A/N: This is part of the same 'verse as Fifteen Minutes Old and The Successor. Though it isn't necessary to have read either of the others at all, it does contain a spoiler for The Successor, which has very little to do with the story itself and is revealed in an early chapter...just a heads up if you were ever planning to read that! This is also much shorter than the idea in my head so I might write a companion piece to this sometime because I just have a lot of feels related to this subject.

The news comes like a knife in the dark. Sudden, cruel, and leaves them disoriented and without defense.

Laguna is dead. Laguna is deadLagunaisdead.

Squall leaves immediately, and Rinoa is almost glad, because the news of his father's death is not something he knows how to handle and is even less something she knows how to support. Because the closeness that has formed between them since Noelle is not something she can relate to. Is not something she even fully came to understand.

Squall helps claim the body (The body, Rinoa thinks. That is what death brings us to. With all the death they have experienced, it is her husband having to treat bringing his father's body home like it's a mission that paints the clearest picture of how death has truly become nothing but a word to them.), and they bring him home to Winhill. He is laid to rest beside Raine, with a full SeeD guard around the perimeter of the town, and the news reports ask what it means for Esthar's civil war rather than remembering his life.

In Ellone's extra bedroom where they are spending the week, Squall finally cries. Rinoa, who has seen his tears before (but not like this), holds him, and lets him drink himself to sleep because after what he had to do he deserves that weakness.

At 8:02pm Squall is sleeping deeply and she makes up her mind, and picks up the phone.

"Hello?" His voice is gruff, and his line from the Winhill hotel cracks in her ear. Earlier, he stood near the back. He paid his respects, but respected their need for space.

She is silent for several long seconds, trying to slow her breath. (trying to stop her tears.)

"Rinoa?"

"Car…" she starts, and then sees Laguna's casket, covered not with the flag of Esthar but with roses, and she is five years old, and when she speaks her voice cracks and she doesn't care. "Daddy. Do you want… I'd like… Please come down and meet me for a drink."

There is a breath, hitched, and when he says "I'd love to," she can hear in his voice that his eyes are also filled with tears.