Chapter Text
"Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart."
---
Pistons squealed and steam filled the air as the military-style transport shuttle folded open on either side, letting the doors become exit ramps that docked into the side of the platform. What was left of the ship, with the doors making up the majority of the length of it, was a narrow beam extending over the hull—or what would be a hull, when the doors were reeled back in. At the front was a small cockpit with what looked like two pilots behind the glass.
Squall sighed while holding his supply pack over his shoulder.
I can’t believe I’m doing this…
He ascended the ramp. His boots made small metallic plink sounds against the shiny, steel floor between the two door-walls of the ship. He looked about the cabin. It wasn’t much longer or wider than a car. There weren’t any seats. He looked up. Extending the length of the ceiling was what reminded him of playground equipment—A black, metal bar to hold on to during motion.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” One of the pilots said through the ship’s comm system. “We’ll be departing shortly.”
Squall put his pack down and held it between his legs to keep it steady during flight. He turned to look once more at the impossibly large and busy Esthar National Hanger. Small shuttles and nimble gunships came and went. An enormous cruiser docked. While Squall waited, dozens of Estharian’s in beach garb got on board.
As the horn sounded, a man said over the speaker: “Balamb is our next destination! Passengers to Balamb only.”
Squall rolled his eyes. It had barely been a year since the Sorceress War and somehow annoying Estharian tourists (locals called them “EMAGS”) had completely overtaken the isle of Balamb. They made the restaurant wait times ridiculously long and demanded tours of Garden on the regular.
But certainly, the most annoying of all the people from Esthar was the man who was walking to Squall’s shuttle dressed in a black and gray jumpsuit suited with pieces of Adamantine amor and patches of Armarado skin. Laguna had his long hair drawn back in a tight bun at the top of his head, and a grin that made his eyes wrinkle. In the crook of his elbow, he carried an oblong white helmet with bug-like eyes.
Laguna thought Squall’s dumbfounded look was because he was amazed by the technology around him.
“Cool place, huh?” Laguna said, gesturing to the hangar with his free hand. His machine gun tapped gently against his leg as he turned. “We call it ‘the parking lot.'"
Laguna made his way onto the ship and stood in front of Squall.
Dammit, he looks so much like her… Oh Hyne, what if this is too awkward? No, no, no, you gotta tell him this time. You just have to!
“Mr. President… What are you wearing?”
“Hey, haven’t I told you to call me ‘Laguna’? Loosen up, man!”
Laguna punched Squall’s arm playfully. Squall’s usual flat stare took on an affect of annoyance. It was slight, but Laguna could tell. Raine had given him that face many times.
“Haha… well, anyway, I’m not all junctioned up like you so my staff insisted I wear this stuff. The helmet is pretty sick though.”
As he said it, he put the helmet over his head.
“See, now I can see your vitals, and our coordinates, and I can breathe in any atmosphere…”
Squall heard everything the man was saying, but it came across in a low, breathy, distorted voice. It was unnerving.
Squall grunted, unimpressed.
Laguna took it off, realizing that this would be a long three days if he didn’t choose his battles wisely.
The ship swayed slightly under their feet. A mechanical shriek alerted Squall that the doors were coming up.
“Wait, what about Kiros and Ward? I thought they were coming?” Squall asked a smidge of worry in his voice.
“Uhhhh…” Laguna mumbled as he scratched his head nervously. “They got… uhh… Sick! Yeah, they both got really bad Fungar allergies. Can you believe it? What are the chances?”
Squall’s eyes widened. He looked at the door, which was already most of the way up. He pushed against it futilely.
I can’t be alone with this guy. He was supposed to have his own guards! What am I supposed to do, babysit the world’s most obnoxious government official?
“Hey, hey, it’s cool! I’m all suited up, you’re a legendary hero, what’s the worst that can happen?”
The door made a loud chi-chunk as it locked into place.
“We’re preparing for takeoff; please hold onto the bar.”
Squall growled under his breath, and, feeling defeated, reached up to the bar. He hung his head as the ship’s ascent made his stomach drop.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
---
Along the way, Laguna chattered incessantly about the remote and hard-to-access Grandidi Forest. The monsters were strong, the landscape was brutal. Only one person lived on the vast, jungle-like archipelago, and he was always traveling between the world’s Chocobo forests—there was no guarantee he’d be at that one.
As Laguna babbled, Squall tried hard to control his urge to just say “shut up.” Rinoa had made him promise to be nice to Laguna. Cid had made him promise that the President of the most powerful country in the world would survive this. Garden was in good graces with Laguna’s government—who knew how a different regime would feel.
So he didn’t talk at all, not answering any one of the questions Laguna asked him. He acted disinterested and even asked the pilots how much longer it would be in the middle of one of Laguna’s sentences, but the man would not get the hint. Even when Squall pretended to fall asleep standing up, Laguna prattled on.
I need to get out of this. I can not put up with this.
“Mr. President,” Squall said as calmly as he could. “I don’t feel comfortable being your only guard. We have no idea what we could face out there.”
“Psst, don’t you remember? I was a soldier once!”
Yeah, a moronic one.
“And it’s Laguna!”
“Approaching drop zone. Please prepare for deployment.”
Drop zone?
“What does that mean?”
“Laguna? Umm, hmm, good question…”
Laguna let go of the bar to put his hand to his chin and ponder.
This is the perfect setup! I could tell him now…
Squall slapped his hand over his face.
“What do they mean by drop zone?”
“Oh! There’s nowhere to land a ship in the Grandidi Forest. We have to come in from above.”
“What?!”
“You know, jump!”
Squall had no time to react as the walls of the hull started to fall away. The powerful winds swept through the travel compartment. Squall hit the comm button and tried to communicate with the pilots.
“Abort mission, abort mission!”
But the loud whooshes drown him out completely.
He glared over at Laguna, who had put on his helmet.
“LAGUNA!” Squall yelled. “I’M NOT DOING THIS!”
The man dressed as an Estharian soldier merely gave him a double thumbs up. He walked to the edge of the floor, where the wall had dropped below eye-line. It was obvious that he was about to jump.
“DON’T YOU—”
That was that, the President of Esthar launched himself out of the ship, screaming “WOOHOO!” on the way down.
Squall gritted his teeth. He knew what he had to do, but he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to do it… Or more likely, patience.
Shit, great, now I have to go after that buffoon…
He looked out at the blanket of green that covered every inch of ground beneath him. It was a long fall, but he had Float equipped and could use the trees to slow his descent.
He walked to the edge and prepared himself to jump.
But then a powerful gust hit the transport, throwing off Squall’s balance. He fell forward, tumbling out of the ship.
---
Squall’s body hung folded over a large branch high in the canopy of a broad, strangling Ficus.
Blurs of green and brown in low light. Squall’s vision took a moment to re-focus.
His head was pounding, as was his torso. He knew this feeling all too well. He had fractured at least a couple of ribs.
But he had his supply pack on his back, his Lionheart at his hip, and consciousness, so that was something.
He cast a Cura spell over himself so that the rib pain would numb to a dull ache. He pulled his legs over to sit, straddling the branch. He rubbed his forehead. Ironically, healing spells were rarely effective on headaches.
The figure of a man burst through the leaves in front of Squall.
“There you are!” Laguna exalted. His normal goofiness came off as malevolent through the voice-modulating mask.
Squall blinked. The man was levitating in front of him.
“Oh… did my staff not give you a jetpack?”
Squall frowned sharply and folded his arms.
“You’re going to get me down, and then we’re leaving.”
Ooof, he is no longer in annoyed Raine territory… Now he’s really mad…
Laguna, trying to make up some lost ground, wordlessly floated behind Squall. He put his arms underneath his son’s and folded his elbows up, bracing the upper half of Squall’s body as he slowly brought them to the ground.
Oh! This is my first time… holding him.
Laguna became teary behind his face plate.
I got em’ Raine! He’s going to be safe with me.
Squall, meanwhile, kept his arms crossed and was extremely rigid the whole way down.
As soon as his boots made contact with the earth, Squall pulled away from Laguna.
“Call to the ship. They need to come back.”
“Uhhh, well, about that.”
“You said you have a comm,” Squall ground out. “Call them.”
Laguna removed his helmet to expose his bashful expression.
“That is only a local-circuit comm link, they won’t pick up a signal from here…” Laguna explained slowly.
Squall’s face twitched as Laguna continued to speak.
“And even if we could call them, there’s only one spot in the whole forest where they can pick us up.”
“So, you’re saying we’re stuck here for three days?!”
Squall’s arm flew out in anger. For some reason, it made him feel like when Cid thrust the responsibility of Commander on him. It seemed he was never the master of his own fate.
“Well, not here. We gotta go to the pickup point!”
Squall seethed for a few more seconds and then shifted into mission mode. He could survive this if he just focused on the objective. He could never speak to the president again after they were back in civilization.
Squall took a long breath in and sighed it out, just as Rinoa had suggested he try in situations like these.
He straightened up.
“Fine then. Which way is the pickup point?”
“That way.”
Laguna pointed to the east.
Squall nodded and immediately started marching in that direction.
“And don’t worry, Squall!” Laguna cheered as he patted Squall on the back. “I’ve done this trip a couple of times so this should be easy.”
---
Laguna tried to be quiet as he and Squall walked through the woods. His son had a distant look in his eyes as he trudged over bushes and slashed vines. This, Laguna thought, was an improvement to his outward revulsion earlier.
He walked several paces behind Squall.
How did my son get to be so… competent? He definitely didn’t get that from me… Look at him, he just knows where to go, what to do…
Maybe he doesn’t need me? Maybe he’d be better off not knowing. I mean, he’s gone this long and look how great he is! Hyne knows I would have been better without my old man…
Laguna had tried several times in the last ten months to get alone with Squall to talk to him about their… connection. After giving Squall a brief respite after the war (also known as, giving himself time to work up the nerve to talk about it), he invited Squall to the palace several times under a “diplomatic” pretense. Every time, Squall was joined by several SeeDs and Laguna had to scramble to come up with an actual reason they were all getting together. Kiros and Ward and the palace staff assisted him in trying to get the two alone, but it only worked once, and that time, Laguna chickened out.
Recently, he had tried to arrange a meeting in Balamb. He thought he’d concocted a way Squall would give him a private tour of the island, but then Rinoa showed up.
At one point, Laguna started to break down at the docks as Squall went to take an important call. Rinoa caught him and he unintentionally told her everything. Luckily, Rinoa was a compassionate and understanding individual; not to mention the spitting image of Julia Heartilly.
The rebel she was, she came up with this plan: To take Squall on a hunting trip. He hadn’t gotten to fight much since the war, and, according to Rinoa, he would take any excuse to get out of stuffy meetings, reviewing lesson plans and filling out forms. Of course, she said to bring Kiros and Ward, and pull Squall aside. Laguna had decided to remove some variables from the equation.
He almost called it off again this morning, but Ellone had urged him. She made it sound like Squall wanted to understand who he was and where he came from. Laguna wasn’t so sure he saw that in the boy.
Squall held out his arm to stop Laguna from walking forward.
“Wha—”
“Ssssh.”
The two men crouched down.
Under the thick leaves of the trees, which had trunks nearly the width of an Estharian transport tube, there was very little light. No matter how much sun shined in the sky, it looked like twilight under the branches. But Laguna could just barely see what Squall was looking at. Running around in the brush up ahead appeared to be a silhouette of a man with two swords.
“What? No one is supposed to be here…”
“It’s a Forbidden,” Squall astutely observed. “See the wings?”
Sure enough, there were feathers protruding from the thing.
Squall looked at the side of the tree closest to him and traced its web of branches with his eyes.
“We can avoid it by going over it,” he whispered.
“Oh come on, man!” Laguna said loudly. “We’re here to hunt, let’s do it!”
“Keep your voice down!” Squall hissed.
“What? Have you gone soft since the Sorceress War? Are you scared of a little action?”
Laguna tried to tease Squall in the way his friends often teased him. Maybe if he treated him like a friend, he would become one.
But Squall, being himself, got defensive instead.
“Of course I’m not scared! I am always training! I don’t live in some palace like you.”
Squall’s volume was steadily increasing as he spoke.
Finally, he yelled, “WHATEVER!”
That was just loud enough for the Forbidden to turn its glowing, red, beady eyes their way. It made a strange kind of squawk and began to sprint toward them.
“Guess we don’t have a choice!” Laguna said with a grin.
Oh yeah, Laguna thought. Father-son bonding time!
Squall unsheathed his gunblade and stood with his feet shoulder-width apart. He braced himself for the Frobidden’s approach.
Laguna put on his helmet and touched a button on his right ear. A high-paced, techno beat started playing through his personal sound system. He smiled beneath his mask as he cocked his gun. The song that he had adopted as his personal theme-song, and had pre-programmed into his armor, always made him feel like such a badass.
“Do-do-do-do-do-dodo-do-do…” Laguna vocalized to the rhythm in a low voice only he could hear.
Moving with the pace of the song, he lifted his machine gun as soon as the beast came within range, hitting his bones with three pangs of fire ammo.
“I’ll draw him this way!” Laguna said as he ran several steps to his left. The monster did adjust his vector to follow Laguna. “You come up behind him!”
Squall looked over at Laguna, shocked. He wasn’t used to someone else giving him orders in an active battle situation. He was even less used to that person suggesting the same plan he had thought of.
Following the president’s lead, he waited until he could see the Forbidden’s back and then charged it. But the creature heard him coming and turned quickly, catching Squall’s blade with its two. Squall pushed hard against the swords, but two-to-one on weapons was already challenging, and he didn’t have a good angle. There was no way he was going to get this thing to lower its blade.
He was about to shout to Laguna for some kind of diversion when something loud and bright lit up the forest. The light was momentarily blinding. Squall took a few steps back, disoriented.
The Forbidden, which had spent its entire life in the shade of the forest, let out a pained bark as it tossed its head back.
A flash grenade. That was actually… a decent idea.
“How about that?” Laguna gloated. He walked nonchalantly toward Squall.
“You could have warned me.”
Laguna shrugged. “What would be the fun in that?”
The president, quicker than Squall thought the older man was capable of, turned on his heel and disintegrated the skeletal warrior with a single shot of AP ammo.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that Laguna was a capable warrior—Squall had fought as the man many times, and filling his shoes never made him feel weak. But he was always so clumsy and hapless, so thinking of him as a threat to anything was a source of cognitive dissonance.
Laguna raised his gun and jumped excitedly. A tiny jingled sounded in his speakers.
“YEAH, I still got it!”
Something rustled overhead. Squall looked up to see three more Forbiddens gliding down. They landed, surrounding them. Squall and Laguna stood back-to-back, each facing a different monster, and taking on defensive poses.
“Oh… I guess that was their Mama!”
Laguna couldn’t see it, but Squall was smirking. It had been a long time since Squall had fought anything but a Grat or the occasional Trexuar, the latter of which he knew the strategy of killing so well, that he could probably take it down in his sleep.
In the heat of battle, Squall’s flow-zone, an environment where he felt in control, he became able to relax. The irony of Laguna’s words amused him, so he couldn’t help but quip as he extended a hand to cast Firaga.
“Having parents is overrated.”
Squall moved toward his foe, but Laguna hesitated, thrown off by the comment.
He doesn’t know, does he?
Laguna’s thoughts were broken by a sword swinging toward him. He became cognizant of the attack at the last second and jumped backward, and then pelted the bone soldiers with a clip of bullets.
The men made quick work of the three Forbidden. Squall wiped the Lionheart with a cloth until he could see his reflection in the blade again. Over his shoulder in the mirror of the well-polished Adamantine he could see Laguna hanging his head.
Is he injured?
“We should get moving,” Squall prompted.
“Oh, yeah…” Laguna said in a distant voice.
Whatever it is, he’ll get over it.
Squall started walking again with his gunblade against his shoulder.
“Is this the right direction?” Squall asked when Laguna remained quiet.
“Yeah, it’s the right way…”
The usually jubilant, if not clown-like, man was acting so morosely that even Balamb Garden’s Commander, known for missing many social signals, caught on.
Negative moods like these were dangerous in battle scenarios. It pained Squall to do so, but he would have to cheer this guy up somehow.
What does Rinoa do when I get like this? …She tries to get me to talk to her. Great.
“Laguna,” Squall said, keeping his eyes and momentum forward. “Is everything… okay?”
Laguna released a languid sigh.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine…”
Well if he is not going to open up then there’s nothing I can—
“Do you really think parents are overrated?”
What?
Squall stopped in his tracks and turned. Confused, he squinted at Laguna.
“I mean, what you said in battle….”
Squall rolled his eyes.
What? Why does he care?
“It was a joke, is it that unbelievable that I’d make a joke?”
“Right, but every joke has an ounce of truth to it!” Laguna countered. “If that’s how you feel…. I dunno, it’s just really sad.”
And? This is how we were raised. I don’t need to know about my parents. Zell seems happy with his mom, sure, but then Rinoa… losing her mother, fighting with her father, it’s all so hard on her. I have Ellone, that’s enough. It doesn’t matter where I came from…
“I did fine without parents,” Squall voiced after a few silent moments.
“But parents… your family…” Laguna waxed. “They help you figure out who you are, ya know? Dontcha wanna know who the ‘Leonharts’ are?”
Who I am… I was raised to fight Ultimecia. That’s who I am… No, I guess, that’s who I was. Now… I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter.
“I don’t need to know. I won’t lose anything by not knowing.”
“Right, but, but… Didn’t you miss out on a lot? Like being dropped off on your first day of school, and going for ice cream? What about havin' a dad around to ask about… I dunno, girls?”
Of course, I missed things. But I was never supposed to have them. Why does this matter so much to him?
“Like, like, like…” Laguna took off his helmet and stammered. “Like, what about when you get married. Don't you want your parents there if they're alive? You want to marry Rinoa someday, right?”
“Wha—of course… wait, what?”
Squall was not prepared for that question. His face got hot and red, and his entire body tensed. He was only 19, that was the last thing on his mind!
…Okay, not the last thing, but he was responsible enough to know that had to wait awhile.
A shooting pain raced down his leg as his calf contracted. It was a stress response he had developed over the past few months that Dr. Kadowaki could not explain.
Squall bit his lip, the agony temporarily distracting him from the embarrassment. He winced as he hit the tight muscle with his fist, the only thing that helped loosen it.
When he looked back at Laguna, he had the strangest expression on his face.
“What?”
“The chocobo doesn’t fall far from the tree!” Laguna exclaimed with a smile.
Suddenly, the man looked startled by his own words. He clapped his hands over his mouth.
Squall tilted his head in confusion.
“Never mind,” Laguna said hastily. “Just a weird expression.”
Whatever, at least we can move on…
---
They spent the day making their way up a steep hill, sometimes moving in a switchback formation. Laguna kept saying they had to get to the high ground—that was where the pickup point would be.
They battled several more Forbiddens and a herd of Cockatrices. In their first encounter with a Cockatrice, Squall became encased in stone from a Petrify spell, but Laguna had a Soft to help him recover. Laguna couldn’t help himself for the rest of the day and kept making jokes about it.
“Looks like we had a rocky start to the relationship.”
“Hey Squall, you don’t have to be so stone-faced!”
“Do I have to gravel at your feet to get you to use Esuna?”
It was exceedingly irritating, but Squall just tried to keep his head down and keep moving forward.
But fighting alongside Laguna ended up being somewhat enjoyable. They seemed to be able to anticipate each other’s moves and approached their enemies with similar strategies. When Squall got tangled in vines, Laguna pulled out a dagger and started cutting him out before Squall needed to give the order. And when Laguna had trouble jumping over a canyon Squall had just cleared, he trusted Squall, without question, to cast Float to give him the extra boost to make it to the other side.
It was a strange thought, but every battle and obstacle showed that he and this ex-Galbadian soldier had enough in common to put them in sync. If Laguna could refrain from yapping, Squall could consider, under better, less-remote circumstances, going on a trip like this again.
When the temperature started to drop, Squall suggested they make camp for the night. They found a large flat rock to build a fire on.
Squall offered some of the provisions he had brought to Laguna. He assumed Laguna didn’t have anything, since he didn’t have a pack.
“Nah, man, I can do you one better.”
Laguna grinned as he reached for his bandolier. Squall had not noticed before, but it wasn’t all bullets—there were a few vials sitting in the loops.
“Do you like Behemoth burgers or are you more of a Thrustaevis wings kind of guy?”
“I’ve never had either,” Squall admitted.
Laguna took the corks off both vials and handed one to Squall. Squall eyed the contents of the glass tube suspiciously.
“Relax, this is something I had the guys at the lab cook up,” Laguna said. “It doesn’t look like much but it tastes and fills you up like a real meal.”
Laguna leaned over and tapped his vial against Squall’s.
“Cheers!”
Laguna tilted his head back and took it like a shot. While Squall was uneasy about it, he ultimately decided to do the same.
Surprisingly, it tasted much better than any MRE Squall had ever had. Somehow, it even had the mouthfeel of real food.
Laguna could see that Squall was impressed.
“Pretty good, right? All my idea. It’s great for morale with the troops.”
“…We need these at Garden.”
“Nope!” Laguna chided. “No talking about work. We’re having fun now, right?”
His son said nothing either way, but he looked almost amused as he finished his portion of the portomeal.
---
After they ate, Laguna went into the woods to get more kindling for the fire. When he returned, Squall was lying on the ground on a sleeping pad, facing away from Laguna.
“Hey Squall, are you asleep?” Laguna called.
He threw a few sticks into the fire haphazardly and then walked over to Squall.
“Are you sleep?” Laguna asked again.
He just doesn’t look relaxed. Maybe he doesn’t relax, even when he’s asleep?
Laguna peered over to see Squall’s eyes were open. He looked bothered.
“Yes, Laguna. I am asleep.”
“You don’t seem asleep.”
“I am, I’m in a dream,” Squall grunted. He pulled his jacket, which he was using as a blanket, over his face.
“A dream? Then why are you talking?”
“…It’s an Ellone dream.”
“Ah, okay!” Laguna accepted. He started to walk away before he realized that reasoning was ridiculous. “Hey, wait a minute, you’re still awake!”
Squall pulled his jacket off his face and sat up, looking mad about it the entire time. His hair was a mess.
Laguna couldn’t help but smile.
Aww, I had to drag my teenage son outta bed. That’s so… dad-like.
“What do you want?” Squall spat.
“I just wanted to share a drink with you, is all. This is a vacation, isn’t it?”
Laguna pulled out a flask and waved it a Squall.
“This isn’t a vacation for me. This is a mission.”
Laguna waved the flask again. Sour Squall swiped it.
“But if this makes you shut up…”
“Glad to know how you really feel about me!” Laguna chortled, puffing out his chest. “No more of that Mr. President stuff, you can say whatever you want.”
Squall pulled the flask away from his mouth and coughed, eyes watering.
“What is that?”
“Kamikaze Bomb Whiskey,” Laguna said. “Heh, probably should have warned you.”
Squall handed the flask back to Laguna, who, like Squall, took a swig and then exploded into a coughing fit from the spice of it.
It was hard to tell over the sound of his own hacking, but did he hear his son laugh?
They sat for a while, passing the whiskey back and forth until the small container was drained. Things were relatively quiet, but Laguna was okay with that. Squall seemed… comfortable.
Fire reflected off Squall’s necklace, which had the head of a lion on it. The piece of jewelry had always given him pause, but it wasn’t until he looked at it now with a booze-sloshed brain that Laguna remembered why.
He gasped.
Squall turned to him in confusion.
“What?”
“Oh, uh… No, your necklace,” Laguna pointed. “My wife used to have one just like it. It was her father’s, the family crest or something…”
Squall lifted Griever up in his palm and looked at it. He couldn’t remember when he got it, but he had long since become comfortable with the feeling of reaching for a memory and finding it wasn’t there.
He considered the meaning of what Laguna said.
“You and Raine… you got married?”
“Yeah, right before they came and took Ellone.”
Squall knew how this story went—he had lived several parts of it. Laguna left, found Ellone, and let the girl return to Winhill ahead of him as he assisted Esthar with the transition of power.
“I guess… you never saw her again,” Squall reflected.
It was an idea that filled him with deep fear. He had often wondered, anxiously, if Rinoa would be okay in his absence—even now.
“No, no… I got so invested in everything going on in Esthar, and I didn’t think I had anything to worry about… When I figured out I couldn’t leave, that I was stuck as their leader… I sent a battalion to bring Ellone and Raine to Esthar to live with me.”
The usual joy in Laguna’s eyes dulled as he explained.
“When they returned… They told me Raine had died, and the townsfolk had sent Ellone to some orphanage. It was one of the hardest days of my life.”
The whiskey gave Squall a bluntness and level of curiosity he didn’t normally have.
“Why didn’t you go find Ellone?”
Laguna sputtered and then snorted in a rueful way. “Ha! Great question… I guess I figured since I really screwed up big time, she was better without me.”
The two men resumed their silence, but a memory trickled into Squall’s mind.
“Ellone said that she was trying to change the past… That Raine had a baby she wanted to show you?”
“Yeah. Imagine finding that out while you’re in a spacesuit. Oooof.”
Has he… figured it out? Well, he is a smart kid.
“What happened to the baby?”
Ah Imp-Tails! He doesn’t know! What do I do? Do I tell him now?
Laguna panicked.
“Ellone ah… uh… um, she didn’t know! She and the baby got separated in Winhill,” Laguna lied. He sweated and held his breath, hoping Squall would believe him.
“Oh,” Squall said with mild interest. “Did you look for them?”
Laguna stared at Squall’s profile and saw Raine’s nose so clearly. It was like looking back in time.
“No… but they’re probably better off that way,” Laguna sighed. “I’d make a shitty dad.”
Squall looked at Laguna, who appeared devastated by the gravity of his own words. He felt sorry for the man.
Squall shrugged and offered, “You can’t be worse than Cid. He was kind of like a father figure, and he what… lied to me, sent me into a battlefield, willingly allowed my memories to be erased, gave me a cursed lamp…”
Squall usually avoided thinking about it because it bothered him, but there was nothing he could do. Even now, as he explained, it was making him angry.
Laguna placed a hand on Squall’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Squall,” Laguna mumbled. “You didn’t deserve all that… Your real dad should have come to rescue you.”
“The point is,” Squall deflected from his own pain. “You can’t say you’d be bad, you never even got the chance. Destiny took that option away from you. You can regret the paths you didn’t take… But if you didn’t even know the paths were there…”
Squall was slurring slightly; he had no idea where all of this was coming from.
“Does that make any sense?”
Laguna smiled sadly and patted Squall’s back again before removing his hand.
“So, you do have some insights in that locked-up brain of yours,” Laguna teased. “Rock on.”
Squall rolled his eyes.
“I’m going to go to bed.”
He laid back down on the sleeping mat, again facing away from Laguna.
Laguna kept reminiscing, “Damn, even my best days as a soldier, I couldn’t go toe-to-tooth with you… You’re 19 and you’re the leader of all the SeeDs… At least I was pushing 30 when I became president. And then you saved the world and you’re so damn humble about it… I’d be using that to pull in all the ladies…”
“Please refrain from telling me anything about your business with women.”
“Fair enough,” Laguna said as he stood and walked to his sleeping mat. “All I am saying is, if you ever meet your parents, I bet they’d be really proud. I’m… really proud.”
Squall’s whiskey-warmed heart found the idea of some mysterious figures out there in the universe being proud of him somewhat comforting. Cid had him do what was expected; the man wasn’t proud as so much as he was self-congratulatory. But what if the people who brought in him into the world expected nothing in particular from him… and then he did all that? Would their amazement and admiration make the experience all worth it?
Eventually, the wave of alcohol overtook his wandering mind, and he drifted off to sleep.
---
As they continued their vertical climb that next morning, Laguna blabbered on about this and that behind the respirator of his strange mask. While Squall could not stand the sound of the president’s voice or the glare of the sun, he decided it would be easier to just let Laguna keep talking.
They fought a few monsters, and again, it was easy, almost sport-like. At one point, they even swapped weapons to try out each other’s. However, Squall quickly grabbed his Lionheart back when he saw Laguna hold it like Seifer held his gunblade.
When they emerged from tree-line, they stood in a dense fog.
“Hey, stop!” Laguna called to Squall. “The sensors are saying there’s a cliff there.”
“What do you mean?” Squall asked. “Is this the pickup point?”
“Uhhh…” Laguna fiddled with the keypad on his wrist that spoke to the helmet.
Squall waited patiently for an answer.
“Well?”
“We were going west, right?”
Squall blinked.
“No, we’ve been going east. You pointed us east.”
Laguna chuckled. “So funny story…”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“No,” Squall argued. “There is no way you could have gotten us lost. There’s GPS in that thing. Not even you are that stupid.”
“Well… I mean, in the beginning, I was just going off what I remembered from the last time I was here…”
“So you didn’t check the GPS?”
Laguna shrugged. Squall pinched the bridge of his nose. He was getting frustrated but he wanted to give the man the benefit of the doubt.
Okay, all of his instincts haven’t been awful, maybe he knew what he was doing.
“When were you last here?”
“Uhhh, I dunno, like maybe ten… eleven years ago?”
I should have known he’d screw up like this. Why’d I trust him?
“Are you serious?” Squall erupted. “Is this why Kiros and Ward didn’t want to come? Because they knew you’d make it impossible to get out of this place?”
“That’s not fair,” Laguna said, putting his foot down. “We’ll make it out, we were doing great! I just took us on the scenic route!”
“Remind me to fake allergies the next time you invite me somewhere,” Squall yelled, pacing around in the mist.
“Jokes on you! They didn’t fake it because I didn’t invite them.”
Squall stopped short, turning to Laguna, face livid, eyes shining with fresh fury.
“What do you mean—AAAAaaaah!”
A piece of cliff crumbled under Squall’s foot, sending him off the edge which he had not realized he’d come so close to. He rolled several yards down the steep face of the mountain before he was able to grab onto the vine of a plant.
Squall yelled as the huge barbs bit into his gloved hands.
“Squall?!” Laguna said somewhere above him.
Squall looked up to see the stupid mask peeking through the clouds. Laguna extended his arms toward Squall, but the vine was too far away.
“I’ll come down there! I’ll get you!” Laguna cried.
“It’s fine,” Squall said calmly, survival mode kicking in. “It’s too dangerous. I’ll figure this out on my own.”
He’s always had to figure stuff out on his own! It’s not fair! Laguna thought, his mind full of alarm bells. I can’t believe I yelled at him, this is all my fault!
Squall found a foothold. He extricated one hand from the plant matter and found a tiny bit of purchase in the cliff face to put his right hand. All the while, Laguna fretted above him. Squall wasn’t even sure if the man could see him through the cover of the fog.
With half of his body gripping the rock, he attempted to pull his left hand off, but found the barbs were caught on the leather of his glove. Slowly and carefully, he tried to remove his hand from it.
“Squall!” Laguna said in his strangely deep helmet voice. “You’re too young to die, you don’t understand how important you are…!
I’m going to be fine... this guy is a nutjob.
“I need to tell you, Squall, I need to tell you about your parents.”
At this, Squall paused what he was doing.
“What are you talking about?”
“Squall… I am your father!”
Squall’s eyes went wide as he processed the sound. He wanted to pretend he didn’t hear the words, but he very clearly had.
“No… no…” Squall muttered. He felt like he was going to be sick. “That’s not true… That’s impossible!”
“Search your feelings!” Laguna blubbered. He was on his knees. He couldn’t keep it in anymore—Squall had to know, he had the right to know. “You know it to be true!”
Squall’s thoughts raced to place all the weird moments, the comments from strangers, and Laguna’s clinginess into one picture. He thought of Raine, and what she looked like, and his attachment to Ellone, and how Ellone chose to use him to try to change the past.
The baby… is me?!
Squall’s hand fell out of the glove. In his surprise, his reaction time faltered. He did not bring his body back to the wall fast enough to prevent his fall.
He left nothing but his black glove still attached to the vine.