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In the days following his execution, Seifer haunts her.
Not literally. But figuratively speaking, she can think only of him.
She remembers holding him the night before his death, the living, breathing man, the man who was still just a boy in many ways; and she remembers holding what was left of him after, ashes in a jar, stardust she scattered to the winds on Balamb Beach.
There must be a way to save him, says the voice in the back of her head.
No, she answers, the past can’t be changed.
The voice, disappointed: Such a finite imagination, for one who has seen the infinite.
*
Two weeks after Seifer’s execution, Quistis visits Ellone.
“I told you,” Ellone says. She sits on the couch in her living room in Esthar, her feet tucked under her, a chipped mug of coffee in her hands. “My powers can’t influence the past. Even if I sent you back, you can’t talk to him. You can only see what he saw.”
“But you sent us to Ultimecia during time compression.”
Ellone shakes her head. “That was because every era existed at once. But this era is fixed. We can’t leave it.” She must catch the desperation, the despair, in Quistis’s eyes, because her expression softens. “What’s wrong, Quisty? I thought you hated Seifer.”
“I did,” Quistis murmurs. “But…”
The feeling she felt when he kissed her in D-District’s visitation room, on the last night of his life—it persists. A feeling of possibility. Of what could have been. The kiss was a joke, Seifer said, a last grasp at carnality for a condemned man, but she knows he felt it too. The concept of them. She saw it in his eyes.
“I have to try,” she says.
If she could go back to the before—before Ultimecia got her claws in him, before Quistis was his instructor, before she failed him in every way possible—maybe she could give him a nudge. Plant a seed of an idea in his head.
She reaches across the couch and touches Ellone’s arm. “If you can send my consciousness back, there must be a way to send a manifestation of me too—like an astral projection. If I wish for it hard enough…”
Ellone doesn’t look convinced. But all the same, she holds out her hands. Quistis takes them, closes her eyes, and plunges headfirst into the kaleidoscope of time.
*
Daylight.
Garden.
The library.
Quistis is there suddenly, seated at a study carrel, looking down at an open, battered copy of an advanced junctioning textbook. The yellow legal pad beside it is filled with scrawled lesson plans in her own handwriting. It feels familiar. Nothing about it is distinct in her memory, but she knows she’s in her own mind, reliving her own past, an everyday moment, a blip in the endless history of the universe.
It didn’t work.
She looks up. The library is quiet, nearly empty. The sun oozing through the blinds is soft and golden; it must be late afternoon. As she takes it all in, movement near the checkout desk catches her eye.
Seifer.
He’s striding for the exit, bookbag slung casually over his shoulder, oversized grey coat flapping around his ankles.
As if he can sense her looking, he turns his head. Their eyes meet. She expects a sneer; instead he winks, cracking a cocksure grin. Her past self wrinkles her nose in distaste.
But Quistis holds the memory close. A memory long forgotten.
Before she can compel her past self to speak, he saunters away and pushes through the turnstile. Then he’s gone.
Bring me back, she calls out to Ellone. This is the wrong place.
For she can feel her past self shaking Seifer's grin off like the dregs of a bad dream.
*
The past closes in like a narrowing tunnel, then widens again into the present, bringing her back to blinking awareness on Ellone’s couch. The older woman watches her warily, mug of coffee still steaming, like Quistis was gone for only a few seconds. Maybe she was. Quistis fights off the grogginess clinging to her brain and makes herself sit upright.
“That wasn’t it,” she says. “I need to get closer to him.”
“Quisty," Ellone says, pitying but firm, “this is insane.”
“Two years ago. The training centre.” This time, Quistis puts her hands out first, almost imploring. “Please. One more try. I have to.”
And Ellone, uneasy, obliges.
*
Nighttime.
Garden.
The secret area behind the training centre.
The ethereal ring floating atop Garden sheds a soft glow across the surrounding forest. Quistis—not her, but the Quistis that was—steps up to the railing and looks out at it, catching her breath. Sweat prickles her skin, dries quickly in the cool breeze, turns clammy. Grat goop, tacky and half-dried, clings to the spaces between her fingers.
She is still trapped in her own mind.
The place is almost deserted, but Seifer stands close by, eyes looking outward, his mind turned inward. He hasn't noticed her presence yet.
Now-Quistis remembers this moment, all too well. It was the day Seifer failed his SeeD exam for the second time, the day his friendly competition with her turned to bitterness. The day he saw himself as lesser and never forgave her for it.
Then-Quistis watches him, hesitating, wondering.
Talk to him, Now-Quistis urges. Because she wanted to back then, but didn't know what to say, how to console him—he, who was so volatile. That’s all he needs, someone to talk to.
Seifer catches her looking. The defeat on his face twists into a wrathful sneer, the corners of his mouth curling down in disdain. (Embarrassment, she sees now.)
“The fuck are you staring at, Trepe?” he says.
Before Then-Quistis can open her mouth to answer, he storms out.
Is this how it's always been? Him, headstrong, turning away from her—and she, powerless to stop him?
*
Quistis snaps back to the present, disoriented by the transition. Frustrated by her failure.
She won't succeed if Ellone sends her back to herself. The Quistis that was is too myopic to heed her.
“Send me to him this time,” she says. "Directly to him. At a moment when he's alone."
As Ellone shepherds her back to the void, Quistis closes her eyes, focuses everything she has in her—bone, muscle, brain, blood, the blue magic sleeping in the network of nerves connecting it all—on going there. Not just her conscious mind, but her heart and body soul, the very essence of her.
The darkness sucks her in, and she reaches.
*
Morning.
Garden.
Seifer’s dorm room.
She’s standing in his doorway, looking in at him. He sits on the edge of his bed, Hyperion slung across his knees, polishing the blade with a soft cloth.
Quistis doesn’t remember ever being in here. She doesn’t feel chambered in her past self, either. She looks down at her hands; they’re translucent, flickering. A projection through time. Tenuous but real.
This is not a memory she’s living.
I did it.
“Seifer?” she says.
Her voice is soft, choppily fragmented, like she’s speaking across an unstable comms link. But it’s enough for him to hear. He looks up, and then he jumps up, eyes wide with alarm, Hyperion clanging as it falls to the linoleum floor.
“Trepe?” he says, in terror, in confusion, scanning her ghostly form up and down like she’s a T-rexaur he encountered in the fields. “What—”
“Don’t be scared,” she says, and steps forward. He steps back, wary. “I came here to tell you something but I don’t have long.”
Quistis holds out her hand. She needs to make him feel it: the concept of them. Seifer stares at her for a moment, and then he reciprocates, fingers reaching curiously for hers. When they touch, her hand passes through his like mist. There’s no sensation of skin.
But there’s that electric spark of possibility.
It has to be enough.
“Whatever you do, don’t go to Timber,” she says. “Stay in the disciplinary room.” She pauses, holding his gaze. “With me.”
Seifer looks wary. “What happens in Timber?”
“Awful things.” She smiles sadly. “Trust me. I came here from the future.”
Seifer responds, but it's lost as the world dissolves. Quistis returns to the river of time. Lets it float her back home.
To the place where she hopes Seifer waits for her.