epilogue.

They don't really talk about what happens in Deling City after the first few weeks. She misses Xu, though; sometimes she'll catch herself typing up an email. Once or twice, she even hits send, and gets an immediate delivery-failure notice. There is no one else at Garden now whom she wants to keep in touch with; the sense of finality when she realizes this is sobering. She knows Seifer dreams about it, though. He sketches out the manner of Xu's death. Her noble sacrifice. The protect spell that saved Seifer's heart from being shredded apart by a bullet fired from three feet away.

Afterward, when he takes a cab back to his apartment to get some clean clothes, she sobs into her hands until she feels like she is going to throw up with the force of it.

Xu is dead, and they are alive. They must carry on. They do.

The funeral heralds the arrival of fall. The week after they get back, her car insurance finally comes through for her with a check, and Quistis buys a new one, a black four-door sedan that came out this year. It's a good car, a stable, dependable vehicle. It makes her feel ordinary to drive it.

Quistis' birthday falls on a rainy Tuesday. They go out to a nice restaurant, and come back, and fall asleep in front of the TV. She doesn't mind. She's never really celebrated her birthday before.

Seifer tells her he loves her, sporadically enough that it still surprises her when he says it out loud. She makes him a copy of her house key, and as November slips into December, he moves in gradually, without fanfare.

The horrible morning sickness fades away as life grows inside of her. She is grateful when one morning, the scent of coffee doesn't immediately make her want to run for the bathroom. She makes a pot of decaf. It is, perhaps, the sweetest thing she has ever tasted.

It takes him a long time to recover from his injuries, and occasionally she will trace the outline of the scar with her finger, feeling all of its bumps and ridges. He doesn't try to get his old job back. He doesn't care. It turns out he has more money than he's been letting on. He just doesn't spend it on anything. They split the bills evenly, and switch off grocery shopping every other week. She sacrifices half of her closet. He remembers to keep the toilet seat down most of the time.

Sometimes, he'll go out and do some rogue monster clearing in Balamb's forests, just for something to do. Squall permits it. Garden even pays him for it.

They fight, occasionally, because they get caught up in thinking and brooding. More than once, she has grabbed her coat and gone for a walk, or he's disappeared to the bar for three hours.

He frequently says something stupid, if she says she's tired or needs some space or hell, could he just, for once, pick up his fucking socks?

They make up in frantic bursts of passion, or in a quiet, more subdued way- he touches her shoulder or she reaches out and takes his hand as they sit on opposite ends of the couch. Sometimes the resolution comes in the morning, when she brews a pot of coffee and he wakes up on the sofa, his hair sticking out in six different directions.

They are not perfect. They don't pretend to be. It keeps them sane.

She tries to bake a cake for Seifer's birthday. It comes out lopsided, but tastes pretty good. He smears icing across her face and kisses it off. There is a lot of laughter, a lot of stolen kisses.

Her belly grows little by little, under the strict watch of her doctor, who insists that she follow a regimented diet because she isn't gaining weight as quickly as he would like. One morning, Quistis catches a glimpse of her profile in the mirror and doesn't recognize herself. She goes to her ultrasound appointment during her twenty-second week just before the winter holidays. The technician asks her if they want to know the sex of the baby this time. She has been putting it off, and off, and off. She glances at Seifer, who's holding her hand as he stares in awe at the picture on the screen.

It is a girl.

She gives up her office for a nursery, and sometimes she'll find Seifer in there at two in the morning, just standing in the room, looking at the crib and the soft yellow paint, and she'll never interrupt him. She lets him have his moment, his stunned realization about the turn his life has taken. Truth be told, she is still having trouble accepting it as fact, no matter how many new clothes with elastic and extra panels she has to buy.

December gives way to January, to constant snowstorms and temperatures that keep them largely inside. She reads a lot of books. Seifer teaches her how to play poker near the end of the month, when Raijin comes up to Dollet for a visit. They spend a lot of time in the living room, drinking and talking and remembering Fujin, loud, boisterous chatter that is incessant.

She takes her book and goes upstairs.

xx

Eventually, after he sees Raijin to the door, he realizes that Quistis has been gone a long damn time. He wanders upstairs.

She is curled up on the bed, a book open in her hand, rubbing her stomach.

"You okay?" he asks quietly.

"Just tired," she says. She is always tired now, almost eight months in, when she can't sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time without having to shift around. "She's restless."

He rests his hand on her belly, and feels the gentle nudge of little feet. It still stuns him, even now, to feel their child between them, and every time, he thinks that he will not be able to do this. He doesn't know the first thing about being a father. He doesn't think he'll be good enough- hell, he knows he won't be. He doesn't even try to talk about it with Raijin. It makes him guilty just to think about it.

But he doesn't have a choice. He can't walk away. He can't do that to her.

Her fingers curl around his, and she holds fast.

"What's wrong?" he asks. He doesn't think he's done anything wrong- not today. He's put his foot in his mouth more times than he can count over the past few months.

"I'm just- worried," she says. "Scared. I don't know. It's nothing."

He draws her hand to his lips, kissing her fingers briefly.

"Me, too," Seifer says. It is a relief to be able to say it out loud.

She wakes him up at four-thirty in the morning with a muffled cry of pain, her face buried in her pillow and her hand clenched around her stomach.

Get the car, she tells him between clenched teeth, and he scrambles out of bed.

xx

It takes sixteen hours of screaming, agonizing pain, the worst thing she has ever felt.

She actually fractures one of Seifer's fingers from gripping his hand so tightly- he returns from the emergency room at hour seven with a splint on his right hand. He gamely offers her his left. Brave of him.

By hour nine, she thinks that this cannot possibly go on for much longer.

At hour ten, she's convinced something is horribly wrong. It shouldn't hurt this much. The attending assures her that it does, and that she's perfectly fine. She tells the other woman to go straight to hell- she apologizes five minutes later.

"It's alright. It's not the first time."

Twelve. They give her a second epidural when the first one finally wears off. It is a blessed relief. She dozes fitfully, exhausted, until hour fifteen, when the contractions start coming in horrible earnest.

At hour sixteen, she delivers a six-week premature baby girl.

At hour sixteen, one of the nurses comments on how much blood she's still losing.

At hour sixteen, she doesn't remember anything afterward.

xx

He stands outside the window of the NICU, and stares in at the tiny child, hooked up to a dozen tubes and cords.

"Are you sure?" he asks, finally, not taking his eyes off of the child. His daughter. It is an impossibility he cannot come to terms with.

"I'm sure," the doctor says.

"Okay." Relief floods through him. He needs to sit down, he thinks. He leans against the thick glass. The text on the identification card swim into focus: Trepe-Almasy, Hana Rue. There are lots of words written under that that he cannot even begin to make sense of. Her name is entirely Quistis' idea.

"You can go in and see her."

There are monitors beeping, steady, rhythmic noises. This is the second time he has had to come to her like this, in the hour of her undoing, and he doesn't know if he can take it again.

But she lifts her head from the pillow, and smiles at him, and whispers his name.

It is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.