Archive of Our Own

The boardwalk is bustling this evening. That’s no real surprise: It’s the height of tourist season in Dollet, and most of the activity is concentrated on the waterfront, where the Dukedom Regatta has been in full swing this week. The docks are crowded with dozens of bobbing sailboats, their bright white triangles rippling in the sea breeze. As Quistis walks along the boardwalk, she passes buskers juggling bowling pins, a puppeteer performing a marionette show for a group of kids, and stand upon stand of food vendors hawking everything from Timber-style hot dogs to Galbadian curry buns.

But Quistis isn’t here for the festival. Her tote bag is stuffed full of binders and textbooks, all the coursework she still needs to slog through to get her certificate in paramagic synthesis at the end of the week. The lime green walls of her short-term rental apartment were starting to drive her crazy, so she figured an evening studying at a coffeehouse in the neighbourhood would be a good change of scenery.

The coffeehouse in question is called Sea Shanty. A sandwich board standing outside the door reads in looping chalked script:

Quistis sighs. Another night of live music. It’s generally local talent that picks up gigs like these, and the quality is hit or miss. Some acts are pretty good, destined to move on to the mid-sized venues in Timber, while others sound like they picked up their instruments for the first time ever just before stepping onstage and they’re still figuring out how to play them. At least—in her experience, anyway—the music is bland and inoffensive enough that she can tune it out while working.

As she pushes open the door, she braces herself for a zoo to match the hubbub out on the boardwalk. It’s busy, but not as busy as she expected. Though most of the tables are taken, she spots an empty one butted up in a corner adjacent to the washrooms. She sets her things down to claim the spot, and then she lines up to place her order, scanning the chalkboard menu behind the counter to see what’s on offer.

Ten minutes later, with a latte and a mashed chickpea sandwich in hand, she settles down and gets to work. She flips open her textbook to the chapter on magic extraction techniques and starts highlighting key passages, pausing to make jot notes on what she wants to say in her final essay. Gradually, the noise of the café fades into the background as she focuses on what she’s reading, and she slips into the familiar tranquility of academic study.

The only warning that the evening’s entertainment has begun is a lukewarm smattering of applause from around the room. Quistis glances up and sees the back of a man stepping onto the little makeshift stage in the far corner. The Knightingale mentioned on the sandwich board outside, presumably. A weathered black ball cap perches on his head, set backwards with the bill sticking out, and he carries an acoustic guitar in one hand.

Oh, brother. Not another “sensitive” songwriter type. Quistis dated a few of those after the end of the war, and never again. They cared more about what she thought about them and their pretentious music than they did about her as a person. (Her conclusions: their music wasn’t very good.)

She ducks her head and gets back to work, wincing when a screech of feedback from the mic cuts through the room. She highlights a sentence in her textbook as Knightingale plucks the first few chords on his guitar, something simple and melancholic. Well, he’s not amazing by any means, but he’s not the worst she’s ever heard either.

Then he starts to sing.

She came to me in a violet haze
With eyes like a panther’s
And a voice like rain
I thought I knew the shadows
Thought I was the shadows
But she wrapped me in darkness
And she showed me pain

Though deep, his voice is soft and unsteady, and it falls flat on some of the higher notes. Quistis tries to tune him out. The science of paramagic synthesis originated in Esthar after the end of the First Sorceress War…

When she gets to the end of the sentence, she realizes she hasn’t absorbed any of it.

She reads it again with the same result.

…There’s something familiar about Knightingale’s voice.

Quistis looks up, her gaze snapping to the man on the stage. He sings with his eyes closed, his mouth pressed to the mic, obscuring the lower half of his face, but the scar slashed across his forehead and the bridge of his nose would make him identifiable to her anywhere. The world seems to fall out from under Quistis. She drops her highlighter onto her textbook; it rolls down the open page and clatters to the floor under her table.

Seifer?

In the three years since the end of the war, no one has seen or heard from him. Cid decided not to pursue him for his actions—no surprise, given his personal guilt over his role in Seifer’s downfall—and she suspects he convinced the Galbadian authorities to turn a blind eye as well.

Who would have thought she’d run into him here, of all places?

The coursework is a lost cause. Quistis spends the last twenty minutes of Seifer’s set watching him, listening to him sing the words he wrote. At least she’s pretty sure he wrote them; they sound autobiographical enough. Songs of lost innocence, of living nightmares and failed dreams, of a home thrown away on a childish whim. She wonders what he’s been up to the past three years, whether he regrets what he did.

It sounds like … yes.

She wouldn’t have believed it herself if she wasn’t hearing it with her own ears. Seifer doesn’t know she’s here, doesn’t know he’s performing for someone in the audience who knows about his past. From his perspective, there’s no one for him to impress, no one to convince of his remorse. The lyrics sound like they’re coming straight from his conscience, from a wound Ultimecia made in him, and Quistis listens to them greedily, hoping at the end of each song that he’ll play just one more.

But the set has to end, of course. When he stands up again, guitar in hand, a smattering of lukewarm applause goes around the room. Seifer accepts it with that stony face she knew so well back in the day. Praying he doesn’t see her, Quistis sinks down in her chair and watches him put his guitar away, pick up the case, and start to weave around the tables toward the door. He doesn’t so much as glance her way.

Once he’s gone, she gathers her things and approaches the counter, pausing for a moment to let a trio all clad in black pass by. Horns of Odin, she presumes. Confirmed when they step up onto the stage and start taking brass instruments out of the cases they’re carrying.

“That man,” she says to the barista, pointing toward the door. “Knightingale? Do you know anything about him?”

The barista’s face brightens. “Yeah! I mean, I don’t know his real name. But he plays here a lot. Maybe a few nights a week? His music’s great, isn’t it?” She sighs, smiling wistfully. “And he’s so dreamy.”

“Er … sure,” Quistis says. She supposes he is handsome, in an objective way. He’d be far more dreamy if it wasn’t for his caustic personality and aggressive tendencies. “Listen, when is he slated to play here next?”

“Friday,” the barista chirps without missing a beat.

Two days from now. Quistis turns that information over in her mind. She should probably leave it alone, let him go his own way so she can go hers, like a warship hiding in the fog to let another sail by without opening fire. Nothing good can come of them meeting face to face, after all.

She thanks the barista, slings her bag over her shoulder, and steps out into the night.

By now, darkness has fallen, but the boardwalk is still bustling. The scents of popcorn and cotton candy float on the breeze. Quistis walks slowly back the way she came, toward the winding, cobbled streets of Dollet and her short-term rental apartment, hewing close to the railing along the water. She’s so lost in thought that she doesn’t register the guitar music at first, nor the sound of Seifer’s voice singing. But as soon as she does, she stops short and looks across the boardwalk.

He’s standing against the wall of the shuttered harbour tour ticket booth, guitar case open in front of him. A few people are gathered nearby, listening; some toss coins into the guitar case. Quistis stands well back, hiding herself in the crowd, and watches him again. Notices things. Like the fraying hem of his T-shirt and the fact that his sneakers are practically falling apart on his feet.

He plays for forty minutes before he starts packing it up. Quistis hovers, waiting, and when he starts walking back to town, guitar case in hand, she follows at a safe distance. He leads her through the well-lit downtown core, with its boutique shops still open to accommodate the tourists. He stops once, at a food cart hawking rice balls. Cheap fare. He uses the coins he collected in his guitar case to pay for two.

By the time he arrives at his destination—a boarded-up house in a sketchier part of town, where there are no streetlight or cars or people roaming the cracked sidewalks—she’s starting to get the picture.

Seifer doesn’t have a job, or money, or even his own home to go to.

Quistis crouches down around the side of the house kitty corner from him and keeps watching. Her hunch becomes certainty as he glances around the street before pushing open the front door and ducking under the boards nailed across it to get inside. Quistis hunkers there for a while, waiting for something else to happen—for him to come back out, or a light to turn on within the house. Nothing does.

Troubled, she turns and walks away.

On Friday, Quistis arrives at Sea Shanty early. The sandwich board outside confirms what the barista told her the other day.

Inside, it’s relatively quiet. It’s the last day of the regatta, and the weather is beautiful, so everyone is outdoors enjoying the events. Quistis nabs the same table she sat at the other night, then orders coffee from the barista who has the crush on Seifer. She smiles at Quistis in recognition, but doesn’t try to make conversation beyond the pleasantries they exchange while Quistis pays.

Somehow, she manages to focus on her coursework until the atmosphere in the coffee house suddenly shifts. She glances up and sees him entering, guitar case in hand, backlit by the orange light of sunset flooding in through the windows. She lifts her textbook to hide her face, not that it ends up being necessary; like last time, Seifer doesn’t look in her direction. It’s like her table is a black hole in the corner.

By now, she knows the drill: Seifer sets up the mic and pulls over a stool. Sits down and puts the guitar across his lap. The songs he sings are the same ones he played on Wednesday night. Quistis closes her textbook and listens, careful to keep her face turned away from the stage, just in case.

It’s not until his set is over that she decides what she’s going to do. She shoves her things into her bag and crosses over to the counter. There’s a different barista working the till now. The other one must have gone on break. Quistis orders two lattes and a chicken pesto sandwich to go, casting glances now and then at Seifer to keep track of him.

He’s standing at the edge of the stage and placing his guitar back in its case. The barista with the crush approaches him, twirling a lock of her long auburn hair around her finger. The stony look hasn’t left Seifer’s face, but he seems to respond to whatever she says to him. As Quistis watches, she grabs his hand and scrawls something into his palm with a pen she pulls out of her apron pocket. Probably her phone number, Quistis thinks with some distaste.

She waits until the barista goes back behind the counter, cheeks flushed and grinning, before she makes her own approach.

“Seifer?”

He turns and sees her. A few emotions go across his face, almost too fast for her to register them: surprise, confusion, wonder, then finally annoyance. He snaps shut the latches on his guitar case and picks it up.

“Quistis,” he says. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Well, he hasn’t told her to screw off. That’s encouraging, right?

“I could say the same,” she says. “So … you live here? In Dollet?”

Seifer opens his mouth. Quistis braces herself for an acerbic retort, but instead he just closes it again and nods.

“Okay. Oh. Here.” She offers one of the lattes and the sandwich. “I got you these. I was hoping we could talk.”

Seifer eyes her offerings dubiously, but he takes them with his free hand. “We can, I guess.”

As she expected, his hungry stomach is doing all the work of convincing him for her.

“Maybe not here.” Quistis glances at the foursome—Beam Me Up PuPu—that has stepped onto the stage to set up their instruments. They’re all dressed in skinny jeans and flannels. Some sort of indie band, maybe. “Could we take a walk down the dock?”

“Why? You trying to lure me somewhere secluded to murder me?” he says, but there’s a shadow of a smile on his face.

“No. I definitely don’t have murder on the mind. But that could change, depending on your behaviour,” she says primly.

Seifer huffs and shakes his head. “Well, lead the way.”

Quistis weaves around the tables, which are still as full as they were when she walked in, and out onto the boardwalk. The sun is just dipping below the horizon, the last of its orange rays glimmering on the dark waters of the bay. Strings of fairy lights strung between the posts of the boardwalk offer enough illumination for the festivities to go on. A busker entertains a small group adjacent to the coffee house. Quistis turns away from him toward the far end of the boardwalk, where there are fewer people and it’s a little quieter.

“How about over there?” she says, nodding in that direction.

“Sure.”

They walk together in silence, Quistis hoisting her bag and Seifer gently swinging his guitar case with every step. She wonders where he got it, how he could afford it when he hardly has enough money to eat.

He must see her looking at it, because he says, “It’s Raijin’s. He’s letting me borrow it.”

“I see. And what’s Raijin up to these days?”

Seifer shrugs. “Got a gig teaching martial arts up in Timber.”

“And Fujin?”

“She’s in Timber too. Works at the weapons shop.”

Quistis laughs softly. “It’s strange to think about, but I guess everyone’s moving on with their lives.”

Seifer just grunts in response.

They reach the end of the boardwalk. Quistis sets down her book bag and takes a seat next to it, her feet dangling off the edge of the dock. It’s high up enough that there’s plenty of space between her boots and the water. Seifer mirrors her actions, though he uses the guitar case as an armrest, holding his latte loosely in his hand. There’s enough distance between them that it doesn’t feel too intimate, but Quistis still feels the tension.

It’s Seifer. The man who, last time she saw him, tried to kill her and her friends. And then there’s the fact she hasn’t seen him in three years, that he seems so different now than he was before. They’ve known one another all their lives, but in some ways, it’s like meeting a stranger for coffee.

“So,” she says.

“So,” he agrees.

“How are you?” She looks at him, and he looks at her, and Quistis thinks she catches a glint of shame in his eyes before he glances away again.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“I never took you for the musical type.”

“Wasn’t, until I got here and had to figure out what to do with myself. The skillset Garden teaches ain’t exactly transferable.” Seifer takes a sip from his cup and makes a face. “Should’ve known you’d be a latte drinker.”

Quistis smiles. “I usually do coffee, but it’s a bit late in the day for that.”

Seifer gestures at the book bag slumped next to her. “So what’re you doing here? Figured you’d still be Cid’s good little acolyte back at Garden.”

“I am,” Quistis says. “They sent me here to take a course on paramagic synthesis.”

“Wow, sounds thrilling.”

Quistis shrugs apologetically and looks out over the water. “It’s what I’m good at.” She picks at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt. “I’m curious … did you write those songs yourself?”

Seifer scoffs. “You think I’d walk up onstage and play a song I didn’t write?”

“No, I suppose not.”

She studies him a bit longer. He must feel her eyes on him, because he meets her gaze with something hard and challenging. Quistis decides to be honest with him.

“I saw you at Sea Shanty on Wednesday night,” she admits, bracing herself again for his ire. “I followed you after. I saw where you went. To that old building in the bad part of town. Are you … squatting there?”

Seifer makes an impatient sound and looks away. In the near-darkness, it’s hard to say for sure, but she thinks his ears might be red with embarrassment. There’s something else she never expected. The Seifer she knows was never ashamed of anything he did.

“So what if I am?” he says.

Quistis laughs softly. “I’m not asking so I can mock you or rub anything in. I’m just…” She glances at him, catches him looking at her again, brow furrowed in perplexity. “Worried. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

Seifer stares at her for another moment, and then shakes his head. “Once an instructor, always an instructor, aren’t you, Quistis?”

“Well … I was asking more as a peer.” Quistis swings her feet over the water. Something splashes out in the darkness, but the night is now so full that she can’t tell what it was. A fish, most likely; there are no predators in the bay around Dollet. “So, then, why are you squatting in an abandoned building? Can’t you find a job?”

“I can,” Seifer says resentfully.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “But?”

The line of his mouth flattens, then curves downward. His shoulders sag with it. “I ain’t cut out for normal work. You know. A day job.”

That doesn’t come as a surprise to Quistis. Seifer was always defined by his outrageous, grandiose dreams, and his belief that the rules and norms of the real world were beneath him. He wanted to be a leader—a hero—without earning that privilege first.

“No, you never were any good at following orders,” she says lightly.

Seifer lifts his head and glares at her. She responds with a soft smile, one she hopes he’ll interpret as fond and knowing rather than derisive. And as she hoped, his scowl falters. Then they’re both doubled over laughing.

When it subsides, she gestures at his guitar case.

“Sing me a song?” she says. “If you do a good job, I’ll toss you a few gil.”

She expects Seifer to roll his eyes and tell her to screw off, but instead he opens his case without hesitation and pulls out his guitar. He settles it across his knee and draws his thumb down the strings, sending a trill of warm, buttery sound into the night.

The girl on the beach
Is haunting me
The taste of her lips
Out of reach
A fading dream
Not meant for me

There’s something vulnerable about Seifer when he sings. A side of him Quistis never knew existed. Proof that he can be more than just a killing machine, that there is a heart and a soul somewhere under the abrasive shield he holds up between himself and the world. Idly, she wonders if the song is about her. Then casts the idea aside as ridiculous. If anyone, it’s probably about Rinoa.

Even so … he chose that song out of everything in his repertoire to sing to her. That can’t mean nothing.

After a verse and a chorus, he sets the guitar back in its case. To her surprise, Quistis is disappointed that he didn’t sing more. Unlike all the hopeless musician wannabes she’s dated, she actually likes his voice and thinks he has genuine talent, even if it could use some polishing.

Still, as promised, she pulls a twenty-gil note out of her pocket and offers it to him. Seifer just looks at it and waves her off.

“You know…” she says. “There could be a place for you. Back at Garden.”

Seifer freezes. Something that looks like consideration crosses his face, and then he grimaces and shakes his head. “The ‘could’ in that sentence is doing a lot of work. Can’t see Cid ever wanting me back.”

“You’re wrong,” she says. “He thinks he failed you. And he believes in second chances.”

Seifer glances at her. “Even for a fuck-up like me?”

Quistis smiles wryly. “We’re all fuck-ups in one way or another, aren’t we?”

It’s the truth. She and the others are a collection of abandonment issues, battle scars, and PTSD, just manifested in different ways. Squall with his aloof detachment, Quistis with her need to people please and overachieve. Seifer was always a problem child, but he’s their problem child. Garden is where he belongs, no matter how much some among her circle—herself included—may not want to admit it.

“Why not give it a try?” she says. “You can always leave again if you don’t like it. But at least you’ll have a roof over your head and three square meals—”

Seifer snorts. “Please. Like the shit they serve at the cafeteria constitutes real food?”

“—and somewhere to sleep that isn’t a dusty, run-down hovel in the bad part of this tourist trap,” Quistis finishes.

“Well…” Seifer smirks, but it’s hollow, with none of his usual boundless ego. “When you put it that way…”

“You don’t need to decide today, obviously. It’s a big decision. But just think about it.” She nods at his guitar case. “You could still do your music too. Selphie would probably love it if you agreed to play the Garden Festival.”

“Messenger Girl? She’d probably kill me stone dead before she let me anywhere near her precious festival.”

Quistis gives a half shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. Zell and Irvine keep dodging her, and she’s desperate for help. It might go a long way toward thawing relations if you volunteered.”

Seifer looks at her for a moment, then glances down into the palms of his hands. Quistis remembers the phone number the barista wrote there, and how infatuated she was with Seifer, and she feels a twinge of something unexpected. Not quite jealousy, not quite protectiveness, but close.

“Are you going to call her?” she asks.

Seifer’s eyes cut toward her. “Huh?”

“The girl from the coffee house. She wrote her number in your hand, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

Quistis looks out at the bay again. Moonlight ripples silver on the black waves. Balamb lies in the night beyond it, leagues across the sea. It’s her home. It used to be Seifer’s home. But maybe after everything that’s happened, Seifer can’t see it the same way anymore, and Dollet is where he’d rather stake his future. After all, he has his music and, apparently, a candidate for a romantic connection here.

“I suppose if you have a reason to stay…” she says.

“Oh, give me a break, Quistis.” Seifer rips open the cellophane around his sandwich and takes a huge bite. “Some random girl gives me her phone number, and now you think I’m gonna marry her or something? No wonder you gave Squall the willies.”

Quistis can only laugh at that. If it’s true that Seifer’s never been good at following orders, then it’s true that she’s always been a hopeless romantic.

They fall into a companionable quiet. Quistis kicks her feet, looking up at the moon, and Seifer finishes his sandwich. There’s really nothing more she has to say, but she finds she doesn’t want to leave either. That means she’ll have to let Seifer go back to that abandoned house and sleep alone in the dark and the dust, while she’ll lay her head down in a nicely appointment apartment under cozy linen sheets. Even if he brought it all on himself, it doesn’t sit right with her.

“What time is it?” she finally asks.

“Dunno. My set ended at eight forty five, so maybe nine thirty?”

“I have an early day tomorrow.” Quistis sighs. “I should get home.”

Seifer raises an eyebrow at her. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. What the hell do you have to do so early on a weekend?”

“The course I’m taking is condensed. There are workshops on Saturday mornings.”

“Lame.” Seifer opens the lid of his empty cup and stuffs the wad of cellophane inside. “I’ll walk you home, then.”

“You don’t have to,” she protests.

“Shut up, I’m not letting you roam the streets alone at this hour.”

Quistis rolls her eyes, because first of all, it’s not even that late, and the boardwalk is still hopping. Second, she’s a decorated SeeD with more battle experience than any thug who might accost her in the night.

But deep down, she’s secretly flattered by his chivalry. Mostly because, with him, there’s no ulterior motive.

They stroll back down the boardwalk together and up into the maze of Dollet’s streets. Quistis’s apartment isn’t far from the wharf, so they reach it sooner than she’d like. As she slows outside the building—a pretty little three-storey townhouse, painted in pastel yellow, with pink and purple petunias overflowing from window boxes in every sill—she turns to face Seifer.

“This is me,” she says.

Seifer nods and shifts his guitar case from one hand to the other. “Thanks for the food. And the chat. I’ll pay you back.”

“No need. But listen—” She opens her book bag and rummages through it until she finds a pen. “I’ll give you my number. If you decide you want to come back to Garden, just give me a call and I’ll help you.”

Seifer studies her for a moment, his aquamarine eyes intense in the porch light glowing overhead. Then he offers his hand. The clean one, the one that doesn’t have that other girl’s number scrawled on it.

Quistis writes her own number in his palm, taking her time so the digits are perfectly legible. As an afterthought, she writes a Q under it.

“So you don’t get them mixed up,” she explains.

“Wasn’t planning to, but okay,” Seifer says.

They look at one another again. The barista was right, Quistis thinks. Seifer really is very dreamy. More than just handsome. He has the sort of face that’s impossible to forget, with his strong jaw and beautiful eyes and lips. Whatever he decides to do, whether to stay in Dollet or return to Garden, he’ll inevitably disappoint one girl or another. Quistis just hopes it’s not her.

“Well … good night,” she says.

“Yeah. Night, Quistis.”

With a final nod, she steps up onto the porch, fishing in her book bag for her keys. She hears his footsteps retreating, echoing off the cobbled street, taking him back to his sad accommodations.

As her hand closes around her keyring, she glances over her shoulder to look at him again, and finds that he’s done the same. Their eyes meet. Quistis smiles and lifts a hand to wave. Seifer waves back. Then he turns back around and keeps going. With hope fluttering in her belly, Quistis watches him until he disappears around a corner.

Something tells her it’s not the last she’ll see of him.