The Fall

Epilogue: Fireworks

I watch him while he stirs and wakes. I have a whole mental list of responses if he is still a danger, starting from Sleep spell to strangulation until unconsciousness is achieved to lethal methods, if needed. Now that I know the extent of even an ex-Knight's powers I am taking no chances.

At least we are in real space-time again, not in Time Compression. Which leaves only a possibly dangerous and frenzied Seifer Almasy to deal with. Won't this day ever end?

Sleeping under the stars, he doesn't seem like a threat. Too thin, unshaven, with shadows under his eyes, I could break him one-handed.

Or end things before he wakes and tries to kill me again. Or tries to end the world, yet again.

I look down again at his sleeping face, brow creased from some troubling dream, or maybe trying to wake. I can't kill him. Not like this.

His eyelids flicker and drift apart. His eyes focus on the night sky above and then turn sidewise to me sitting by him.

"Don't move." The cold washes over me as I charge a Blizzaga spell, my fingertips glowing blue in warning.

"Trepe." He lies very still, eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Where are we?"

"Not our time, yet."

He sighs. "Are you afraid of what I'll pull if I know the space-time coordinates? I'm too tired. I'm sane-ish. Relax."

"I don't believe I'll ever relax again in my life."

"All right, fair enough." He pauses. "At least believe me when I say I'm tired. Put me down if it'll reassure you, I can't fight back and I don't even want to."

The strain he was under trying to keep that time from his childhood hidden from me, and the way he was tearing holes in space-time…

"I believe you." I let the Blizzaga go. The dissipation of the icy cold buildup is a relief.

I help him up and he looks around in the dark. "So where are we?"

Before I can answer a streak of color rises into the sky with a whistle and blossoms into color. Then another. The whoops and laughters of children float up from below, along with the murmur of the waves.

We make our way through the little strand of woods and stand at the edge, looking down the slope at children, us, setting off firecrackers and dancing for joy on the sand. He looks up at the riot of colors we cluttered the sky with, the sparks reflected in his eyes.

"How did you bring us here?" he asks, eyes on the sky.

"I didn't know for certain where we would land. But since we went to all the waystations… I thought maybe we would go where we were meant to be. We're not quite there yet, but I guess this was another piece of unfinished business."

"You're close now. I think the next jump is it."

"We'll go together, then."

"After the fireworks."

It's a tiny display compared to the things we will have seen since, but it was ours, a little piece of the night and fire stolen for us alone. Down there on the beach, right now, I am lying side by side with Seifer listening to him talk about his grandiose dreams of self-annihilation. We are together, with no knowledge of the things we will face or what we will do to each other, talking in the simple camaraderie that our own choices and the currents of the world will strain and almost break.

"I'm sorry, Quistis." His voice is so quiet I almost miss it in the noise. "I wanted her back more than anything. I still do."

"My mother's last letter said she could finally be with her little girl again. And that she was sorry for not being a good mother to me, and maybe I could finally be happy without her."

Standing with him watching the fireworks, I now understand why I had to know the truth about his mother with him, why we had to make the journey through Time Compression together. Without facing how we were hurt, and how love could be crueler than the selfishness that left its marks, we would never have left the pull of Time Compression and been lost. And if I had not been there with him, there would have been nothing to go back to at all.

"Let's go." He turns away toward the lighthouse and the flower field behind it.

It's close to the time Zell would be running down from the house—would it really be all right? But we won't run into him, because it didn't happen. Our future is our past, a snake eating its tail.

As the house grows larger with our approach the sky lightens, with sunlight and not the firecrackers though it was nowhere near morning. The house falls inward and ages before our eyes, going from an old but inhabited house to a long-abandoned ruin, roof caving, a wall crumbling, vines crawling over everything. The sunlight grows piercing as we walk around the house to the field. I don't remember reaching out but I am pulling him by a hand like we are children again.

At the flower field awaits another riot of color, swirls of petals under the midday sun and at the center of it all, the blue-clad figure of Rinoa holding a prone Squall in her arms. Is he okay?

"Come on." I pull at Seifer. I see the others, Irvine, Selphie, Zell. We've made it and we'll be safe and together again.

My hand drops to my side, the beat of the dance missed. When I turn around Seifer is there, his hand still closed as though to hold mine. I see the house and the sky through him–he is fading. My hand fell through his.

"Seifer!" I go back to him, stop before I can step through him.

"I have more unfinished business." He raises a hand to my face, and though we can't touch I still feel him, the warmth and the thrill. "At least I got you home safe."

"Just like you promised." I make myself smile, because I can't let pain be his last memory of me while he is out there alone.

"There's a first time for everything, right Instructor?" He winks, then his entire body blinks and fades away, the colors scattering like petals in the wind.

"Quistis!"

I turn and run to my friends. I hope they think I'm crying with joy, if they notice the tears in my eyes. I am, in a way. Squall sits up in Rinoa's arms. Zell punches the air in glee.

But Seifer… what kinds of places are calling him now? Will he relive the war, the atrocities, the deaths, all alone after weakening himself to bring me home?

Can he come back?

Much like I did at Galbadia Garden, I tell no one the details. They know him as an enemy and traitor, and they are not wrong. Let the story they tell each other be simple. The full truth can be my burden to bear.

But if he does return, I will be there.

When he returns.


Firecrackers. I remember their trails of light across the night sky.

These are far more than children's firecrackers going off, of course, as Balamb Garden floats in the sky like a festive glass lamp. Celebratory fireworks surround us like flowers for the end of the war, for victory. For the heroes. For us.

I know it's useless to look toward the balcony where Seifer and I danced once, uninvited guests from out of time. It makes me smile, though, to see Squall and Rinoa standing there. Thinking of some of the… rude things Seifer said about them leaves me holding back laughter. I can count on him to make me laugh, even when he is not here.

Above the couple on the balcony fireworks open up, showering them with light. I imagine the same light falling over our childhood beach of memories and forgetfulness. Perhaps he, too, will be watching them, if not now in this time, then somewhere outside time's moorings.

Maybe I will find him again through the unmistakeable brilliance of his light, but in the full clamor of life and not a thunderclap of destruction.

I know we will meet again, somwhere in time.

— The End —


Credits to Meredith Brooks's Watched You Fall lyrics for the title and many of the chapter titles.

Thank you to Final Fantasy VIII and the Seiftis fandom for all the memories!