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"Wait!" Garnet tried to call after Quistis, but it was too late. The woman was gone. She had been about to point out that while float did ensure that they'd reach the bottom safely, it did not ensure that they would be able to get back out. A rope or the ladder would have done that, but clearly they had no choice. They had come all of this way. Now their only option was to carry on. Quistis seemed prepared, at least. White magic, black magic, her whip by her side, was there anything that woman couldn't do? Garnet had to admit, she felt a little jealous. Next to her, her meagre white magic seemed rather... underwhelming. Back in her team, back on Gaia, every team member had contributed, but it seemed Quistis could do it all. She wondered if maybe Quistis should have journeyed here alone. That was unfair, she realised. Being in a team wasn't about power, it was about companionship.

She looked to Tellah, both he and Quistis seemed to disagree with her assessment that the shadowy figures were their reflection. She had to admit, it seemed unlikely, she had just assumed by the long hair she had seen on a figure, so much like her own. But now, as one of the figures disappeared, she was beginning to have another feeling.
"Maybe... not us, but linked to us, somehow. Look, that figure disappeared when Quistis entered..." she pointed out to Tellah, looking to the darkness. The figure she had thought was her hadn't moved when she had moved, so it wasn't like they were looking directly at themselves. Instead, her eyes moved to the other figure. The one that wasn't her. Heavyset, with what could be horns on the side of her head...

...or hair?

....(Mother?)

Was it possible? With magic, Garnet knew that anything was feasible, she had seen other worlds, she had travelled dimensions, and she had battled a God at the centre of the universe, but... this felt like something else. She almost felt violated, if that figure was who she thought it was. Like the shrine was digging into her memories, and turning them back against her. It had no right.

But she had no choice but to proceed. She nodded to Tellah, and began to cast float on him, before casting it on herself too and moving towards the edge of the well.
"I... do not know what we shall see in there, but... I have a feeling that it won't be easy. I think you're right. Those figures aren't us. But they're connected to us. I think... They're somebody special to us. Perhaps somebody that we have lost. I think... that's my mother..." she admitted, pointing at the large woman. "Be should be ready for anything. There's no turning back," she said, before turning back to the well. The sense of foreboding grew, but she knew that she had to go on. Zidane would have jumped. She would jump too. For the good of the party. She climbed over the well, letting her legs dangle into the water that didn't seem damp.

"Be safe. I'll see you soon," Garnet said to Tellah, and then she pushed herself off the edge, into the depths...

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It was strange how she had slipped into a routine in the recent weeks. Her search for Zidane had yielded no answers, and the threat of Kuja went unanswered. She realised that while she had travelled the world, she had never lived like this, aimless, and without a goal. No, that was a lie, she had a goal; find Zidane, find a way back home, stop Kuja, but... without a way of achieving that. She had gotten a job working at a small local clinic, where she used her White Magic to heal battered adventurers for gil. It didn't make much, but enough to live, but it was a life Garnet had never experienced. Working for hours every day, and then repeating it the next day, with no end and no goal in sight. She realised that for all her travelling, as worldly as she thought she had become, she still had very little understanding of the day to day life of regular citizens. If there was one thing she could say about this experience, it was that Faris was right, and that she would return a stronger Queen than she had been before. She was learning so much.

Like the importance of gil. She wasn't naïve, she knew gil was important. But somehow, when they had been travelling, it hadn't been her daily concern, but here, even with the extra gil she had gotten from selling her gown, she seemed to be daily counting coins, making sure they lasted while paying for lodgings and food. It was stressful, and she was beginning to understand why things like taxes were always the primary concerns of the citizens. It was because they were always worried about money. It was easy to focus on duty when you didn't have to worry about gil, it was easy to have the luxury of doing the right thing, Garnet thought, when you were a Princess or a Queen, but being poor made it more difficult, didn't it? When you had so much more to worry about than just what the right thing to do was.

Except... that wasn't really true, was it? Her mother had never wanted for anything, and look at how she had turned out. And Zidane... Zidane had nothing. He was a poor thief, and he had been the truest, kindest person she had ever known. No, the world was infinitely more complex than that. There was no simplicity to having money or not having it, but still, she felt like she understood the working commoner much more now. Zidane would probably think she was a fool.

Oh, Zidane. She missed him so much. She kept asking after him, kept searching but he was nowhere to be seen. Every so often, even as she walked through the crowded city, she thought she saw a flash of blonde hair that reminded her of him, or something trailing that might be a monkey tail, but every time she tried to chase it down, it turned out to be nothing. A trailing ribbon. Another person.

Like just then. She saw something swish by, and her heart fluttered for a moment, before she told herself it was nothing. Just some loose trailing piece of clothing or something.

And then it moved. And she suddenly moved forward, and she saw through the crowd a figure. A figure waving kindly to those he passed. A figure who made the time for everyone, no matter how strange they were to him. A figure with the kindest heart she knew.

It was him. It was unmistakable.

Her heart beat in her chest and she felt her legs go weak, and suddenly, she bolted. She ran as fast as she could, pushing her way through the crowd. There was something so familiar about that, but she didn't care, not in that moment, and she desperately forced people apart even as she thought she lost sight of him for a moment. Again, her heart fluttered. No! She was so close! She pushed past them, almost rudely, especially by her standards, drawing surprised, startled stares, but she didn't care in that moment, and then...

...there he was. Right in front of her. Zidane Tribal. In the flesh. She paused for a moment, standing where she was, as if unable to take him in. Unable to believe that it was truly happening. Afraid that any moment she would wake up. And then, without hesitation, she threw herself into his arms, wrapping them around him. Her eyes felt damp from joy as she slowly looked up at his.
"You... you did it to me again.... You.... jerk," she said softly, thumping an annoyed fist against his chest. She then broke into a smile, one of those emotional smiles that was both happy and sad when you were fully overwhelmed with emotion. "I thought... I thought I'd lost you again," she said, her voice broken. And then she said nothing else, and hugged him as tightly as she could, resting her head against his chest...

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Garnet didn't quite know what to think as they made their way into the temple. Her heels echoed on the stone floor despite the distant sound of haunting song, but apart from that, the temple seemed so deserted. It felt cold and damp, and Garnet began to wonder how far they had travelled, how far they were from the boat, from escape, whether or not they were somewhere far beneath the sea, all alone. She began to wonder if Bartz and Aerith had been the lucky ones, heading back, but she knew in her heart luck had nothing to do with it. This was a thing that had to be done, and she was intending to do it.

Slowly, she realised that oddly the Water Temple didn't remind her so much of the Water Temple back on Gaia, but rather, Ipsen's Castle. Mysterious, somehow difficult to understand, and filled with mystery. She hadn't explored Ipsen's Castle much; it wasn't friendly to magic users, but it still reminded her of how she pictured it. Especially how Zidane had explained it to her. Again, thoughts of Terra came to her. Was this Shrine not of this world? That would make so much sense, but she didn't want to imagine...

She peered into the well, staring at the strange reflection within. She could see the crystal, but the room below as well. Or the same room? She looked up to try and see where the water was looking from, but she couldn't make it out. She looked back at the figures below. Shadowy and indistinct though they were, there were three of them. Three that looked very familiar.
"They're us..." Garnet said quietly. "Maybe not... really us, but some kind of... reflection. A shadow?" The spikey hair was Quisitis's hair, Garnet was fairly sure, as were the 'horns' on Tellah's head. "Do you think...?" Garnet tried moving, somewhat robotically, holding out a hand and then another hand to see if the shadowy figures copied her. "Perhaps the Crystal is really there, and it's an illusion. Or maybe we need to lower ourselves down through the water?" she suggested. She removed one of her gloves, and reached in to touch the water, not feeling it at all. As if it was a portal they could pass through. But... it seemed quite a fall. She wished Zidane was there again. He'd have leapt in without a second thought, but Garnet was afraid the fall would be too far. "Was there any rope with the boats? Perhaps we could tie it somewhere and climb down?" Garnet wasn't entirely confident climbing down a swinging rope, but she was fairly confident she could do it. She'd done worse, hadn't she?

Wait, she had forgotten. She was being a fool. She still had her float spell. That would carry them down.
"Wait, I could cast float. We could jump in, it would carry us down safely. If... that's the right path. And not a reflection. And not a trap. What... do you think?" she looked to the others for confirmation. It was a plan, she thought. Quite a good plan. But it wasn't fool proof. It could go very wrong. Zidane would have just leapt. Garnet thought that perhaps she should. Usually when she got an idea, she went for it, whether it was right or wrong, but recently she seemed to be second guessing herself a lot more, and she was much more cautious. It came with the burden of being a Queen, she liked to think, but the real truth was it came from her adventures. So often she had made the wrong decision, she felt, she had made a mistake and had to be saved by Zidane, she wasn't sure she trusted her decisions anymore. Not without checking with the others, at least...

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Garnet looked a little sheepish when Tellah climbed on board her boat, pointing out they both needed to work together to drive it. She had assumed it would run on magic, and realised despite her experience with boats, she didn't actually know much about piloting one. She sat at the front, with the crystal, as the boat slowly made its way into the darkness...

The waters were eerily calm and still, and something about the complete quiet reminded Garnet of Terra. The water hadn't flowed at all on Terra, it had been utterly still as well, and not for the first time, she wondered if there was a connection between the two places. This place didn't look like Terra, but interdimensional travel? How they had all come to be here? That sounded like Terra...

And then slowly, something appeared, just below the surface. At first, Garnet thought it was just a rock formation in the low light, but as her eyes adjusted, she realised it was the spire of a building. And then she saw another. And another. She leaned over the edge of the water, and saw through the crystal clear surface the remains of a city below, flooded and devastated, hidden beneath the water. She could make out the domes and the passageways and what must have once been houses as fish swam between them, glowing softly. Her mind instantly tried to imagine people living there, walking among the passageways, living their lives... All gone now. It reminded her of Madain Sari. Looking between the devastated buildings and trying to imagine the society that had lived there; her society. Trying to combine her imagination with memories to get a picture of life there...

She thought back to the images they had seen before building the boats. Leviathan had been there...
"On my world, Leviathan was... an Eidolon so powerful that the people of Madain Sari... summoners..." She paused. "...my people... sealed it away because they couldn't control it. I... awoke it eventually. It aided me in my battle against the forces that wanted to harm our world. But it would... destroy its enemies with a tidal wave. Do you think.... Leviathan did this?" she asked, peering into the water. Was Leviathan capable of such destruction in the wrong hands?

Slowly, the sense of longing, the thoughts of Madain Sari, of her life lost, began to grow in her. She looked down, her eyes unable to be drawn from the city below. She thought she could see the people, moving between the buildings. She thought she could see the market and hear the sound of alien voices and even smell the smells of food drifting up from below. She thought again of everything she had lost. Not just Madain Sari, her real home, but Alexandria when it had been devastated, her father when she had been young, her mother more recently, and now her home once again... Zidane...

She felt she had spent her life losing things. Losing homes. Losing places she felt comfortable. Maybe it was why she had only really ever felt at peace when travelling with Zidane. Maybe she didn't really have a home. But down below, she sensed that this could be home. This was somebody's home. They could stay here, couldn't they? Make it their home.

She knew something was wrong. That feeling... That longing, yes she knew it, but not for this place. She'd never been here. This place was under water and destroyed. Tainted by a deep sadness, but this wasn't her home. This wasn't where she belonged. And yet she couldn't shake the feeling. This was a place she'd return to some day. Wasn't it? With great effort, she tore her eyes away from the city below. Nothing else. She would forget it. She would push it away. A place to call home.

"We have... to keep moving. Don't look at the city..." she advised, with great difficulty, as if she could tell it had some magical hold over them. As if she knew they had to keep moving forward...