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He doesn’t know what’s real anymore, if this is real, if this is madness, if he’s finally dead.
(But if Seifer’s going to die, it’s going to be on his own terms, not because of an egomaniac’s threat of collapsing time and space down to nothing.)
So, instead of trying to figure that out, he just keeps running, boots against the marble floor of the castle, the sterile white tile of Balamb Garden, the cobblestoned streets of Dollet, smashing down grass in the forested outskirts of Timber. Seifer runs, runs, runs, and there is no end to it, no escaping (no eskaping) what’s coming after him.
Don’t look back, he tells himself, just keep going--
( Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back, but her claws are in his shoulder, his matron’s smile on her lips, wearing her body like a coat, and when she says his name, he turns, he turns, he turns.
It’s not his matron, not the only mother he’s ever known, not the woman who had sung him to sleep as a child and not the woman who had sailed away, abandoning him to Garden and a fate he hadn’t asked for.
She crooks her finger, she pulls him as easily as a puppet on its strings-- come with me to a place of no return.)
When he looks back, a glance thrown over his shoulder, time compression is coming for him, outstretched like a gaping maw, something dark and formless and distinctly full of teeth as it devours every inch of the universe in his wake.
It doesn’t surprise him that Leonhart and his cohort had screwed it up, their one goddamned task to kill that bitch, that they’re all fucking doomed now because Puberty Boy couldn’t handle shit when it mattered most, when Seifer had finally realized he'd made a goddamned mistake.
It figures, he thinks, you can’t expect someone like Leonhart to be a world-savior, after all, an idiot savant with a gunblade unable to think for himself outside of the cogs of the great Garden machine.
The blind hatred rips through him again, that he would be turned on, that he was forced to choose this fate at all.
(“All you had to do was pass me, you coward!” he shouts at Cid Kramer, shrunken like the old man he really is, old and useless and nothing but the master of Seifer’s fate, sat behind his desk like a barricade.
Seifer wants to pick it up, flip it over, dangle the headmaster out the window by one ankle and let him see what it feels like to risk everything and get none of the reward. He might have been gracious enough to applaud the rest of the squad, but he’s still angry, still packed full of fury like a powder keg in search of a match--)
Ultimecia’s magic is hot, wet breath, foul as a Malboro at his back, stinking of eons of power, eons of death and suffering in pursuit of what she’s always wanted, stinking of source magic, that thing that runs eternal beneath the world’s crust, that thing that will kill them all in the end.
Tendrils of it stretch outward, a dozen disgusting tongues slimy against his skin, grabbing at his sleeves, his legs, his throat--
He rips away with a shout; the wind sounds like a mockery of her laughter, the bedraggled hem of his coat beating around his ankles like dragging feathers, phantom wings.
Keep going, keep going, just keep going --
He is young, he is strong, he isn’t scared of any of this shit (you’re so scared, little boy, she croons into the golden crown of his head, consonants striking as hard as bullets, knife-claws carding sweetly through his hair, what are you so afraid of?)
He runs, and his feet hit nothing at all, chased off the seaside cliffs of Centra, the ocean riot-thrasing-wild below.
For a second, he freewheels forward into the sky, like he’s defied the laws of gravity.
(This shouldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.)
There are two choices. Plummet, or be devoured.
(This isn’t how his story is supposed to end.)
It’s not a choice at all, and he doesn’t even get the chance to make it, because the laws of physics realize their mistake, and decide that what’s come up must, in fact, go right back down.
He folds himself up as small as he can, and waits to hit the water with all the grace of a rock, or be eaten whole.
He doesn’t know which one swallows him up first.
--
“--over here!”
The world comes back in hazy impressions, the first of suffocation, of coughing hard against something stuck in his throat, and instead coming up with what feels like half the damn ocean. He spits and moans, and feels like someone’s gone through his whole damn body with sandpaper, then dumped salt in every open wound.
Not dead, at least. He kind of wishes he was.
“Hey, over here, get a medic!” Someone is shouting, obnoxiously loudly, a familiar voice that he can’t place carrying on over his head.
Seifer would like to tell them to shut up and go to hell, but that would involve more effort than he’s currently able to give right now, squeezing his eyes shut, pushing them open against the merciless brightness of the sun overhead.
It’s too much for a while; he doesn’t try opening them again until a shadow comes over his face, blocking out the light-- when he opens his eyes to see what’s happening now, he wishes he hadn’t.
“Not you,” Seifer groans, letting his head fall back against the wet sand.
(He thinks that he’s never been so glad to see anyone in his life, with the way that Squall Leonhart’s face comes into focus, the gash between his eyes now healed more neatly than Seifer’s certainly was, a fixed diagonal point he tries to focus on to keep himself from puking up more of the sea again.)
“Sorry to disappoint,” Squall shoots back, and follows it with a strangely sympathetic, “You alright?”
“Define alright.” He really doesn’t have the energy for this volley of wit, pushing himself up with his hands until he’s mostly sitting upright-- the horizon comes into view, Dollet’s familiar skyline across the way, where it’s supposed to be.
How the hell did I get back here?
Balamb should be a million miles away, and yet, here he is. Here he is.
“Can you stand up?”
He considers the question, and shrugs, and winces as something pulls painfully in his back, deciding that it’s not worth the effort of trying to be cool about how he really feels (like he’s been pushed into a meat grinder, then put back together wrong on the other side.)
“--Probably not.”
“Okay. Here, hang on,” and there’s the chilly familiarity of a cure suffusing through his body, Squall’s palm pressing against his chest to get the magic in as efficiently as possible. It soothes some of the furious protesting of his muscles, his bones, his nerves.
Seifer just sits there and takes it, until the spell ends, until Squall’s hand pulls away, staring at the sea and sky.
“Thanks,” he says finally, and he doesn’t think he’s ever said that to Squall in his life. It sounds wrong. Weird. He immediately wishes he could take it back.
Squall’s expression confirms that feeling, brows rising, and then furrowing as he shrugs, muttering a, whatever, beneath his breath.
Same Leonhart. Different day.
“Give me a hand, will you?” Seifer asks, before the silence can stretch on any longer, or this whole thing can get any more bizarre.
Squall’s hands are firm, confident in their grip as he loops Seifer’s arm around his neck and hauls him to his feet. The sand is nearly as unforgiving as the sun and the sea-- Seifer slips on legs that feel like a newborn chocobo’s, unable to keep himself steady, but Leonhart takes the bulk of his weight, grunting with the effort.
There’s a team of Balamb Garden medics coming toward them with a stretcher-- Seifer stares, and shakes his head.
“I’d rather be dead than be carried anywhere on that thing.”
Leonhart snorts, and Seifer can feel the vibration of a disbelieving laugh between them.
“You’re one stubborn jackass, you know that, right?” But he waves away the medics, who salute -- when the hell had that happened, that a newly-minted SeeD earns that kind of respect?
(He’s getting the feeling that he’s missed a lot of pages of this particular story, or that he’s been reading a different book entirely.)
“Yeah, well. When you’ve got the skills...” And he can’t help but laughing, too, bone-deep-weary-- this is insane, that he would run away from here, as far as he could go, and somehow, find his way right back to where he started.
That Leonhart had seen him go, that Leonhart is here now.
(What was it she’d said? Time won’t escape you? He feels that now, not that he’d ever admit it out loud. He thinks if he never sees a sorceress again, it’ll be too goddamned soon, no matter what philosophical bullshit they might spin.)
Seifer turns his back to the sea, putting Balamb’s bright paramagic ring in his sights as they slowly move up the shore to more solid ground, flashing like a lighthouse, guiding them home.