fifteen
The sea lifts her, bobbing her gently onto the shore. Her fingers splay in wet mire, and she digs them in, holding fast before the swells can take her again. Quistis coughs, wetly, and turns her head to the right. Something comes out of her mouth. She sees the faint tinges of red. It is washed away.
She coughs again, and pulls herself forward. Wet sand gives way to dry. She rolls onto her back, and thinks she might be dead. Every part of her hurts, seared right down to her bones.
Quistis rolls her head. There is the flash of something bobbing in the ocean, a toy lost by a child—no, not a toy. A body. A man.
No.
When she stands, she stumbles, falling forward. Her hands smack against sea foam; Quistis pushes her feet against the muck, propelling herself forward into the sea. The water is freezing. She wades out to her waist, and then cannot stand anymore, letting a swell pick her up and drag her back out. The weightlessness is a balm. The salt stings a thousand open wounds. She lifts one arm, then the other.
Swim, she orders herself.
Seifer's face is pale, his lips are blue. She fists her fingers into his shirt and says his name, screaming above the crash of the ocean.
She cannot hear his heartbeat.
Seifer.
A wave pushes them out to the shore. It tries to drag them back. She resists.
She drags his corpse up onto the beach, inch by laborious inch.
-no, no no no
He is not dead.
He is not dead.
The sand gives way beneath her feet; she trips, the sand hard under her. The sea still laps at his feet, threatening to pull him back in. She grabs his wrist and pulls with one last burst of strength.
His eyes are closed. His pulse is nothing, but her fingers are numb. When she holds her hand, shaking, over his mouth, she feels no exhalation of breath.
This isn't happening.
Her arms are limp; she places her palms against his chest anyway, pushing down hard in a million-times-practiced motion.
She pinches his nose and tilts his head back and presses her lips to his and breathes into his mouth.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten.
Exhale.
Thunder crashes in the distance.
xx
Balamb is in ruins and it is beginning to rain. Squall runs out of space to drive less than two blocks in; he throws the car into park and looks at Rinoa.
She meets his gaze levelly, and her eyes are huge and dark and more pupil than iris. She is trembling with the force of magic, and she is unstoppable.
Squall grabs Lionheart from the backseat and they escape the car into the fray. The streets are a madhouse, people running in a thousand different directions without a single idea of what's going on.
Someone comes at him with a wild swing. Squall catches the glint of something in the man's hand. Lionheart goes through the stranger's chest and two feet of Trabian steel stick out the other side. Squall kicks the corpse hard; his gunblade pulls free of flesh and bone and organs with a wet smacking sound, metal streaked with blood. There is no time to clean it before there is another assault, a soldier in Galbadian fatigues, and her forearm is neatly separated from her elbow, the gun in her hand skittering away with the limb.
At his back, Rinoa whispers a spell. He feels the weight of a shield settle onto his skin. He hears the rustle of feathers.
He is not surprised.
They descend upon the chaos, a knight and an avenging angel. It does not take long before he loses count of the bodies he's gutted.
There is someone shouting his name. Squall looks up, quickly, and Zell is there, screaming for him to look out; he hits the deck, dragging Rinoa down with him. A fira spell explodes near his face, and Squall smells the scorched-earth scent it leaves in its wake. He clamps his hand around Rinoa's wrist, hauling her to her feet, and runs, charging toward Zell, toward the Balamb Hotel, where sniper fire issues from every available window. A hail of bullets chases them through the door.
Rinoa cries out. The door slams shut behind them.
"What?" he says frantically, and he expects to see her organs on the floor. "What?"
Red soaks down her arm. "I'm fine," she tells him, just a scratch, I'm fine. He reaches down and tears off a strip of his shirt, the white fabric giving way easily under his grip. Squall knots the makeshift bandage tightly around her bicep. A blossom of blood appears almost as soon as he is done.
It will have to do.
"Sitrep," he demands. SeeDs are forming a barricade, shoving furniture back against the entrance to the hotel. Zell is at his side immediately.
"Galbadia's taken almost everything. We're pretty much it—we've gotten as many civilians out as we can, but…"
He thinks to the barricade of SeeDs at the edge of town—they're not keeping anyone out, they're keeping Galbadia in, away from Garden.
"I need a GF," he says, turning to Zell. His friend nods, ripping off his glove and pressing his fingers to Squall's temple.
There is the rushing fire of Ifrit downloading into his brain and Squall's entire world goes red for a second—it has been so long since he has done this, it has not been long at all, and Ifrit comes home like an old friend.
xx
Her fingers spider across his chest, sliding frigid over his skin, along the sloping planes of muscle.
-no
Yes, Ultimecia's voice whispers, yes-yes-yes.
Her thin frozen fingers come to rest above his heart.
Please, god, no—
But he cannot fight her.
The magic slams into his chest, coiling around his heart and squeezing.
Seifer's entire body jerks up, seizing with the spell. His spine lands hard against soft ground. He thinks he cries out. He doesn't know anymore.
The pain ebbs. The blackness returns. He relaxes, and thinks it might be sand under his arms.
The spell hits him again.
His eyes snap open, and he sees nothing but white exploding across his vision.
His heart feels like it's going to explode out of his chest. It hurts—it hurts, so badly. His hand comes up, weakly, and wraps around the cold fingers, wrenching them away.
Seifer curls onto his side, one hand clamped over the entry wound, and retches up something, ash and blood and salt water, choking on it as he struggles to breathe, dammit, breathe—
-seifer.
There is the report of gunfire from a hundred different places. Seifer makes it to his knees.
A witch's hands are on him, helping him to stand. Let go don't touch me let go—
"Seifer."
His name.
He is weak, new-born, unable to rise on his own power. She drapes his arm around her neck and slips hers around his ribs. Seifer sags heavily, betrayed by his own skeleton.
Rain beats against his back, a million tiny bits of shrapnel.
Come on, come on, we have to get out of here, and he thinks it's Quistis' voice issuing from the witch's mouth.
He turns his head, and catches a glimpse of her profile, one he knows better than his own.
There is no time for questions, and he doesn't think he can make the words for any, regardless. Seifer puts one foot in front of the other, stumbling in the shifting sand. Quistis catches him at one point. His heartbeat is erratic, a war-drum in his ears.
They move, inch by inch, toward the burning ruin of Balamb.
xx
She feels the magic nearby, roaring from the sea, and she wants it, she wants it.
It is easier alone, to push her way through the space between, and when Rinoa comes out in Balamb's streets, chaotic with gunfire and spell blasts and the sick stench of blood, she is still a whole person.
Almost, anyway.
Rain soaks her through. She shivers, and breaks into a run.
The blue-beat of magic pulses just ahead, an ancient draw point that beckons the sorceress home.