It's over. It's actually over. It's finished. I can't believe it.

In the end, looking back over the entire thing, I can see things I'm happy about and things I perhaps should have done differently. For the most part, though, I've just had a great time playing around with some of my favourite fictional characters, and I've developed a new appreciation for Rinoa Heartilly.

thebaconfat, jecca_mehlota, this fic belongs to you. Without your encouragement and enthusiasm, this would never have been finished. It probably wouldn't have been started. I can't thank you enough.

(I finished a chaptered fic. I finished a chaptered fic. I haven't managed that in ten years. I've certainly never finished anything this long before. I've never finished anything half this long.)

If anyone's curious about where the title With These Signs Upon Our Souls came from, it's actually a complete mishearing of a line from a song. The game Iji ends with this cover of a song called 'Further' by VNV Nation. I was absolutely convinced that one of the lines began 'with these signs upon our souls'; it always made me think of l'Cie when I heard it. By the time I learnt that the line was actually 'with designs upon ourselves' (which is very clear in the original), it was too late; I was already set on my misheard fic title. Whoops!

And, hey, jecca_mehlota, happy birthday!


Title: With These Signs Upon Our Souls, Epilogue
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,800 (this chapter; 26,800 total)
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
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten



They sleep for a very long time. They sleep until the Gardens are abandoned and forgotten. They sleep while a freak Lunar Cry pours monsters onto the world for years, rendering it almost uninhabitable. They sleep while most of the surviving human population migrate to the moon, build a new society around the fal’Cie they brought with them, go to war with the world below.

And then one day, long after history has pushed them aside as saviours of a world nobody likes to think about, they wake up.

-
“Hey! Hey, Lightning! You guys! You see this?”

Zell? Squall thinks, confused and groggy. It’s an enthusiastic male voice, but something about it isn’t quite right.

“Look at these guys! This is what’s gonna happen to Serah! And Dajh! They’ll be fine!”

“See?” Another voice, this one female. “What’d me and Vanille tell you?”

Bright sunlight is glowing through Squall’s eyelids. It feels like he’s lying on grass. He keeps his eyes closed and feigns unconsciousness as he tries to assess what the situation is and how he got here. The two voices have very different accents, but he can’t place either of them with confidence. He thinks the man might be from the Galbadia region.

Serah. Why is that name bothering him?

“Dajh,” another male voice murmurs; this one sounds a little older. “Lucky they woke up when we were around, I guess; I wouldn’t want to have to fend for myself in this place.”

“Well, they’ve got each other,” yet another voice points out – a woman or even a girl; she sounds quite young. “And I think they could probably have taken care of themselves. That jacket looks like Behemoth leather to me.”

“Yeah, but look at the stitches, Vanille,” the first woman says. “Looks like something from you Cocoon guys’ clothes machines. He didn’t make that himself.”

They don’t seem hostile. Still, Squall keeps his eyes closed for the moment, trying to gather more information. Why can’t he remember how he got here?

“In any case, nothing lucky about it,” a third female voice says, sounding almost amused. “I’m prepared to bet all our gil their new Focus has something to do with us.” Her tone changes slightly halfway through, as if something has caught her attention. “Are those gunblades? I’ve never seen those models before. Do they even have a folding mechanism?”

Someone else speaks, but Squall isn’t paying attention. Something in what she just said is bothering him, trapped and fluttering in his mind.

Focus.

Oh.

The first person Squall sees when he opens his eyes is a young man who looks unsettlingly familiar. For a moment he thinks it’s just the blond hair and vaguely Seifer-esque grey trenchcoat, but then he recognises the strange, disconcerting do I know you? feeling of meeting someone your GF remembers. At some point, this man has junctioned Shiva.

“Hey, this one’s awake!” the man announces cheerfully. He holds out a hand, and his expression is so open and friendly and unlike Seifer that for a moment Squall has difficulty mentally reconciling it with the coat. “Better take care; it looks like you’ve been out a long time. What’s your name?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Squall accepts the hand and pulls himself to his feet; his legs feel a little strange, as if they belong to someone else and he’s borrowed them for a moment, but he can remain standing easily enough. He’s surrounded by the mysterious speakers, but right now his main priority is his teammates, who are at present sprawled on the ground around him but beginning to stir. Rinoa unfolds her limbs as he watches and manages to push herself up into a sitting position, looking up at the sky. “Oh, wow,” she says softly, “what happened to the moon?”

“My name is Squall,” he says, once he’s satisfied that everyone is accounted for and appears to be alive. “These are Rinoa, Zell, Seifer, Quis—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” a woman interrupts him. She’s dark-haired, dressed in blue, and Squall recognises her from her accent as the second person to speak when he was regaining consciousness. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”

Squall cuts himself off and frowns, confused.

The red-headed girl next to her claps her hands together. “Well, we know they completed a Focus,” she says, “so maybe they really could be...”

“You two care to share with the rest of us?” asks an older, dark-skinned man.

We know they completed a Focus, Squall thinks. So they must have been in crystal stasis, and they must have just become uncrystallised. He was beginning to suspect it already, it was the only possibility that seemed to make sense, but to have it confirmed...

“Oh, don’t tell me you don’t know,” the woman in blue says. “The Heroes of Time? Sorceress Ultimecia? Ringing any bells?” She gives an incredulous laugh. “You’re telling me the people of Cocoon hate this place so much they even cut that out of the history lessons? Cocoon wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for these guys.”

“Sounds impressive,” says the guy in the grey trenchcoat. “Hope? You seem like the kind of guy who paid attention in school.”

‘Hope’ shakes his head. “I don’t remember anything about any ‘heroes of time’.”

“Hey, wait, we’re heroes?” Selphie chirrups from the ground. She bounces to her feet. “That is so cool!”

“Heroes history’s forgotten about, sounds like,” Seifer mutters, bracing himself on the handle of his gunblade as he stands. “Should’ve picked a more memorable leader.”

“So... wait,” Zell says. He’s sitting up on the grass, rubbing his head. “We completed our Focus, didn’t we? So we must’ve been crystal. I thought that was game over for us. And now we’re... waking up? You can do that?”

Rinoa winks at him. “Told you, didn’t I?”

“Okay,” Zell says. “From now on, I vote we believe everything Rinoa says. Man, I can’t believe we’re still around.”

“The question is,” Quistis says, and at the sound of her voice Squall can relax a little – they’re all alive, they’re all conscious – “how long were we in crystal for? If it was long enough for us to pass into history and then be forgotten...”

“We’ve heard of you,” the red-headed girl points out.

“We’re not the best example, Vanille,” her dark-haired companion says. “Must’ve learnt about them more than a couple of years ago.”

She touches her shoulder as she speaks, and for the first time Squall notices the strange, scorched l’Cie mark there. Now that he’s paying attention, there’s a mark on the arm of the trenchcoated man as well, but that one looks normal. Dangerously far along, but normal.

Squall lifts the hem of his shirt to check on his brand. It looks... renewed, back at stage one, as if he only attacked the fal’Cie yesterday. He remembers one of the strangers saying something about a ‘new Focus’.

“It’s been five hundred years since the War of Transgression,” Hope says helpfully, addressing Quistis.

Quistis looks at Squall. Squall looks back. They must both be thinking the same thing: that’s a long, long time after an event they’ve never heard of. How long were they in crystal?

“No way,” Zell breathes.

“That’s not gonna be any use to them,” says the dark-haired woman. “We’re talking way pre-war here. These guys were saving the world before Cocoon was even an idea.” She folds her arms, sizing them up. “So which one of you is Seifer? I always thought he sounded the most interesting.”

Seifer laughs, coming up beside Squall. “See?” he says quietly into Squall’s ear. “They’d never have forgotten us if I’d been leader.”

I never asked to be leader, Squall thinks. But for the first time it really hits him that he didn’t fail. They didn’t fail. He may not have got everything right, and they may now have a new set of problems, but – if these women are to be believed – they saved the world.

He looks around at the others. All alive, all conscious. They were in crystal, but they came back. He’d thought he would never see any of them again. It’s hard to believe he’s not dreaming.

A third woman steps forward now. Her hair is pale pink; against regulations, thinks the part of Squall’s mind that never completely left the Garden. Something about it seems familiar. “We can have introductions later,” she says. “Do we want to take them with us?”

“Well, they did save the whole of time,” says the dark-haired woman. “We could probably do worse.”

“Uh, shouldn’t we find out whether they want to come with us?” asks the older man. His hair appears to make a chirp of agreement, which may be the most confusing thing about this entire situation. “You know. Just a thought.”

Everyone looks at Squall: everyone, that is, except Seifer, who notices where everyone is looking and says in irritation, “I’m gonna explore this place on my own. Don’t come after me.”

“Not your best idea, sunshine,” says the dark-haired woman. “As I understand it, you come from less monstery times. At the very least you’ll want someone to watch your back. One Long Gui footstep and it’s bye-bye Hero of Time. I’m guessing you’re Seifer.”

“I think travelling together might be our best option,” Quistis says. “It seems we were in stasis for a very long time. We have to assume that any information we have about the world may now be out of date. If we have an opportunity to learn from people with more experience of this time, we should take it.”

It’s a relief to Squall to have the decision taken off his shoulders for once, and the fact that it’s Quistis speaking seems to mollify Seifer a little, remind him that this isn’t actually a Squall-run dictatorship. It’s sound reasoning, and after a short discussion the group conclude that they’re willing to travel with the people who found them for now.

“Great!” says the trenchcoated man, grinning broadly, when they report their decision. “The more the merrier, right?”

This has never been Squall’s philosophy, but he says nothing.

“All right,” says the woman with pink hair. “You’ll have woken up with a new Focus. It might even be ours, if the fal’Cie don’t think we’re doing our jobs well enough. That’s how being a l’Cie works: you’re a slave of the fal’Cie forever, or at least until you fail and turn into a monster.” She smiles grimly. “We’re looking for a third option. You’re going to help us find it.”

A third option? It seems impossible, but he didn’t think they’d be able to come back from the crystal state, either.

They woke up, Squall thinks. Is Ellone here somewhere, in this new world?

He nods. “Let’s go.”