Saving

Quistis was walking.

She didn't know why she was walking, or even where she was walking to. All she knew was that in the middle of the celebration ball, she'd heard it. There were no words – only an emotion laden summons that spoke to her soul. She'd actually dropped the glass of champagne she was holding – not that alcohol was really helping her current mood – and pressed a hand to her chest, clutching at her heart. The sharp tinkling of broken glass had alerted her friends to the happening of the whatever it was. When asked what was wrong, Quistis couldn't say. She didn't know. She just knew that someone, somewhere, needed her help.

The call beckoned her out of Garden and down to the Centra shore. They'd stopped by the Orphanage to pick up Edea, and Garden had settled its great bulk there for the present. She wandered among the stone ruins, stopping outside the main doors for a moment, thinking.

She wasn't a spiritual person, but for the summons to affect her heart like that – it had to be coming from someone she loved. But everyone she loved was at the party. No, that wasn't quite right. The people who may as well have been her parents were there. Her brothers and sisters were there. Her friends were. The man she loved – the man she had always loved – wasn't.

Quistis didn't cry at the thought of him. She was stronger than that.

All her life she'd been strong. No, strong wasn't a strong enough word for what she was. The last time she'd cried was at five years old, being driven away from the people and the place she loved by people she didn't know, she didn't love or care about. She knew what they offered, she knew that what all orphans longed for was within her grasp – and she hadn't cared. She was taught how to be strong that day.

Taught by the boy who had never cried. Even at five he was tough – lean and quick and wiry. He'd learnt in turn the lesson of strength from his father's fist. He taught Quistis in the only way he knew how – showed her he loved her in the only way he understood love. Goading, pushing, poking, provoking, angering, upsetting, breaking – he tried all the methods he could think of to ensure that this precious, peerless, perfect golden little girl wasn't shattered. Or more accurately, wasn't shattered by anyone except him. It wasn't until years later, when she'd seen him and remembered him with a clarity that even Guardian Forces could not dim, that she had understood. He'd broken her...to make sure that no one else ever could.

She stopped, then. That was it. She couldn't be broken. "Oh Hyne, Seifer."

She ran, then. She ran from the Orphanage down to the white stretch of sand by the ocean. Her lungs were heaving, her muscles were burning and her heart was still calling out his name desperately.

The sound of her pounding footsteps on the sand alerted the dark shape huddled on the beach to her presence. He looked up with an expression of such desperation on his face that Quistis increased her speed. She skidded to her knees beside him, gathering him into her arms as she might a child, and smoothing his hair back and pressing kisses on his face and letting her tears cleanse him of his.

He was muttering mindlessly, endlessly in terror. "Quistis...help me I can't...she's in my head, won't leave, I'm not strong enough..."

"Shhh...Hush, my darling... She's gone. I promise you she'd gone. I'm here. It'll be alright, Seifer." She lifted his face to hers again, and kissed him, passionate and dedicated and fiery and strong. She let him know that she'd always be there, come hell or high water. She hugged him tighter, and felt his arms recover enough strength to wrap around her, too, and knew. Her words were true.

She looked out across the starlit ocean. "It'll be alright."

She'd saved him.