Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy 8 or any of its characters or any other copyrighted stuff which I might possibly be sued for using. And there would be no point to suing me, anyway, since I'm a poor sixteen-year-old Tennessee girl and have no money. :P

A/N: Oddly enough, I got the idea for this fic while I was playing FF7. My mind works strangely sometimes. XD (Okay, most of the time.) And, well, I just couldn't focus on anything else until I got it out of my head. But no worries to all of you who have been waiting so long (and patiently, for the most part :P) for updates on Sons of Reproach or my other fics. I'm already lining up plans for new chapters, so it shouldn't be long!

Farewell

"I'm booooored," a little girl complained, kicking a rock that happened to have the misfortune of being nearby. "Zell, let's play something!"

"Wanna play soldiers?" Zell asked hopefully.

"Noooo," the girl replied with a sigh. "I.. wanna... I dunno... Let's go find Matron and see if she can play!"

"I dunno, Sefie, she might be busy."

"But she always plays with us anyway!"

Zell shrugged and agreed, and they walked off toward the white stone building they had previously been standing outside of. While they walked, Sefie asked, "Where is everybody else, anyway?"

"I think Sis took them for a walk by the beach," Zell answered, shrugging again. "I didn't wanna go, though."

There was a short pause before Sefie asked, "Seifer make you mad?"

"No!"

Sefie didn't press the matter, just kept walking. Then they heard Matron's voice coming from behind a door that was barely cracked.

"It's not just the only plan, Sid, it's the only option. Ellone can't stay if they're looking for her."

Selphie and Zell stopped dead in their tracks. Both sets of eyes widened, and they both looked at each other before their eyes shot back to the door when a strange voice, a man's voice, answered Matron.

"All right, dear, all right. I won't argue with you. But what about the others? They're close to her."

Matron sighed. "I know. I think it would be easier if they didn't know.. until after she's gone."

"You mean you won't tell them? Edea --"

"I know, Sid. But I can't tell them, and heaven knows you can't."

"Well, you have to tell Ellone."

"No."

"What!?"

"No. The kids are coming in the morning, early, before anyone awakens. We'll wake her up and tell her then."

"But why?"

"I can't trust her not to tell the others. I don't want them to know it was all planned. They'll ask questions that I can't answer."

Zell grabbed Sefie's arm and pulled her back outside. Once they were out of earshot, Sefie demanded, "Zell, what're you doing!? They're talking about sending Sis away! We can't let them send Sis away!"

"But we can't tell them we were spying!"

"We weren't spying, we were just walking in and they were talking and we heard!"

Zell fell silent and finally said, "I guess. But do you really wanna say something like that to Matron!?"

"Well.. no..."

Sefie bit her lip and looked thoughtful. Finally, she began to muse out loud: "She said Sis has to go. She said someone's looking for her."

"Maybe her parents?"

"But she also said they're kids. So maybe they're big kids, like Sis, and that's why she's going?"

Zell suddenly looked afraid. "Do you think we'll have to go away, too, when we're big kids!?"

"Oh, I hope not!" Sefie cried, hugging him. "I don't ever wanna go away and not be here with you and Matron and everybody!"

"But then what do we do?"

"We..." Sefie thought for a second and finally grinned broadly and announced, "We give Sis a party!"

"A party?" Zell asked blankly. "Why on earth would we do that?"

"Because she's going away! So she won't ever, ever forget us!"

"Are you sure that's a good --"

But Zell's words were lost to Sefie's ears as she suddenly darted off along the beach, yelling over her shoulder, "I gotta go tell everybody! But don't say anything to Sis, I wanna surprise her..."

---

"C'mon, Irvy, hurry up!" whispered one of the small figures that was currently creeping through the courtyard of the little stone orphanage on Cetra continent. It was now well after midnight and the children had all been in bed for hours.. but, this time, they weren't staying there. Sefie had made sure of that.

"Be quiet, Sefie, you'll wake up Matron!" ordered a taller girl, looking around suspiciously in the moonlight.

"Aw, Sefie isn't gonna wake anybody up, Quisty!" said another voice, a boy's this time. "Anyway, Matron's so tired tonight, she ain't gonna wake up for ages."

"You be quiet, too, Irvy! I just don't wanna get in trouble is all!" Quisty said defensively, then squealed when yet another voice spoke up from somewhere she couldn't see.

"Sneaking up late? I should get Matron."

"Aw, sheddap, Seifer!" said another boy combatatively, clenching his fists and trying to look tough. "If you go to Matron, you'll get in trouble, too!"

"Anyway," Sefie put in confidently, "we're not doing anything wrong! We're just gonna s'prise --"

"Sefie, don't tell him!" said the angry blond boy. "He'll wanna come, too."

"He can come! You wanna come, Seifer!?"

"I want to go back to bed," said another boy quietly, "but nobody asked me what I want..."

"Oh, don't be a party pooper, Squall," said the boy who had gotten angry at Seifer earlier. "Don't you wanna tell Sis bye? Don't you wanna help us have a party for her?"

"Sefie has great ideas for parties," Irvy said with a grin.

"A party?" Seifer's voice asked, and he walked out into the moonlight from where he had been hiding behind a column.

"Yeah!" Sefie said, bouncing up and down. "We're gonna play games and talk and laugh and I even saved some of the cookies from dessert so we can have cookies!"

"What are you having a party for?" Seifer asked, frowning.

"Who, you mean," Sefie corrected him, running over and looking at him with big brown eyes. "For Sis! We heard Matron talking to somebody, and saying that Sis is going away with some big kids in the morning! So we're gonna throw her a really big party to say bye and make sure she remembers!"

Squall promptly added, "I keep saying it's not true, Sis wouldn't leave us."

"But I don't think Sis knows she's leaving," Sefie said firmly. "And I heard Matron say it, Squall, and Matron doesn't lie!"

"That doesn't mean she can't be wrong!" Squall objected stubbornly. "Sis won't leave us, she won't."

"Everyone leaves," Seifer said coldly. "You're stupid if you think they'll be here forever."

"No, you're stupid," the combatative little blond boy said, glaring at Seifer. "Stupid and mean and ugly and a bully --"

"Don't make him mad, Zell," Quisty advised, but Seifer's reaction just proved that ship had already sailed.

"At least I'm not a loud-mouthed dork-face."

Really, in later days, none of the children would be able to guess how they didn't wake up the matron then and there. At any rate, the next thing they knew, Zell started yelling, then Seifer started yelling, then Quisty started lecturing, then Seifer got mad and stomped off, and Zell finally wound up fighting hard not to cry.

"Don't let him get to you," Irvy advised, patting Zell on the shoulder. "He just wants to make you mad, and make you cry."

"No, he's jealous because we're all friends," Sefie said, sticking her tongue out in the general direction of the place that Seifer had disappeared to.

There was a silence after that, broken only by a couple of sniffles from Zell. Then Sefie hugged Zell, bounced to the middle of the courtyard, and announced, "Next stop, Sis's room!"

Judging by the reactions of the others -- which included "Huh?" from Zell, "Oh, yeah!" from Quisty, and "What are we waiting for!?" from Irvy -- they had momentarily quite forgotten just what they had gotten up in the middle of the night for. It was a good thing that Sefie, at least, wasn't easily discouraged, and she led the way toward a room off of the courtyard, grinning and skipping all the way.

"Sis?" she whispered tentatively as she opened the door.

"Hey, Sis!" Zell called a little louder.

A figure stirred in the room's single bed, and then a girl with rather short, tousled brown hair sat up and looked at the open door. She was a little bleary-eyed and quite obviously tired, but she perked up immediately upon realizing who was at her door.

"Zell? Sefie? Did you guys have a bad dream?"

The voice itself said plainly that this girl was older than any of the other kids. It was gentle and caring and definitely not as high-pitched as Sefie's.

"No," Sefie said, bouncing into the room and onto the girl's bed. "We came to see you! We're havin' a party for you, Sis!"

"A party?" the girl called Sis asked, blinking her confusion. "But it's not my birthday or anything, and I don't want you to get in trouble..."

"It's okay, Sis," Squall said as the rest of the kids piled onto her bed, too. "We'd get in trouble, if we had to. But we won't, so don't worry."

"But ain't it a great idea?" Irvy asked, grinning.

"Why do you want to have a party for me?" Sis asked, still confused.

"Sis, you're not going anywhere, are you?" Squall asked suddenly, before anyone else could even open their mouths. And this was saying something, considering just how quickly Sefie and Zell could do that.

Sis frowned and asked slowly, "Why would you ask me that, Squall?"

Color immediately began to rise in Squall's face. "Well -- Sefie and Zell say they heard Matron talking about you. About you going away. But you wouldn't go away, would you, Sis?" he added quickly.

"We did hear her saying it," Sefie said indignantly. "You just wanna sit and mope and be lonely and say it ain't gonna happen, but it is! Matron said so! The big kids in a white boat are coming in the morning, before we wake up! And they're gonna take Sis away, and I don't know if we'll ever see her again, so I wanna throw her a party so she won't forget us!"

Sis laughed, and her amusement seemed to calm Sefie and reassure Squall. Finally, with amusement in her brown eyes, she smiled at them both and said gently, "Don't be silly. I'm not going anywhere, Matron would have told me."

"But Seifer says everybody leaves sometime," Zell said with wide eyes. "Maybe somebody in your family's still alive, Sis! Maybe they've found you and they're coming to get you!"

"Her family wouldn't be big kids, though," Quisty said reasonably. "They would be grown ups, like her mommy or her daddy..."

"Then that means you didn't really hear what you thought you did," Squall put in.

Before Sefie or Zell could object that they had heard exactly what they had reported to the others, Sis spoke up in a soft voice: "I don't have any family left, grown ups or big kids or anything else. My parents have been gone since I was littler than any of you, and Raine died before I came here. Uncle Laguna..."

Her words drifted off and finally she just shook her head. "He won't be coming."

"But we heard --"

"Maybe you did, Zell," Sis cut in gently, "but I don't know who could possibly be coming after me. Maybe you heard Matron wrong, or maybe she was just wishing out loud that someone would come for us and she didn't really mean that anyone is."

"Matron wouldn't wish for us to leave!" Irvy objected vehemently.

"She would wish that our families were still here," Quisty said confidently. "She told me so, once. She said she didn't want any of us to leave, ever, but she still wishes that our parents had been able to take care of us."

"But then we never would've met, pro'lly!" Sefie gasped.

"Of course we would've met," Sis said, smiling. "Because what would I ever have done without Sefie the Spunky, Quisty the Quirky, Zell the Zealous, Irvy the Ingenius, Squall the Silent... and you, too, Seifer the Shrewd."

Everyone turned to look at the place Sis was smiling at. There, beside the still-cracked door, stood Seifer, an incredulous look on his face.

"How'd you see me while I was on the other side of the door!?"

"Because that's my job," Sis said with a grin. "To spot you and keep you out of trouble. And if you don't get in here with everybody else or go back to bed, Matron'll find you and then you will get in trouble."

Seifer looked back over his shoulder for a second before finally coming inside with the others. "Fine," he said, crossing his arms. "But don't think I'm here because of your stupid party."

"Then why are you here?" Zell asked with raised eyebrows.

"Shut up, crybaby."

"Seifer," Sis said with that elder-sisterly tone of reproof. "Don't be mean to Zell, all right?"

Seifer muttered something unintelligible under his breath, which Sis apparently took for an agreement. Zell, however, continued to glare at Seifer suspiciously.

"So you're not leaving?" Squall asked, as if just to be sure.

Sis smiled and said, "No, Squall. Not that I know of.. and I'm pretty sure I'd know."

There was a short silence and then Sefie asked, "So.. can we still have our party?"

---

It had been a long time since any of the kids had ever tried to stay up through the night, but it was needless to say that they didn't do so well. At first, they were all excited to stay up and talk and play (even Squall and Seifer, though of course they didn't admit it), but after all the cookies were consumed and their sugar high crashed around four AM, they started to fall asleep where they stood. Sefie fought it the longest, but even she finally nodded off in the middle of a game of cards.

Sis just laughed and herded them off to their beds. When she finally got back to her own room, it was the dark before the dawn, and she was just thinking about how sweet the kids were and how glad she was to have someone to care about again.

And then she saw the Matron, a man she didn't know, and a couple of teenagers dressed all in white. What could they be doing in her room?

Swallowing hard, she forced a smile at Matron even as she wondered if Sefie and Zell could have been right.