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Spoilers: do not read any further unless you have finished Final Fantasy VIII. Seriously, you'll get very pissed at me for telling you the ending.
As any of you still reading may have guessed, this is a piece of fanfiction about the end of Final Fantasy VIII. I take liberties when I write, so bite me if it's not a hundred percent 'how it happened'.
*And... - Derek Zischke*
"And..."
The faceless form of the sorceress bore down on Zell, Irvine and Squall. Squall was clutching his gunblade arm, as a result of an injury caused by Ultimecia's lion-like GF. Irvine's face was flushed from the heat of a powerful Flare attack, and his gun was being armed with explosive canisters and aimed at Ultimecia.
Zell could sense some powerful magic radiating from Ultimecia, more powerful than anything he had felt before, which said a lot for the past few weeks. He focused himself and drew from her, feeling into her essence and parting with a piece of it. Instantly his whole being was jumping and sparking with the power that was flowing through it. The spell shot to his arms, his hands, his fingertips, where it built up to its climax...
"Apocalypse!"
This battle was over.
Squall staggered to the end of the grey desert he had walked through, to what appeared to be a cliff face. He cast his eyes down it, and confirmed what he had believed: he was stuck in some godforsaken nowhere. A chunk of lifeless rock that was neither past, present or future. He would now be trapped here, because for the first time in his life, he had depended on others: not because they had failed him, but because he had failed himself.
He fell to the ground, now letting himself feel tired, feel exhausted, feel the scars from their final battle. He lay his head to the ground, and let unconsciousness ebb over him.
Rinoa watched the SeeDs fade away from the blankness that had fallen on them after Ultimecia's defeat. They were all returning to their time, back to where they were real, back where she should be. But there was one person she didn't see, neither here where there was nothing or sense in her time where there would be nothing without him.
Squall.
He was somewhere else, not where they had promised to be, and she could feel him...trying to be there, wanting to be there, but couldn't.
Not without her.
She gave up focusing on her time, and tried to be where Squall was. As she began to see shapes solidify through the nothing around her, she thought that she wouldn't have been able to return to her time, either, if she wasn't returning close to the one she loved.
Desert. Barren land. Cracked earth. Grey sky. And a feeling of where to run to.
Rinoa's hand clasped the rings that hung around her neck on a chain. He was here. And she would bring him home.
She found Squall, passed out on the ground, lying lifelessly. Rinoa felt her breath hitch in her throat and her heart stop in her breast, and she rushed to him. She knelt beside him, touched her hand to his, touched her hand to his face. He felt cold.
Her forefingers instinctively reached to the strong vein in his neck, fearing that there would be no beat beneath her fingers.
"Rinoa...?"
Her eyes widened.
"Rinoa...you came back...," Squall said in a voice almost below a whisper, almost silenced by his fatigue.
"Of course I came back," Rinoa whispered back to him tenderly, holding his head up in a motherly fashion and leaning close to him. "I love you."
A faint smile crossed his face "I...I love you, too."
Squall's eyes closed again, as he lapsed back in to unconsciousness, and he never saw the grey clouds peel back to reveal a blue sky, nor did he hear the low hum of the Balamb Garden as it flew towards them.
"Man, we are _never_ going to find them!" Zell exclaimed to no one in particular on the Garden's observation deck as he hit his fist down on the handrail. Quistis quietly ignored him. Edea, who stood on the deck between them, replied, "We will find him. I know it."
"How? We've been looking through these scopes for hours, and we still haven't-"
"There!" Quistis pointed to a patch of ground below them. Zell picked up his scope again and looked at the spot to where she was pointing. Through the lenses and past the displays he saw Rinoa, waving her hands and calling desperately up at the Garden, and Squall, lying on the ground.
Zell sprinted out from the observation deck, through the Garden and up to the control room, yelling to anyone in his way, "Stop the Garden! We found 'em! Stop the Garden!"
For a sinking second, Rinoa thought the Garden was going to pass them by, but as she saw it slowly sink to the ground, she felt a weight as heavy as the Garden itself lift off her shoulders. Out from the front gates came Doctor Kadowaki and Zell, flanked by two SeeD cadets with a stretcher.
"He's fine...just let me get finished here, and you can all wait for Squall to wake up, if you like."
Doctor Kadowaki began checking over Squall once more. Beside the bed, Rinoa knelt, Squall's hand resting in hers. Quistis and Zell stood back, observing from Garden's resident doctor's office. Neither would say it, but both were incredibly relieved that their leader and friend had survived.
"What happened here?" Doctor Kadowaki asked, indicating ragged cloth and a shallow wound that would become another scar similar to the one on its owner's face.
Rinoa saw in her mind's eye how Squall had been against Ultimecia: He had charged at her, regardless of his life, and driven his gunblade into the sorceress to pierce her heart. Time had seemed to have frozen in the instant, broken by first the dull thud of Squall's gunblade being triggered, and then the roar of a primitive beast, as Ultimecia's GF had acted to protect its master. One of its giant paws had come down on Squall, and he had dove away, barely in time, the claws tearing at his arm.
"Battle casualties," Zell piped up.
The doctor considered this. "It's probably not severe enough to become infected...but we should bandage it to be on the safe side. Quistis, could you get me that dressing?"
As Quistis and Doctor Kadowaki went to work, Rinoa asked Zell quietly, "Where are Selphie and Irvine?"
"Out in the Ragnarok, searching for you two."
"I'm sure searching isn't all they'll be doing," Quistis remarked as she placed her hand to hold a bandage.
No one else commented further.
Seifer stared down at the water, watching his lure but thinking about Squall. He had finally proven himself, hadn't he? Yes. Beaten by his greatest rival, lost control of the Galbadian Army, kicked out of Garden...life was not exactly at its best.
"Hey, Seifer! We're gonna catch some _real_ Balamb Fish this time, ya know? Gonna do it right, not like last time, ya know?" A lure let fly above Seifer, cast from Raijin, who stood behind him.
_Maybe I could try again. Maybe it wouldn't be like last time...maybe I could do it right._
"I got one! I got one, ya know?" Raijin enthusiastically reeled in his catch, while Fujin watched complacently.
Seifer stood and turned around, prepared to announce his pledge to try and best Squall one more time, at the sight of Raijin holding up his Balamb Fish.
Fujin saw the expression on Seifer's face, which was not wholly unfamiliar to her. He had looked like that for days: a mixture of dismay, contempt and outright rage. The thought that quickly sprang into Fujin's mind at that point possibly prevented another war with Galbadia.
She simply pushed Raijin into the waters of Balamb Harbour.
A smile crossed Seifer's face. He bowed his head, and for an instant, Fujin thought he was going to explode, but what he did to surprised her even more: he roared with laughter. So much, that even the complaints of a wet Raijin and the shadow of Garden passing overhead didn't disturb the former leader of the Galbadian Army in the least.
"It's been a long day for everyone here," Doctor Kadowaki said to the group in her office. "Could you keep things under control here? I'm going to get something to eat."
"The cafeteria's out of hot dogs again," Zell remarked as Doctor Kadowaki left, which earned him a glace from Quistis.
"What? They are."
In the following silence, Zell fished around in his pocket, and produced a far-from-completed deck of Triple Triad cards.
"Anyone up for a game?"
After five hands, it would have been clear to even the most amateur Triad player that Zell was losing. He was in the middle of a double-or-nothing negotiation with Quistis for a Catoblepas card he had pestered Squall into giving him when Selphie and Irvine walked into the infirmary. Zell noted that Selphie's hair was slightly more out of place than it normally was. Quistis saw that Irvine's cowboy hat was sitting at an odd angle on his head. Both observed mildly flushed faces on the pair.
"We were...uh...," Irvine began explaining.
"Running!" Selphie exclaimed. "We landed the Ragnarok and came walking to Garden, and we were all depressed that we couldn't find Squall or Rinoa, and then someone in FH said that they were found and then we...ran here. Where are they?"
"...Are you doing?"
"That's Plus, isn't it?"
"No."
"Why? They both add to thirteen."
"No, they add to thirteen and twelve."
"Really? Damn..."
"Besides, we're not even playing with..."
"...A party? Garden Festival didn't go ahead this year, so..."
"We couldn't get that organised so quickly."
"Sure we could! Me and Irvine can..."
"...When Squall's going to wake up?"
"Soon, I hope."
Voices that were faded and distorted came to Squall during short lapses of consciousness. He became dimly aware that he was lying in the Garden Infirmary, and at that realisation a sense of déjà vu had swept over him ('I knew it'd either be you or Seifer!'). His eyes slowly opened, and the first thing that greeted them was Rinoa, who had leant close to him.
"Welcome back," she whispered, and her hand lightly touched the side of his face.
"How long was I out?" Squall whispered back.
"A few hours." She smiled. "But that doesn't matter. What matters is that we're here."
Rinoa leaned in even closer, and covered Squall's lips with her own.
"Come _on_, let's dance!"
"Jeez, you're almost pulling my arm out, Selphie..."
Quistis smiled quietly behind a closed hand, and watched Irvine being dragged, not too forcefully, out onto the dance floor, which was only a clearing in the centre of some hastily-set-up tables, that were only usually used for SeeD graduation dances. Irvine and Selphie stood out amongst the other SeeDs, students and juniors, partly because of Selphie's never-ending energy, and partly because of their size difference, Irvine almost dwarfing Selphie when they stood side by side.
Quistis glanced across the room, seeing various members of Garden eating, talking, or dancing. She didn't see Headmaster Cid or Matron anywhere, though. Xu had said to her that the Headmaster would be making an announcement later on in the night, but she wouldn't tell her what, leading her to believe it would be fairly important. She also did not see Squall or Rinoa, but she hadn't seen them arrive, so perhaps they were still getting ready.
"Um, excuse me...," came a voice from behind her. Quistis turned to see who had sat at her table.
"Oh, hi, Lily."
"Um, hi," said the nervous girl who constantly had a pigtail in her hair. "Do you know where Zell is? I know he was with you earlier, and..."
"Zell's in the control room with Nida. Didn't he tell you he was organising the music?" Lily shook her head. "Well, that's where you'll find him."
"Oh. Um, thankyou, Instructor."
As she left, Quistis realised that she had failed to point out she was no longer an Instructor.
"You know that parties aren't my thing," Squall remarked to Rinoa as they walked down the hall from the dormitories.
"Why not? This is going to be the same place where we met, isn't it?" she said, smiling as she did so.
"Everyone's going to be there...everyone's going to want to know what happened..."
"What? You save the world and you don't even want to talk about it?" Rinoa giggled, and that was enough to bring a smile to Squall's face, and make him see a little from her view. Rinoa placed her hand on Squall's shoulder and stopped him to look in his eyes.
"If it bothers you that much, we can just stay here."
"No...I'll get through it." He took Rinoa by the hand and began to walk again. "Besides, it's not every day I get to take the most beautiful girl in the world to dinner."
Rinoa hugged him as best she could while still walking and asked, "You think I'm the most beautiful girl in the world?"
The elevator platform chimed in the control centre of Balamb Garden, and began to descend.
"I wonder who that is?" Nida said to Zell, who was sitting in front of the speaker and microphone controls with his feet on them.
"Maybe it's someone coming up to say they're serving the hotdogs!"
"You think far too much with your stomach."
"_You've_ obviously never had a Balamb garden hotdog."
The elevator chimed again, and both Nida and Zell turned their heads to see who it had brought up. It was one of the library assistants, who always had a pigtail in her hair.
"Hi Nida," Lily said. "Hi, Zell," she said a little hesitantly, blushing slightly.
"Hi, Lily," Zell said back, getting of his chair and walking towards her. "You know, the party's downstairs..."
"I know," she replied, scuffing her foot a little. "I...don't have anyone to go with."
"That's too bad..."
"Have you got anyone to go with, Zell?" Lily asked, blushing a little harder.
"Well, I..." Zell was about to say no, when Lily cut him of.
"Because I was thinking that...you might want to go with me?"
A smile broke out on Zell's face that was associated by Nida as being hopelessly love struck, even allowing for the sinister tattoo that ran across the left side of its owner's face.
"Um...yeah, well, I'd...sure."
"Great!" Lily clapped her hands together, and then embraced Zell in a tight hug, much to his surprise.
As they both walked together to the elevator platform, hand in hand, Zell called back to Nida, "Keep things under control here, man!"
Nida, along with the rest of Garden, had known that this was going to happen, and he had a smile on his face about it. As he heard their conversation fade out...
"You know, I'm not really a good dancer..."
"That's okay..."
...He walked over to the controls for the microphone that Zell had left absent and prepared the next song. Over Garden's announcement system, he dedicated it to all the couples in Balamb Garden. The song was, of course, Julia Heartilly's Eyes On Me.
As the first notes of the piano began to play, the lights grew dim on the dance floor. All of the dancing couples came in closer to one another. Irvine held Selphie close to him, her head resting against his chest, and he inhaled, smelling the scent of her hair. Selphie hugged him tightly, and closed her eyes, and was for this moment in time content to be completely at peace in his arms.
In the dim light of the deserted headmaster's office, Zell and Lily stood. Lily's hands rested on Zell's shoulders, and Zell's hands were awkwardly placed around Lily's waist. Once, through their motion of slow dancing to the song they could both faintly hear, Zell tangled his feet with Lily's, and almost fell over himself. Lily giggled, covering her mouth with her hand as she did so. Zell made the motion to walk off, much as Squall had done during his SeeD graduation dance. Lily then took Zell by the hand and smiled at him, much as an unknown girl called Rinoa had done to Squall. The next time they tried, Zell now had his hands comfortably linked around Lily's waist, and he managed to keep perfect balance.
Quistis sat at one of the tables, shuffling her deck of Triad cards, floating a rare card depicting a chocobo on it from the top of the deck to the bottom, watching the couples dancing. She thought that she was perhaps one of the few people in Garden that disliked this type of situation even more than Squall did. No matter what her rank would be from now on, she would still be Instructor Trepe instead of Quistis to most of her past students, despite being younger than many of them, and she would always be the idol of the Trepies that thought she didn't know about them. Quistis had made it her nature in Garden and as an Instructor to always know more than she let on: so the same went with her card talent...it was always more interesting to be the dark horse anyway. And then she had been demoted, and had gone with Squall and everyone else across the world, and had saved it from destruction by a sorceress from the future.
Throughout all of it, she had begun to realise that she had never felt better when she was in battle: the crack of her whip, the crackle and electricity of casting a powerful spell, the adrenaline rush after the fall of an opponent. Now sitting here in the ballroom of Balamb Garden, she wondered if she could put in an application for a Battle Instructor's licence, instead of her now-useless Theory Instructor's one. She smiled at that: a chance to go back to teaching, and this time for it to be interesting. She stopped floating the chocobo card and put the deck back in her pocket. The card that now sat on top was that of a T-Rexaur.
"Uh...Instructor Trepe?"
A brief urge rose in Quistis to snap at the person that was talking to her. It was quickly suppressed. "Yes?" she asked, drawn out of her thoughts, and turned to face the voice that spoke to her. It was one of her past students: she remembered teaching him in a magic class when she had just earned her Instructor's license. From the old recesses of her memory, she could recall his name was Alex (Author's Note - this name is being used by no basis other than the fact that I find it a decent male name). She could also recall, and for this she did not have to search through her mind, that he was often known as the First Trepie.
_I wonder what he's going to ask for? ...Maybe an autograph...I did help save the world after all,_ she thought with a touch of egotistic irony.
"Um, Instructor, uh, would you..."
_Here comes the pen and paper,_ her mind said sardonically.
"...Would you have this next dance with me?"
_Take your own advice, Quistis...you said this enough to Squall when he was your student: lighten up._
"I'd love to," she said, smiling and accepting Alex's extended hand. "On one condition."
"What's that, Instructor?"
"_Please_ stop calling me Instructor..."
"Whenever sang my songs, on this stage, on my own..."
The words floated out of the ballroom and onto the balcony overlooking the spinning anti-gravity field of Garden, and were received by Rinoa and Squall's ears.
"My mother's song," Rinoa said quietly, her head resting against Squall's arm, which held her protectively. "She used to sing that to me when I was little...really little. I miss her still, even though I can't really remember her. But I think maybe...maybe it'll be alright now."
"Why?"
"She used to hold me, and comfort me, whenever she sang this song. And now...now I've got your eyes on me, Squall."
Squall leaned down closer to her and whispered, "And I'll never let you go."
As the two of them shared a sweet kiss under the pale glow of the full moon, Julia Heartilly's song continued to play.
"I kind of liked it your way, how you shyly placed your eyes on me...did you ever know that I had mine on you?"
Later in the night, the music was called off for a brief period for Headmaster Cid to make his announcement that Quistis had been wondering about earlier. Edea stood beside him in a plain grey dress, her long black hair unbound and falling below her shoulders.
"Where did Selphie go?" Quistis asked Irvine as she sat down at a table next to him. Through most of the night, they had seemed practically attached at the hip.
"She said something about going to get her camera."
"I didn't know she had a camera."
"Well, that was one of the things that had to be shipped from Trabia, and it got kinda delayed because of Galbadia's missile attack. So most of Selphie's stuff is missing from her dorm."
"And how is it that you know what's missing from her dorm?" Quistis asked with a hint of smile on her face.
"Well...that is...I, uh..." Irvine stumbled over his words, and before his comments could get him into more trouble, a high electronic whine broke through the speakers in Garden, causing most of the people in the ballroom to cringe and make motions to block their ears. It did, however, succeed in lowering the dull crowd noise in order for Cid to talk.
"Sorry about that, folks. I don't want to interrupt too long, so I'll make this as brief as I can." Cid cleared his throat and began to slip into his headmaster's tone that many, if not all, the students in Balamb were familiar with.
"Firstly, I'm sure you are all aware of the recent victory of the SeeDs of Balamb against the Sorceresses Adel and Ultimecia. This is a proud day for the students of Garden, and I would like to invite the individuals responsible up onto the stage. Squall Leonhart..."
Squall rose from his seat next to Rinoa formally and moved to the stage.
"...Zell Dincht..."
Zell sprung out of his chair, flashed all the eyes on him a thumbs-up and walked confidently to the stage.
"...And Quistis Trepe of Balamb Garden..."
Quistis stood among a few whistles from the crowd.
"...Irvine Kinneas of Galbadia Garden..."
Irvine took off his hat and waved with it as he walked to the stage.
"...And Selphie Tilmett of Trabia Garden."
A low murmur crossed the room when Selphie didn't stand.
"Uh, Selphie?"
"Here!" Selphie exclaimed, running into the ballroom with a portable camera in her hand. She ran up onto the stage to join Irvine.
"There is also one other person, who is not a member of any Garden, that aided our SeeDs in their mission. Would you please join them on stage, Rinoa Heartilly of the Forest Owls?"
Rinoa stood, looking a little surprised at the mention of her name among the Seeds, despite being involved as much as they were. She stepped up on the stage to take her place between Squall and Quistis.
"Although Rinoa is not affiliated with any Garden establishment," Cid continued, "I am willing to overlook this, and in light of her service against the Sorceresses and her aid to the SeeD, I am granting her honorary SeeD status."
Applause broke out in the ballroom. Rinoa, overwhelmed, made a mock-curtsy and smiled. Following this action, Irvine took a deep bow and Selphie a sweet curtsy as best she could with the video recorder in her hand. Zell took up a quick fighting stance and jabbed the air a couple of times, and then unclenched his fist into another thumbs-up to Lily, who waved enthusiastically back at him. Quistis, her hands folded in front of her, went to exchange a glance with Squall, who she predicted would be standing and observing as he always did. Her prediction, however, was wrong in this instance: Squall has his hand waving to the crowd and a smile on his face.
"Everyone smile!"
"Um, Selphie..."
"C'mon, smile guys!"
"Selphie, you've still got the lens cap on.
"What?" Selphie took the camera away from her eye and turned it around, to see the lens cap still fastened over the lens. "Bummer! But I've still got enough battery to shoot a few more minutes...so smile!"
"Where's Rinoa and Squall?" Irvine heard Selphie ask him. "I want to get them on the camera too."
"I think Rinoa's on the balcony...maybe Squall's with her," Quistis said.
"Do you want me to go check?" Irvine asked, and he began to walk in the direction of the balcony. Selphie quickly grabbed his arm and stopped him, jerking his letterboxed view of the world around a bit.
"_No!_ Don't disturb them! I think they'd want to be...left alone."
"Ah..." Irvine lowered the camera for a moment and leant close to Selphie. "You know, maybe later tonight you and I might want to be left alone too..." A slight blush crept across Selphie's face, and Quistis moved quietly away. As she left to find the Headmaster to talk about her Instructor's Licence, she head Irvine ask Selphie, "What does this little thing here mean?"
"What? Oh, it's out of batteries again..."
"Look."
"At what?"
"A shooting star." Rinoa smiled and pointed towards the sky. "Make a wish, Squall."
Squall put his arm around her and said, "I wish this night could stay forever."
"So do I."
As they kissed, the moonlight gave pale blue light to the rolling hills underneath the flying Garden.
I'd like to thank the following people for their positive feedback while this was in its beta stage: RinoaHeartilly, Ayara, Neosubphylum, Edea's Knight, LordOFDarkness, Sodina, Rinoa 7 6 9, *Heaven's Reign*, Mistress, Black Chocobo, Elizabeth, BigB and Lady Edea.
Derek Zischke
[email protected]
Zischke In The Jar Productions, 2000-07-07 (c)
"Do you suffer from long-term memory loss? I can't remember..."
-Chumbawamba
Spoilers: do not read any further unless you have finished Final Fantasy VIII. Seriously, you'll get very pissed at me for telling you the ending.
As any of you still reading may have guessed, this is a piece of fanfiction about the end of Final Fantasy VIII. I take liberties when I write, so bite me if it's not a hundred percent 'how it happened'.
*And... - Derek Zischke*
"And..."
The faceless form of the sorceress bore down on Zell, Irvine and Squall. Squall was clutching his gunblade arm, as a result of an injury caused by Ultimecia's lion-like GF. Irvine's face was flushed from the heat of a powerful Flare attack, and his gun was being armed with explosive canisters and aimed at Ultimecia.
Zell could sense some powerful magic radiating from Ultimecia, more powerful than anything he had felt before, which said a lot for the past few weeks. He focused himself and drew from her, feeling into her essence and parting with a piece of it. Instantly his whole being was jumping and sparking with the power that was flowing through it. The spell shot to his arms, his hands, his fingertips, where it built up to its climax...
"Apocalypse!"
This battle was over.
Squall staggered to the end of the grey desert he had walked through, to what appeared to be a cliff face. He cast his eyes down it, and confirmed what he had believed: he was stuck in some godforsaken nowhere. A chunk of lifeless rock that was neither past, present or future. He would now be trapped here, because for the first time in his life, he had depended on others: not because they had failed him, but because he had failed himself.
He fell to the ground, now letting himself feel tired, feel exhausted, feel the scars from their final battle. He lay his head to the ground, and let unconsciousness ebb over him.
Rinoa watched the SeeDs fade away from the blankness that had fallen on them after Ultimecia's defeat. They were all returning to their time, back to where they were real, back where she should be. But there was one person she didn't see, neither here where there was nothing or sense in her time where there would be nothing without him.
Squall.
He was somewhere else, not where they had promised to be, and she could feel him...trying to be there, wanting to be there, but couldn't.
Not without her.
She gave up focusing on her time, and tried to be where Squall was. As she began to see shapes solidify through the nothing around her, she thought that she wouldn't have been able to return to her time, either, if she wasn't returning close to the one she loved.
Desert. Barren land. Cracked earth. Grey sky. And a feeling of where to run to.
Rinoa's hand clasped the rings that hung around her neck on a chain. He was here. And she would bring him home.
She found Squall, passed out on the ground, lying lifelessly. Rinoa felt her breath hitch in her throat and her heart stop in her breast, and she rushed to him. She knelt beside him, touched her hand to his, touched her hand to his face. He felt cold.
Her forefingers instinctively reached to the strong vein in his neck, fearing that there would be no beat beneath her fingers.
"Rinoa...?"
Her eyes widened.
"Rinoa...you came back...," Squall said in a voice almost below a whisper, almost silenced by his fatigue.
"Of course I came back," Rinoa whispered back to him tenderly, holding his head up in a motherly fashion and leaning close to him. "I love you."
A faint smile crossed his face "I...I love you, too."
Squall's eyes closed again, as he lapsed back in to unconsciousness, and he never saw the grey clouds peel back to reveal a blue sky, nor did he hear the low hum of the Balamb Garden as it flew towards them.
"Man, we are _never_ going to find them!" Zell exclaimed to no one in particular on the Garden's observation deck as he hit his fist down on the handrail. Quistis quietly ignored him. Edea, who stood on the deck between them, replied, "We will find him. I know it."
"How? We've been looking through these scopes for hours, and we still haven't-"
"There!" Quistis pointed to a patch of ground below them. Zell picked up his scope again and looked at the spot to where she was pointing. Through the lenses and past the displays he saw Rinoa, waving her hands and calling desperately up at the Garden, and Squall, lying on the ground.
Zell sprinted out from the observation deck, through the Garden and up to the control room, yelling to anyone in his way, "Stop the Garden! We found 'em! Stop the Garden!"
For a sinking second, Rinoa thought the Garden was going to pass them by, but as she saw it slowly sink to the ground, she felt a weight as heavy as the Garden itself lift off her shoulders. Out from the front gates came Doctor Kadowaki and Zell, flanked by two SeeD cadets with a stretcher.
"He's fine...just let me get finished here, and you can all wait for Squall to wake up, if you like."
Doctor Kadowaki began checking over Squall once more. Beside the bed, Rinoa knelt, Squall's hand resting in hers. Quistis and Zell stood back, observing from Garden's resident doctor's office. Neither would say it, but both were incredibly relieved that their leader and friend had survived.
"What happened here?" Doctor Kadowaki asked, indicating ragged cloth and a shallow wound that would become another scar similar to the one on its owner's face.
Rinoa saw in her mind's eye how Squall had been against Ultimecia: He had charged at her, regardless of his life, and driven his gunblade into the sorceress to pierce her heart. Time had seemed to have frozen in the instant, broken by first the dull thud of Squall's gunblade being triggered, and then the roar of a primitive beast, as Ultimecia's GF had acted to protect its master. One of its giant paws had come down on Squall, and he had dove away, barely in time, the claws tearing at his arm.
"Battle casualties," Zell piped up.
The doctor considered this. "It's probably not severe enough to become infected...but we should bandage it to be on the safe side. Quistis, could you get me that dressing?"
As Quistis and Doctor Kadowaki went to work, Rinoa asked Zell quietly, "Where are Selphie and Irvine?"
"Out in the Ragnarok, searching for you two."
"I'm sure searching isn't all they'll be doing," Quistis remarked as she placed her hand to hold a bandage.
No one else commented further.
Seifer stared down at the water, watching his lure but thinking about Squall. He had finally proven himself, hadn't he? Yes. Beaten by his greatest rival, lost control of the Galbadian Army, kicked out of Garden...life was not exactly at its best.
"Hey, Seifer! We're gonna catch some _real_ Balamb Fish this time, ya know? Gonna do it right, not like last time, ya know?" A lure let fly above Seifer, cast from Raijin, who stood behind him.
_Maybe I could try again. Maybe it wouldn't be like last time...maybe I could do it right._
"I got one! I got one, ya know?" Raijin enthusiastically reeled in his catch, while Fujin watched complacently.
Seifer stood and turned around, prepared to announce his pledge to try and best Squall one more time, at the sight of Raijin holding up his Balamb Fish.
Fujin saw the expression on Seifer's face, which was not wholly unfamiliar to her. He had looked like that for days: a mixture of dismay, contempt and outright rage. The thought that quickly sprang into Fujin's mind at that point possibly prevented another war with Galbadia.
She simply pushed Raijin into the waters of Balamb Harbour.
A smile crossed Seifer's face. He bowed his head, and for an instant, Fujin thought he was going to explode, but what he did to surprised her even more: he roared with laughter. So much, that even the complaints of a wet Raijin and the shadow of Garden passing overhead didn't disturb the former leader of the Galbadian Army in the least.
"It's been a long day for everyone here," Doctor Kadowaki said to the group in her office. "Could you keep things under control here? I'm going to get something to eat."
"The cafeteria's out of hot dogs again," Zell remarked as Doctor Kadowaki left, which earned him a glace from Quistis.
"What? They are."
In the following silence, Zell fished around in his pocket, and produced a far-from-completed deck of Triple Triad cards.
"Anyone up for a game?"
After five hands, it would have been clear to even the most amateur Triad player that Zell was losing. He was in the middle of a double-or-nothing negotiation with Quistis for a Catoblepas card he had pestered Squall into giving him when Selphie and Irvine walked into the infirmary. Zell noted that Selphie's hair was slightly more out of place than it normally was. Quistis saw that Irvine's cowboy hat was sitting at an odd angle on his head. Both observed mildly flushed faces on the pair.
"We were...uh...," Irvine began explaining.
"Running!" Selphie exclaimed. "We landed the Ragnarok and came walking to Garden, and we were all depressed that we couldn't find Squall or Rinoa, and then someone in FH said that they were found and then we...ran here. Where are they?"
"...Are you doing?"
"That's Plus, isn't it?"
"No."
"Why? They both add to thirteen."
"No, they add to thirteen and twelve."
"Really? Damn..."
"Besides, we're not even playing with..."
"...A party? Garden Festival didn't go ahead this year, so..."
"We couldn't get that organised so quickly."
"Sure we could! Me and Irvine can..."
"...When Squall's going to wake up?"
"Soon, I hope."
Voices that were faded and distorted came to Squall during short lapses of consciousness. He became dimly aware that he was lying in the Garden Infirmary, and at that realisation a sense of déjà vu had swept over him ('I knew it'd either be you or Seifer!'). His eyes slowly opened, and the first thing that greeted them was Rinoa, who had leant close to him.
"Welcome back," she whispered, and her hand lightly touched the side of his face.
"How long was I out?" Squall whispered back.
"A few hours." She smiled. "But that doesn't matter. What matters is that we're here."
Rinoa leaned in even closer, and covered Squall's lips with her own.
"Come _on_, let's dance!"
"Jeez, you're almost pulling my arm out, Selphie..."
Quistis smiled quietly behind a closed hand, and watched Irvine being dragged, not too forcefully, out onto the dance floor, which was only a clearing in the centre of some hastily-set-up tables, that were only usually used for SeeD graduation dances. Irvine and Selphie stood out amongst the other SeeDs, students and juniors, partly because of Selphie's never-ending energy, and partly because of their size difference, Irvine almost dwarfing Selphie when they stood side by side.
Quistis glanced across the room, seeing various members of Garden eating, talking, or dancing. She didn't see Headmaster Cid or Matron anywhere, though. Xu had said to her that the Headmaster would be making an announcement later on in the night, but she wouldn't tell her what, leading her to believe it would be fairly important. She also did not see Squall or Rinoa, but she hadn't seen them arrive, so perhaps they were still getting ready.
"Um, excuse me...," came a voice from behind her. Quistis turned to see who had sat at her table.
"Oh, hi, Lily."
"Um, hi," said the nervous girl who constantly had a pigtail in her hair. "Do you know where Zell is? I know he was with you earlier, and..."
"Zell's in the control room with Nida. Didn't he tell you he was organising the music?" Lily shook her head. "Well, that's where you'll find him."
"Oh. Um, thankyou, Instructor."
As she left, Quistis realised that she had failed to point out she was no longer an Instructor.
"You know that parties aren't my thing," Squall remarked to Rinoa as they walked down the hall from the dormitories.
"Why not? This is going to be the same place where we met, isn't it?" she said, smiling as she did so.
"Everyone's going to be there...everyone's going to want to know what happened..."
"What? You save the world and you don't even want to talk about it?" Rinoa giggled, and that was enough to bring a smile to Squall's face, and make him see a little from her view. Rinoa placed her hand on Squall's shoulder and stopped him to look in his eyes.
"If it bothers you that much, we can just stay here."
"No...I'll get through it." He took Rinoa by the hand and began to walk again. "Besides, it's not every day I get to take the most beautiful girl in the world to dinner."
Rinoa hugged him as best she could while still walking and asked, "You think I'm the most beautiful girl in the world?"
The elevator platform chimed in the control centre of Balamb Garden, and began to descend.
"I wonder who that is?" Nida said to Zell, who was sitting in front of the speaker and microphone controls with his feet on them.
"Maybe it's someone coming up to say they're serving the hotdogs!"
"You think far too much with your stomach."
"_You've_ obviously never had a Balamb garden hotdog."
The elevator chimed again, and both Nida and Zell turned their heads to see who it had brought up. It was one of the library assistants, who always had a pigtail in her hair.
"Hi Nida," Lily said. "Hi, Zell," she said a little hesitantly, blushing slightly.
"Hi, Lily," Zell said back, getting of his chair and walking towards her. "You know, the party's downstairs..."
"I know," she replied, scuffing her foot a little. "I...don't have anyone to go with."
"That's too bad..."
"Have you got anyone to go with, Zell?" Lily asked, blushing a little harder.
"Well, I..." Zell was about to say no, when Lily cut him of.
"Because I was thinking that...you might want to go with me?"
A smile broke out on Zell's face that was associated by Nida as being hopelessly love struck, even allowing for the sinister tattoo that ran across the left side of its owner's face.
"Um...yeah, well, I'd...sure."
"Great!" Lily clapped her hands together, and then embraced Zell in a tight hug, much to his surprise.
As they both walked together to the elevator platform, hand in hand, Zell called back to Nida, "Keep things under control here, man!"
Nida, along with the rest of Garden, had known that this was going to happen, and he had a smile on his face about it. As he heard their conversation fade out...
"You know, I'm not really a good dancer..."
"That's okay..."
...He walked over to the controls for the microphone that Zell had left absent and prepared the next song. Over Garden's announcement system, he dedicated it to all the couples in Balamb Garden. The song was, of course, Julia Heartilly's Eyes On Me.
As the first notes of the piano began to play, the lights grew dim on the dance floor. All of the dancing couples came in closer to one another. Irvine held Selphie close to him, her head resting against his chest, and he inhaled, smelling the scent of her hair. Selphie hugged him tightly, and closed her eyes, and was for this moment in time content to be completely at peace in his arms.
In the dim light of the deserted headmaster's office, Zell and Lily stood. Lily's hands rested on Zell's shoulders, and Zell's hands were awkwardly placed around Lily's waist. Once, through their motion of slow dancing to the song they could both faintly hear, Zell tangled his feet with Lily's, and almost fell over himself. Lily giggled, covering her mouth with her hand as she did so. Zell made the motion to walk off, much as Squall had done during his SeeD graduation dance. Lily then took Zell by the hand and smiled at him, much as an unknown girl called Rinoa had done to Squall. The next time they tried, Zell now had his hands comfortably linked around Lily's waist, and he managed to keep perfect balance.
Quistis sat at one of the tables, shuffling her deck of Triad cards, floating a rare card depicting a chocobo on it from the top of the deck to the bottom, watching the couples dancing. She thought that she was perhaps one of the few people in Garden that disliked this type of situation even more than Squall did. No matter what her rank would be from now on, she would still be Instructor Trepe instead of Quistis to most of her past students, despite being younger than many of them, and she would always be the idol of the Trepies that thought she didn't know about them. Quistis had made it her nature in Garden and as an Instructor to always know more than she let on: so the same went with her card talent...it was always more interesting to be the dark horse anyway. And then she had been demoted, and had gone with Squall and everyone else across the world, and had saved it from destruction by a sorceress from the future.
Throughout all of it, she had begun to realise that she had never felt better when she was in battle: the crack of her whip, the crackle and electricity of casting a powerful spell, the adrenaline rush after the fall of an opponent. Now sitting here in the ballroom of Balamb Garden, she wondered if she could put in an application for a Battle Instructor's licence, instead of her now-useless Theory Instructor's one. She smiled at that: a chance to go back to teaching, and this time for it to be interesting. She stopped floating the chocobo card and put the deck back in her pocket. The card that now sat on top was that of a T-Rexaur.
"Uh...Instructor Trepe?"
A brief urge rose in Quistis to snap at the person that was talking to her. It was quickly suppressed. "Yes?" she asked, drawn out of her thoughts, and turned to face the voice that spoke to her. It was one of her past students: she remembered teaching him in a magic class when she had just earned her Instructor's license. From the old recesses of her memory, she could recall his name was Alex (Author's Note - this name is being used by no basis other than the fact that I find it a decent male name). She could also recall, and for this she did not have to search through her mind, that he was often known as the First Trepie.
_I wonder what he's going to ask for? ...Maybe an autograph...I did help save the world after all,_ she thought with a touch of egotistic irony.
"Um, Instructor, uh, would you..."
_Here comes the pen and paper,_ her mind said sardonically.
"...Would you have this next dance with me?"
_Take your own advice, Quistis...you said this enough to Squall when he was your student: lighten up._
"I'd love to," she said, smiling and accepting Alex's extended hand. "On one condition."
"What's that, Instructor?"
"_Please_ stop calling me Instructor..."
"Whenever sang my songs, on this stage, on my own..."
The words floated out of the ballroom and onto the balcony overlooking the spinning anti-gravity field of Garden, and were received by Rinoa and Squall's ears.
"My mother's song," Rinoa said quietly, her head resting against Squall's arm, which held her protectively. "She used to sing that to me when I was little...really little. I miss her still, even though I can't really remember her. But I think maybe...maybe it'll be alright now."
"Why?"
"She used to hold me, and comfort me, whenever she sang this song. And now...now I've got your eyes on me, Squall."
Squall leaned down closer to her and whispered, "And I'll never let you go."
As the two of them shared a sweet kiss under the pale glow of the full moon, Julia Heartilly's song continued to play.
"I kind of liked it your way, how you shyly placed your eyes on me...did you ever know that I had mine on you?"
Later in the night, the music was called off for a brief period for Headmaster Cid to make his announcement that Quistis had been wondering about earlier. Edea stood beside him in a plain grey dress, her long black hair unbound and falling below her shoulders.
"Where did Selphie go?" Quistis asked Irvine as she sat down at a table next to him. Through most of the night, they had seemed practically attached at the hip.
"She said something about going to get her camera."
"I didn't know she had a camera."
"Well, that was one of the things that had to be shipped from Trabia, and it got kinda delayed because of Galbadia's missile attack. So most of Selphie's stuff is missing from her dorm."
"And how is it that you know what's missing from her dorm?" Quistis asked with a hint of smile on her face.
"Well...that is...I, uh..." Irvine stumbled over his words, and before his comments could get him into more trouble, a high electronic whine broke through the speakers in Garden, causing most of the people in the ballroom to cringe and make motions to block their ears. It did, however, succeed in lowering the dull crowd noise in order for Cid to talk.
"Sorry about that, folks. I don't want to interrupt too long, so I'll make this as brief as I can." Cid cleared his throat and began to slip into his headmaster's tone that many, if not all, the students in Balamb were familiar with.
"Firstly, I'm sure you are all aware of the recent victory of the SeeDs of Balamb against the Sorceresses Adel and Ultimecia. This is a proud day for the students of Garden, and I would like to invite the individuals responsible up onto the stage. Squall Leonhart..."
Squall rose from his seat next to Rinoa formally and moved to the stage.
"...Zell Dincht..."
Zell sprung out of his chair, flashed all the eyes on him a thumbs-up and walked confidently to the stage.
"...And Quistis Trepe of Balamb Garden..."
Quistis stood among a few whistles from the crowd.
"...Irvine Kinneas of Galbadia Garden..."
Irvine took off his hat and waved with it as he walked to the stage.
"...And Selphie Tilmett of Trabia Garden."
A low murmur crossed the room when Selphie didn't stand.
"Uh, Selphie?"
"Here!" Selphie exclaimed, running into the ballroom with a portable camera in her hand. She ran up onto the stage to join Irvine.
"There is also one other person, who is not a member of any Garden, that aided our SeeDs in their mission. Would you please join them on stage, Rinoa Heartilly of the Forest Owls?"
Rinoa stood, looking a little surprised at the mention of her name among the Seeds, despite being involved as much as they were. She stepped up on the stage to take her place between Squall and Quistis.
"Although Rinoa is not affiliated with any Garden establishment," Cid continued, "I am willing to overlook this, and in light of her service against the Sorceresses and her aid to the SeeD, I am granting her honorary SeeD status."
Applause broke out in the ballroom. Rinoa, overwhelmed, made a mock-curtsy and smiled. Following this action, Irvine took a deep bow and Selphie a sweet curtsy as best she could with the video recorder in her hand. Zell took up a quick fighting stance and jabbed the air a couple of times, and then unclenched his fist into another thumbs-up to Lily, who waved enthusiastically back at him. Quistis, her hands folded in front of her, went to exchange a glance with Squall, who she predicted would be standing and observing as he always did. Her prediction, however, was wrong in this instance: Squall has his hand waving to the crowd and a smile on his face.
"Everyone smile!"
"Um, Selphie..."
"C'mon, smile guys!"
"Selphie, you've still got the lens cap on.
"What?" Selphie took the camera away from her eye and turned it around, to see the lens cap still fastened over the lens. "Bummer! But I've still got enough battery to shoot a few more minutes...so smile!"
"Where's Rinoa and Squall?" Irvine heard Selphie ask him. "I want to get them on the camera too."
"I think Rinoa's on the balcony...maybe Squall's with her," Quistis said.
"Do you want me to go check?" Irvine asked, and he began to walk in the direction of the balcony. Selphie quickly grabbed his arm and stopped him, jerking his letterboxed view of the world around a bit.
"_No!_ Don't disturb them! I think they'd want to be...left alone."
"Ah..." Irvine lowered the camera for a moment and leant close to Selphie. "You know, maybe later tonight you and I might want to be left alone too..." A slight blush crept across Selphie's face, and Quistis moved quietly away. As she left to find the Headmaster to talk about her Instructor's Licence, she head Irvine ask Selphie, "What does this little thing here mean?"
"What? Oh, it's out of batteries again..."
"Look."
"At what?"
"A shooting star." Rinoa smiled and pointed towards the sky. "Make a wish, Squall."
Squall put his arm around her and said, "I wish this night could stay forever."
"So do I."
As they kissed, the moonlight gave pale blue light to the rolling hills underneath the flying Garden.
I'd like to thank the following people for their positive feedback while this was in its beta stage: RinoaHeartilly, Ayara, Neosubphylum, Edea's Knight, LordOFDarkness, Sodina, Rinoa 7 6 9, *Heaven's Reign*, Mistress, Black Chocobo, Elizabeth, BigB and Lady Edea.
Derek Zischke
[email protected]
Zischke In The Jar Productions, 2000-07-07 (c)
"Do you suffer from long-term memory loss? I can't remember..."
-Chumbawamba