I was loved."
(And so was I.)
Maybe she couldn't change the past, but it was possible to consider the lessons learned in the past, and then use those lessons to change the course of the future. The past itself was fixed and gone, but it was not dead. And those who still remembered it and kept it alive could work wonders.
In her sojourns to the past, Rinoa had remembered one important thing that she'd forgotten. Aboard the Ragnarok, at the end of the battle against Ciel and Seifer, Rinoa had tapped into a power and a fury that she had never known before. She had somehow exceeded herself, calling forth bursts of pure white energy that she didn't even know she possessed. The energy had a particular quality—a comforting familiarity, as if she had been inborn with that magic—that told Rinoa that there were many uses for this spell. It was enough even to thwart Ultimecia in Ciel's body.
And if it could stop Ultimecia, then perhaps it could save Squall. In fact, she was almost certain it could. She couldn't explain why she knew, or what evidence had led her to make that assertion, but witnessing the past twice had shown her the truth. She had stood against Ultimecia in the past, in her mind, in the future. She had fought against a superior foe and won. She had done great and terrible things with her magic.
The ring had not given her a route to change the past. Instead, it had given her the memories she needed in order to change the present. That, she knew, was fate's plan from the start.
(I can do this.)
She pictured that moment aboard the Ragnarok again, focused on it. Now that she had seen it twice, envisioning the scene proved rather easy. She remembered her anger. Her desperation. Her self-destructive desire to succeed at all costs. She allowed those feelings to return to her, to boil over inside of her until she felt that she was going to scream. Then she focused harder, grinding her teeth until her jaw hurt, clawing her fingernails into her palms.
She got furious, and then more furious. She was almost blind with her anger, her desperation. And then she channeled that power and poured it into Squall.
What came out was not the green energy of healing magic, but shimmering white power that filled the inside of the tiny escape pod with a light greater than the sun. Rinoa felt like she should have been blinded by that radiance, but the light was not harmful. Instead it was warm and soothing.
With this new power, this new percipience, she was able to root around even deeper into Squall's essence. There she found the memory of life, the last shards of Squall's existence, still clinging tenaciously to his body.
She found the pieces of Squall and she suffused them with her power, her energy, her emotions, her love. The shards grew, then began to fuse together. They formed into a likeness similar to Squall, connecting to make his hands, his legs, his face, his hair.
Then, once Rinoa was sure that the shards were strong enough to stand on their own, she turned her attention to his wounds. The bullet wounds now seemed almost trivial in comparison to her abilities. She removed the bullet fragments from his body. The shards of bullets clattered to the floor of the pod. Then she got to work stitching together the ruined fibers of his muscles, joining his nerves and his blood vessels. She sealed closed the wounds, leaving only three faded pink scars.
The blood stains and holes in his shirt remained, but otherwise, Squall appeared as though he was sleeping. Her task completed, Rinoa released her energy.
Transitioning down from this heightened state of euphoria back to her regular self was like burying herself beneath a pile of blankets. She felt slower, stiffer, and less aware. She felt an aching urge to call upon the power again, just to feel that intensity once more, but something in her mind warned her against indulging such desires.
Instead, she rested her hands on Squall's chest. He was warm again. She moved the palm of her hand up higher on his chest and there she detected a single heartbeat.
And then another.