Fanfiction: With These Signs Upon Our Souls, Chapter Seven (FFVIII/FFXIII)
Hey, I actually managed to finish this chapter fairly soon after the last one! I thought, proudly, before realising that I posted the last chapter in June. Apparently, I'm impressed when I take a mere quarter of a year to get a new chapter out. It's a good thing I usually write one-shots.
Title: With These Signs Upon Our Souls, Chapter Seven
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,800 (this chapter; 17,000 cumulative)
Summary: The exam brief is simple enough: protect the fal'Cie from the Timber resistance. Squad B are about to get the mission as wrong as humanly possible.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
“Irvy,” Selphie says, firmly. “He’d be around our age.”
“This is a Garden,” Seifer says. “Everyone’s around our age.”
Squall isn’t sure this is really going to help. None of them can remember anything about Ellone’s Focus; why would Irvine? But Selphie absolutely insisted on visiting him, and it’s not as if they have any other leads.
There’s something hovering over the six of them, unspoken: if their Focus is to stop this sorceress from the future, they have no idea how the hell they’re supposed to complete it. Time travel wasn’t exactly on the Garden’s curriculum. So maybe it’s best to look down other routes first, hope their Focus is actually something different. It makes sense to start with Ellone. After all, the prophecy wasn’t the only thing they found in Winhill.
Selphie is sure Irvine was taken in by Galbadia Garden. Squall doesn’t remember anything about that, but he wasn’t really paying much attention to his surroundings after Ellone was taken.
“He might go by Irvine,” Quistis says.
“Oh, you mean Kinneas?” the receptionist asks, picking up the phone. “I think he’s in his room. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
They wait in silence as the receptionist dials.
“Hello? Kinneas? I have a young lady here who’s very determined to see you.” He pauses, then rolls his eyes. “Yes, well, she’s with her friends, so I think that’s unlikely. And also, I should remind you, against regulations.” Another pause. “Selphie, I believe.”
Irvine’s “Whoa, what?” is so loud that Squall hears it through the phone.
-
Irvine opens his door and grins at them. “It really is you! Didn’t know if I’d ever see you guys again.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Quistis says. “Did we catch you on your way out?”
Irvine, who for some reason is wearing a long coat and cowboy hat, seems surprised by the question. He shakes his head. “Come on in. Sorry about the mess. When you’re out being a lone gunman, you don’t have all that much time to keep your room in order.”
Quistis quickly covers her smile with her hand. “I suppose not. Thank you.”
The room isn’t that bad. It’s mostly just magazines scattered over the floor: back issues of Weapons Monthly, and a couple of magazines that Irvine kicks under the bed with a cough. There are guns mounted on the far wall, next to an old poster of a dark-haired woman leaning against a piano. Squall is bewildered to recognise her from his dream (or vision, or whatever it was that Ellone was transmitting to them) as Julia, the pianist Laguna was embarrassingly interested in.
Rinoa is biting her lip, but Squall can’t tell whether she’s looking at the guns or the poster.
“The gang’s all here,” Irvine says. “Gotta say, you all grew up pretty well.” He takes Rinoa’s hand. “And who’s this beautiful creature?”
Rinoa laughs so hard she almost doubles over, and something in Irvine’s manner cracks; he suddenly looks very embarrassed.
“Anyway,” he says, leaning back against the wall, “any reason you’ve come to pay me a visit? Forgot to send me an invitation to the reunion?”
Squall looks to Quistis. She closes her eyes for a moment, then takes a breath.
Irvine tenses up. “Whoa. Whoa. Sefie?”
Seifer looks startled and furious for an instant, before he apparently remembers what’s just come back to Squall: that was what Irvine always called Selphie, back in the orphanage.
Squall looks around. Selphie’s been poking around Irvine’s room, examining everything, but now she’s looking at Irvine with her head tilted.
“Turn back around,” Irvine says, twisting his hand in a circle. “What’s that thing on your leg?”
Seifer rolls his eyes. “Selphie, are you ever going to start covering that up?”
Selphie grins. “Hey, you’re actually talking to me! We should definitely talk more.”
“Sefie,” Irvine says.
Selphie turns around.
Irvine lets out a shaking breath. “You’re a l’Cie?”
-
“I can’t believe this,” Irvine says. “All of you? What, was that orphanage cursed?”
Zell shrugs. “Looks like you’re doing okay.”
“Yeah, for now,” Irvine says. “Guess I’ll be staying away from fal’Cie for the rest of my life.” He takes his hat off, scratches the back of his head. “Not that that helps you. Man. I’m sorry.”
“Do you remember Ellone’s Focus?” Squall asks. Irvine seems to remember the orphanage far more clearly than the rest of them, after all. “Or how she completed it?”
Irvine puts his hat back on and looks up at the ceiling, frowning. “Ellone? Oh, wait, Sis?”
“We were turned by the same fal’Cie,” Quistis explains. “We have an idea of what our Focus might be, but if we knew the fal’Cie’s goals it might help us.”
Irvine shakes his head. “Sorry. I can’t remember. I don’t think we had a chance to find out, did we?”
“What do you mean?” Squall asks.
“Well, I don’t remember Sis actually being a l’Cie. She ended up crystal pretty much straight away, didn’t she? Whatever her Focus was, she must’ve done it right there with the fal’Cie.”
Something about what he’s saying feels familiar. He’s right; Squall doesn’t think he ever saw Ellone when she was a l’Cie. She was just Sis, and then they visited Timber, and then Matron took them all aside and gently explained that Sis wasn’t going to be around any more.
“You said you have an idea about your Focus, right?” Irvine asks. “Mind enlightening me? Maybe I can help.”
Squall privately doubts this, but he gives Irvine a short run-down of what they learnt about in Winhill: the strange prophecy, the sorceress from the future, the ‘Time Compression’ thing they think they’re supposed to prevent.
“Travelling to the future, huh?” Irvine asks, scratching his jaw. “I’m gonna say upfront I’m not an expert.”
“And we were so sure you’d know,” Quistis says, with a smile.
“Have you tried Esthar?”
Seifer snorts. “How are we supposed to ‘try Esthar’? Do they give you history lessons here?”
“Yeah, I know, they’ve been shut away from the world for seventeen years,” Irvine says. “Tell them you’re trying to save the universe, though, and maybe they’ll let you in.”
“It might be our best chance,” Quistis says, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know how likely it is that anyone there will know of a way to travel into the future, but Esthar was already the most technologically-advanced city on the planet when it closed its borders. It’s had almost two decades to develop its technology since then.”
“Makes sense,” Squall says. He nods to Irvine. “Thanks.”
“Hey,” Irvine says. “If you guys are all l’Cie, does that... I mean, I might not see you again, right?”
“It’s likely,” Squall says.
Irvine nods. “Okay. Man, this is kind of screwed up.” He’s quiet for a moment, then tips his hat to them. “Well, take care of yourselves.” He winks. “Especially you, Sefie. I know I shouldn’t play favourites, but...”
Selphie giggles. “I will!”
“And finish your Focus,” Irvine says. “Anything I can do, you know where to find me.”
-
Rinoa freezes when they’re on their way out of the Garden gates.
“Hey,” she says. “Did you guys see that?”
“See what?” Quistis asks.
Rinoa frowns, then shakes her head. “I’m not sure. It was less than a second. It just...”
She’s silent for a moment.
“The Garden was gone,” she blurts out. “There was just a crater.”
Squall looks up at the crimson bulk of Galbadia Garden. It is definitely still there.
Zell shifts his shoulders, frowning at Rinoa. “Hey, uh, you need some sleep?”
She laughs. “I guess that might help.”
“Deling City isn’t far,” Squall says. “We can find a hotel for the night.”
Quistis nods. “If we’re going to Deling City, shall we pay a visit to the library? I’d like to find out more about Time Compression, if they have any information on it.”
-
Squall has no particularly strong feelings on where they stay in Deling, with one exception: he would very much prefer not to stay in the hotel he visited as Laguna, the place where Julia the pianist played.
Unfortunately, Selphie is extremely interested in staying at Julia’s hotel, and Squall doesn’t have the patience to fight her.
Squall doesn’t like being the one to deal with hotel staff, but he checks them in himself on this occasion so he can decide which rooms they take. They’re offered two three-bed rooms or three twins, and he goes for the first option because it means there’s no chance that he’ll end up in Julia’s bedroom, reliving Laguna’s horrible flirtation in his mind. Rinoa goes straight up to the girls’ room to rest for a while, but it’s still only mid-afternoon, so the rest of them set out to find the library.
-
The Deling City library is a half-collapsed wreck that looks like it has been abandoned for centuries.
And then Squall blinks, and it’s a perfectly ordinary library. The door is open; the lights are on; the Adel-era porch pillars are intact. There’s no rubble blocking their way in. There’s no ivy growing over the front.
“Tell me you guys saw that,” Zell says, quietly. “Otherwise I’m gonna have to go back and get some sleep myself.”
Quistis nods. “I’m glad I wasn’t the first one to ask.”
“I saw it,” Squall says.
“Me too!” Selphie says. “The place was all messed up, right? That was kind of cool.”
Zell shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s actually a relief. Is this like those Ward dreams?”
“Sir Laguna dreams,” Selphie says, firmly.
“I don’t think it’s just us,” Seifer says.
Squall looks around. The streets of Deling City are famously busy, and everyone has somewhere to be, but a lot of people have stopped. A lot of people are staring at the library. A lot of people are talking frantically to their confused-looking companions.
“In our age her efforts will make themselves felt,” Quistis says, softly.
“Time Compression can’t be happening yet!” Zell exclaims. “I’m not ready for this!”
“But this is a good thing, right?” Selphie asks.
“Uh,” Zell says.
“I mean, if Esthar’s seeing this stuff it’s gotta be freaking them out, right? Maybe they’ll let us in!”
“Look,” Quistis says, “let’s just see what we can find out for now.”
-
Squall gets back to the hotel on his own, some time after everyone else. He’s planning to head straight up to the room, but something makes him stop in the foyer. There’s faint, familiar piano music coming from downstairs, and for a moment, although he knows it’s ridiculous, he has to look down at himself and make sure he’s in his own body.
He walks down the stairs, trying not to be too loud. It’s Rinoa at the grand piano, performing to an empty room. Her playing is a little awkward, not nearly as smooth as Julia’s in his dream, but it’s unmistakably the same song.
She must have heard him, because she stops very suddenly and twists around on the piano stool. She catches his eye and laughs, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “Sorry. I’ve never been that good.”
“What was that song?” he asks.
She shrugs. “It’s just something my mom used to sing to me. Did you find anything about Time Compression?”
He shakes his head, pulling up a chair to sit by the stage. “Theories. Nothing solid.” Unsurprisingly, nobody has had many opportunities to observe the actual effects of Time Compression. “Some books say that Time Compression might begin with ‘flickering’, though. Events or perception being scattered across time for brief moments. When you said that you saw the Garden disappear, it’s possible that you were seeing the past or future of the site. We saw something similar at the library.”
“Whoa,” she says. “So it might be starting?”
“It might be starting.” And they still don’t know how to combat it.
For a moment, neither of them speaks. Rinoa absently plays a little on the piano: the same three keys, over and over again. It’s annoying. Squall doesn’t comment.
“I wonder why she wants to compress time,” she says, eventually. “It must be scary, living at the end of everything. Maybe she’s trying to... I don’t know, save herself somehow? Or preserve the world?” She rests a hand on her left armwarmer, the one covering her brand. “I guess I can understand wanting to stop time moving forward.”
Squall shakes his head. “We have no way of knowing.”
“Maybe, but aren’t you curious? I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you just decide to do for no reason.”
“Her reasons don’t matter,” Squall says. “Everyone has reasons. If you have to fight someone, sympathising with them will only hurt your focus.”
“I guess,” Rinoa says, pulling her legs up onto the piano stool. She wraps her arms around her knees. “But doubt’s a good thing sometimes, right? You need to make sure you’re on the right side.”
It seems a strange thing to say to someone formerly involved with a mercenary organisation. “I don’t think there is a right side, most of the time.”
Rinoa shrugs. “If you think that, maybe you shouldn’t fight at all.”
“Real-life conflicts don’t divide neatly into good and evil.”
“I’m not saying that,” Rinoa says. “I know it’s complicated. But I still think you have to believe in what you’re fighting for.”
“We were all at Garden,” Squall says. “We were trained to fight for money, not causes.”
“What about when you attacked the fal’Cie?”
Squall hesitates.
“You were fighting for Ellone, weren’t you?” she asks.
He looks away. “It was stupid.”
She laughs. “It was definitely stupid. I’m not gonna deny that. But your reasons weren’t.”
Squall isn’t sure about that. Attacking the fal’Cie couldn’t have helped Ellone. At least fighting for money would have achieved something.
Still, fighting this sorceress for the sake of time, the world, the others... he supposes he can believe in that.
-
Two weeks later, sitting in the bed of a vast dried-out lake, he knows that what he believes in doesn’t matter. What use is being prepared to fight the sorceress if they can’t reach her? She’s in the future. They’re here. What, did the fal’Cie choose them as a joke?
The flickers have been getting more frequent. Patches of red sky amongst the blue, vanishing glimpses of faceless figures in old-fashioned clothes. More than once, the disused railway bridge to Esthar seemed to disappear beneath their feet as they crossed it.
Other people are seeing them too. The newspapers are full of ‘could this really be Time Compression?’ and speculation on whether the six fated heroes actually exist.
They exist, maybe, but what can they do against power like this? What can they do to fight someone who hasn’t even been born? Esthar was their only hope; they knew it hadn’t let anyone in for seventeen years, so it was always unlikely that they would find help here, but they’d all grown up hearing that it was the most technologically-advanced place on the planet. If anywhere knew how to reach the future...
But they travelled all the way across the bridge to find a barren continent. There’s nothing where the city should be. Esthar doesn’t exist.
So what are they going to do now? Are they just going to keep asking around and looking at books, as if something in the world can actually help them with this?
It’s hopeless. They’re all going to become mindless monsters, and it’s all his fault for dragging them into a fight they could never have won.
His hip itches. When he pulls his shirt up by the hem, a red eye glares out at him from his brand.
His breath mists in the air.
When did it get so cold?
Shiva shoots up from the ground before him in a pillar of ice, like the crystal they’re never going to be trapped in, and the moment of surprise Squall feels quickly passes. He’s heard of this: Guardian Forces coming to l’Cie who have fallen into despair, to ‘put them out of their misery’, as the material he’s read euphemistically put it. He was always closest to Shiva at Garden; he supposes that’s why she’s come for him now. If he defeats her, she’ll junction with him again, their bond stronger than before. If not...
The ice shatters, and for a moment Squall considers just sitting there and letting her end it. What will defeating her achieve? Their Focus is in the far future; they’ll never reach it. At most it’ll buy him a few more days of regret before they all become Cie’th. Assuming all of time and existence doesn’t collapse before then.
Shiva raises her arms. Squall closes his eyes.
She came in a pillar of ice, he finds himself thinking. Like crystal.
Like crystal.
Ellone.
Squall opens his eyes, grabs his gunblade and leaps to his feet.
Chapter Eight
Title: With These Signs Upon Our Souls, Chapter Seven
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,800 (this chapter; 17,000 cumulative)
Summary: The exam brief is simple enough: protect the fal'Cie from the Timber resistance. Squad B are about to get the mission as wrong as humanly possible.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
“Irvy,” Selphie says, firmly. “He’d be around our age.”
“This is a Garden,” Seifer says. “Everyone’s around our age.”
Squall isn’t sure this is really going to help. None of them can remember anything about Ellone’s Focus; why would Irvine? But Selphie absolutely insisted on visiting him, and it’s not as if they have any other leads.
There’s something hovering over the six of them, unspoken: if their Focus is to stop this sorceress from the future, they have no idea how the hell they’re supposed to complete it. Time travel wasn’t exactly on the Garden’s curriculum. So maybe it’s best to look down other routes first, hope their Focus is actually something different. It makes sense to start with Ellone. After all, the prophecy wasn’t the only thing they found in Winhill.
Selphie is sure Irvine was taken in by Galbadia Garden. Squall doesn’t remember anything about that, but he wasn’t really paying much attention to his surroundings after Ellone was taken.
“He might go by Irvine,” Quistis says.
“Oh, you mean Kinneas?” the receptionist asks, picking up the phone. “I think he’s in his room. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
They wait in silence as the receptionist dials.
“Hello? Kinneas? I have a young lady here who’s very determined to see you.” He pauses, then rolls his eyes. “Yes, well, she’s with her friends, so I think that’s unlikely. And also, I should remind you, against regulations.” Another pause. “Selphie, I believe.”
Irvine’s “Whoa, what?” is so loud that Squall hears it through the phone.
-
Irvine opens his door and grins at them. “It really is you! Didn’t know if I’d ever see you guys again.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Quistis says. “Did we catch you on your way out?”
Irvine, who for some reason is wearing a long coat and cowboy hat, seems surprised by the question. He shakes his head. “Come on in. Sorry about the mess. When you’re out being a lone gunman, you don’t have all that much time to keep your room in order.”
Quistis quickly covers her smile with her hand. “I suppose not. Thank you.”
The room isn’t that bad. It’s mostly just magazines scattered over the floor: back issues of Weapons Monthly, and a couple of magazines that Irvine kicks under the bed with a cough. There are guns mounted on the far wall, next to an old poster of a dark-haired woman leaning against a piano. Squall is bewildered to recognise her from his dream (or vision, or whatever it was that Ellone was transmitting to them) as Julia, the pianist Laguna was embarrassingly interested in.
Rinoa is biting her lip, but Squall can’t tell whether she’s looking at the guns or the poster.
“The gang’s all here,” Irvine says. “Gotta say, you all grew up pretty well.” He takes Rinoa’s hand. “And who’s this beautiful creature?”
Rinoa laughs so hard she almost doubles over, and something in Irvine’s manner cracks; he suddenly looks very embarrassed.
“Anyway,” he says, leaning back against the wall, “any reason you’ve come to pay me a visit? Forgot to send me an invitation to the reunion?”
Squall looks to Quistis. She closes her eyes for a moment, then takes a breath.
Irvine tenses up. “Whoa. Whoa. Sefie?”
Seifer looks startled and furious for an instant, before he apparently remembers what’s just come back to Squall: that was what Irvine always called Selphie, back in the orphanage.
Squall looks around. Selphie’s been poking around Irvine’s room, examining everything, but now she’s looking at Irvine with her head tilted.
“Turn back around,” Irvine says, twisting his hand in a circle. “What’s that thing on your leg?”
Seifer rolls his eyes. “Selphie, are you ever going to start covering that up?”
Selphie grins. “Hey, you’re actually talking to me! We should definitely talk more.”
“Sefie,” Irvine says.
Selphie turns around.
Irvine lets out a shaking breath. “You’re a l’Cie?”
-
“I can’t believe this,” Irvine says. “All of you? What, was that orphanage cursed?”
Zell shrugs. “Looks like you’re doing okay.”
“Yeah, for now,” Irvine says. “Guess I’ll be staying away from fal’Cie for the rest of my life.” He takes his hat off, scratches the back of his head. “Not that that helps you. Man. I’m sorry.”
“Do you remember Ellone’s Focus?” Squall asks. Irvine seems to remember the orphanage far more clearly than the rest of them, after all. “Or how she completed it?”
Irvine puts his hat back on and looks up at the ceiling, frowning. “Ellone? Oh, wait, Sis?”
“We were turned by the same fal’Cie,” Quistis explains. “We have an idea of what our Focus might be, but if we knew the fal’Cie’s goals it might help us.”
Irvine shakes his head. “Sorry. I can’t remember. I don’t think we had a chance to find out, did we?”
“What do you mean?” Squall asks.
“Well, I don’t remember Sis actually being a l’Cie. She ended up crystal pretty much straight away, didn’t she? Whatever her Focus was, she must’ve done it right there with the fal’Cie.”
Something about what he’s saying feels familiar. He’s right; Squall doesn’t think he ever saw Ellone when she was a l’Cie. She was just Sis, and then they visited Timber, and then Matron took them all aside and gently explained that Sis wasn’t going to be around any more.
“You said you have an idea about your Focus, right?” Irvine asks. “Mind enlightening me? Maybe I can help.”
Squall privately doubts this, but he gives Irvine a short run-down of what they learnt about in Winhill: the strange prophecy, the sorceress from the future, the ‘Time Compression’ thing they think they’re supposed to prevent.
“Travelling to the future, huh?” Irvine asks, scratching his jaw. “I’m gonna say upfront I’m not an expert.”
“And we were so sure you’d know,” Quistis says, with a smile.
“Have you tried Esthar?”
Seifer snorts. “How are we supposed to ‘try Esthar’? Do they give you history lessons here?”
“Yeah, I know, they’ve been shut away from the world for seventeen years,” Irvine says. “Tell them you’re trying to save the universe, though, and maybe they’ll let you in.”
“It might be our best chance,” Quistis says, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know how likely it is that anyone there will know of a way to travel into the future, but Esthar was already the most technologically-advanced city on the planet when it closed its borders. It’s had almost two decades to develop its technology since then.”
“Makes sense,” Squall says. He nods to Irvine. “Thanks.”
“Hey,” Irvine says. “If you guys are all l’Cie, does that... I mean, I might not see you again, right?”
“It’s likely,” Squall says.
Irvine nods. “Okay. Man, this is kind of screwed up.” He’s quiet for a moment, then tips his hat to them. “Well, take care of yourselves.” He winks. “Especially you, Sefie. I know I shouldn’t play favourites, but...”
Selphie giggles. “I will!”
“And finish your Focus,” Irvine says. “Anything I can do, you know where to find me.”
-
Rinoa freezes when they’re on their way out of the Garden gates.
“Hey,” she says. “Did you guys see that?”
“See what?” Quistis asks.
Rinoa frowns, then shakes her head. “I’m not sure. It was less than a second. It just...”
She’s silent for a moment.
“The Garden was gone,” she blurts out. “There was just a crater.”
Squall looks up at the crimson bulk of Galbadia Garden. It is definitely still there.
Zell shifts his shoulders, frowning at Rinoa. “Hey, uh, you need some sleep?”
She laughs. “I guess that might help.”
“Deling City isn’t far,” Squall says. “We can find a hotel for the night.”
Quistis nods. “If we’re going to Deling City, shall we pay a visit to the library? I’d like to find out more about Time Compression, if they have any information on it.”
-
Squall has no particularly strong feelings on where they stay in Deling, with one exception: he would very much prefer not to stay in the hotel he visited as Laguna, the place where Julia the pianist played.
Unfortunately, Selphie is extremely interested in staying at Julia’s hotel, and Squall doesn’t have the patience to fight her.
Squall doesn’t like being the one to deal with hotel staff, but he checks them in himself on this occasion so he can decide which rooms they take. They’re offered two three-bed rooms or three twins, and he goes for the first option because it means there’s no chance that he’ll end up in Julia’s bedroom, reliving Laguna’s horrible flirtation in his mind. Rinoa goes straight up to the girls’ room to rest for a while, but it’s still only mid-afternoon, so the rest of them set out to find the library.
-
The Deling City library is a half-collapsed wreck that looks like it has been abandoned for centuries.
And then Squall blinks, and it’s a perfectly ordinary library. The door is open; the lights are on; the Adel-era porch pillars are intact. There’s no rubble blocking their way in. There’s no ivy growing over the front.
“Tell me you guys saw that,” Zell says, quietly. “Otherwise I’m gonna have to go back and get some sleep myself.”
Quistis nods. “I’m glad I wasn’t the first one to ask.”
“I saw it,” Squall says.
“Me too!” Selphie says. “The place was all messed up, right? That was kind of cool.”
Zell shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s actually a relief. Is this like those Ward dreams?”
“Sir Laguna dreams,” Selphie says, firmly.
“I don’t think it’s just us,” Seifer says.
Squall looks around. The streets of Deling City are famously busy, and everyone has somewhere to be, but a lot of people have stopped. A lot of people are staring at the library. A lot of people are talking frantically to their confused-looking companions.
“In our age her efforts will make themselves felt,” Quistis says, softly.
“Time Compression can’t be happening yet!” Zell exclaims. “I’m not ready for this!”
“But this is a good thing, right?” Selphie asks.
“Uh,” Zell says.
“I mean, if Esthar’s seeing this stuff it’s gotta be freaking them out, right? Maybe they’ll let us in!”
“Look,” Quistis says, “let’s just see what we can find out for now.”
-
Squall gets back to the hotel on his own, some time after everyone else. He’s planning to head straight up to the room, but something makes him stop in the foyer. There’s faint, familiar piano music coming from downstairs, and for a moment, although he knows it’s ridiculous, he has to look down at himself and make sure he’s in his own body.
He walks down the stairs, trying not to be too loud. It’s Rinoa at the grand piano, performing to an empty room. Her playing is a little awkward, not nearly as smooth as Julia’s in his dream, but it’s unmistakably the same song.
She must have heard him, because she stops very suddenly and twists around on the piano stool. She catches his eye and laughs, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “Sorry. I’ve never been that good.”
“What was that song?” he asks.
She shrugs. “It’s just something my mom used to sing to me. Did you find anything about Time Compression?”
He shakes his head, pulling up a chair to sit by the stage. “Theories. Nothing solid.” Unsurprisingly, nobody has had many opportunities to observe the actual effects of Time Compression. “Some books say that Time Compression might begin with ‘flickering’, though. Events or perception being scattered across time for brief moments. When you said that you saw the Garden disappear, it’s possible that you were seeing the past or future of the site. We saw something similar at the library.”
“Whoa,” she says. “So it might be starting?”
“It might be starting.” And they still don’t know how to combat it.
For a moment, neither of them speaks. Rinoa absently plays a little on the piano: the same three keys, over and over again. It’s annoying. Squall doesn’t comment.
“I wonder why she wants to compress time,” she says, eventually. “It must be scary, living at the end of everything. Maybe she’s trying to... I don’t know, save herself somehow? Or preserve the world?” She rests a hand on her left armwarmer, the one covering her brand. “I guess I can understand wanting to stop time moving forward.”
Squall shakes his head. “We have no way of knowing.”
“Maybe, but aren’t you curious? I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you just decide to do for no reason.”
“Her reasons don’t matter,” Squall says. “Everyone has reasons. If you have to fight someone, sympathising with them will only hurt your focus.”
“I guess,” Rinoa says, pulling her legs up onto the piano stool. She wraps her arms around her knees. “But doubt’s a good thing sometimes, right? You need to make sure you’re on the right side.”
It seems a strange thing to say to someone formerly involved with a mercenary organisation. “I don’t think there is a right side, most of the time.”
Rinoa shrugs. “If you think that, maybe you shouldn’t fight at all.”
“Real-life conflicts don’t divide neatly into good and evil.”
“I’m not saying that,” Rinoa says. “I know it’s complicated. But I still think you have to believe in what you’re fighting for.”
“We were all at Garden,” Squall says. “We were trained to fight for money, not causes.”
“What about when you attacked the fal’Cie?”
Squall hesitates.
“You were fighting for Ellone, weren’t you?” she asks.
He looks away. “It was stupid.”
She laughs. “It was definitely stupid. I’m not gonna deny that. But your reasons weren’t.”
Squall isn’t sure about that. Attacking the fal’Cie couldn’t have helped Ellone. At least fighting for money would have achieved something.
Still, fighting this sorceress for the sake of time, the world, the others... he supposes he can believe in that.
-
Two weeks later, sitting in the bed of a vast dried-out lake, he knows that what he believes in doesn’t matter. What use is being prepared to fight the sorceress if they can’t reach her? She’s in the future. They’re here. What, did the fal’Cie choose them as a joke?
The flickers have been getting more frequent. Patches of red sky amongst the blue, vanishing glimpses of faceless figures in old-fashioned clothes. More than once, the disused railway bridge to Esthar seemed to disappear beneath their feet as they crossed it.
Other people are seeing them too. The newspapers are full of ‘could this really be Time Compression?’ and speculation on whether the six fated heroes actually exist.
They exist, maybe, but what can they do against power like this? What can they do to fight someone who hasn’t even been born? Esthar was their only hope; they knew it hadn’t let anyone in for seventeen years, so it was always unlikely that they would find help here, but they’d all grown up hearing that it was the most technologically-advanced place on the planet. If anywhere knew how to reach the future...
But they travelled all the way across the bridge to find a barren continent. There’s nothing where the city should be. Esthar doesn’t exist.
So what are they going to do now? Are they just going to keep asking around and looking at books, as if something in the world can actually help them with this?
It’s hopeless. They’re all going to become mindless monsters, and it’s all his fault for dragging them into a fight they could never have won.
His hip itches. When he pulls his shirt up by the hem, a red eye glares out at him from his brand.
His breath mists in the air.
When did it get so cold?
Shiva shoots up from the ground before him in a pillar of ice, like the crystal they’re never going to be trapped in, and the moment of surprise Squall feels quickly passes. He’s heard of this: Guardian Forces coming to l’Cie who have fallen into despair, to ‘put them out of their misery’, as the material he’s read euphemistically put it. He was always closest to Shiva at Garden; he supposes that’s why she’s come for him now. If he defeats her, she’ll junction with him again, their bond stronger than before. If not...
The ice shatters, and for a moment Squall considers just sitting there and letting her end it. What will defeating her achieve? Their Focus is in the far future; they’ll never reach it. At most it’ll buy him a few more days of regret before they all become Cie’th. Assuming all of time and existence doesn’t collapse before then.
Shiva raises her arms. Squall closes his eyes.
She came in a pillar of ice, he finds himself thinking. Like crystal.
Like crystal.
Ellone.
Squall opens his eyes, grabs his gunblade and leaps to his feet.
Chapter Eight