Irvine took his hat off as he approached the grave marker, stopping a few feet back from the stone.
"Mornin'… um… Ma'am."
He looked out over the rest of the meadow that stretched out behind the town.
"You've got a beautiful spot here. Picturesque little town on one side an' a wide open field with some wildflowers here and there on the other."
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let it out slowly. He knew he wasn't nervous or apprehensive, but there was a tightness in his chest and a tremble in his muscles that he couldn't explain. He took another deep breath and opened his eyes on the exhale.
"I'm gonna have a seat if that's okay."
He dropped down to sit cross-legged, with his coat laid out behind him and his hat off to the side.
"My name's Irvine, by the way. We've never met, but I know a little about you thanks to a couple of new acquaintances I've made recently. Squall's the one that actually got me thinkin' about comin' here in the first place. He's a piece of work, your little boy. I've never met anyone so completely sure of what they need to do and yet be so oblivious to it at the same time as he is.
"He's a born leader, but the way I hear it, he spent the majority of his time before becoming commander just wantin' to follow orders and keepin' his head down. That made him a damn fine soldier, of course - sorry for my language - but once Kramer put him in charge, you knew somethin' was different. Soon as he got used to bein' the guy everybody was lookin' to, he ran with it.
"Fallin' for Rinoa didn't hurt none, either. She had him all turned around right at first, but havin' somebody tell you they believe in you regardless of whatever else you've got goin' on sure goes a long way to gettin' yourself straightened out."
He leaned back on one elbow and pulled a small flask from inside his jacket, took a sip and replaced it.
"On the way here I kept wonderin' why I was doin' this. Y'see, more often than not, I let people who've passed on go about their business. I've set too many on that path to take the time and talk to most of 'em. There's quite a few I ain't interested in talkin' to, anyway."
He shook his head and chuckled quietly.
"There's more'n a few I'd shoot again if I had the opportunity, but they brought that on themselves. Some people just need killin'. But I digress… Squall's only memories of you are what Ellone told him you were like and what he saw when she sent him here. He kinda put a few things together after comin' here and talkin' to a few people, but he doesn't know you like a son should know his mother. An' not to put too fine a point on it, but it ain't like he's gonna come visit any time soon. It's nothin' personal y'understand, but he's got a lot of people after him with questions right now and he's runnin' low on answers."
A small breeze picked up and Irvine let it flow around him, appreciating the faint rustle of grass and leaves on distant trees before he continued.
"Squall helped me get through a little crisis I had a few weeks back. He and I were the point team to assassinate Sorceress Edea. I was the shooter and he was my lookout. Normally, this is a cake walk. I go in, line up, pull the trigger, go home. That's it. But this time, when I sighted down on my target, I discovered that the Sorceress was the matron that took care a' me when I was little. I didn't want to shoot her. There was no way she was this great evil force we'd been hearin' about all our lives. But there she was... right out in the open."
The memory brought a long gone chill to the present air and Irvine gave a small shiver.
"I couldn't do it. I know it only took a few seconds, but it felt like hours I sat there tryin' to figure out what was happenin'. Squall got through to me. He set me straight and got me back to where I needed to be. Turns out, my bullet didn't even make it through her force field and things just went more pear-shaped from there, but I did what I was commissioned to do. Yeah, Squall was just being himself and doin' his job, but it was more than that. I felt like, for whatever reason, he was talkin' to me, you know? And not some random trigger jockey he got partnered with. Things like that stick with you. Especially when all I'd heard about this guy was that he was cold and detached and aloof. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't the warmest person when I first met him, but you need armor like that with a life like his."
He realized how that sounded and a quick look of shock followed by a sheepish frown crossed his face.
"Sorry. That might'a sounded a little more harsh than intended, but my point was that you did good. He's got a lot of things under the surface that'll serve him well as long as he keeps goin' the way he's goin', an' those things had to come from you. SeeD doesn't have much patience for individuals, y'know? So he put the important parts of himself in a little box and buried it under a mound of being better than everybody else at damn near everything that didn't involve interacting with another human being."
He couldn't help but give a rueful smile at having chosen a path that wasn't quite as restrictive.
"Anyway… I think that's really why I came out here. I wanted to thank you for giving your boy the right tools he needed to survive and to let you know that he's got a few friends now that actually care about him. I can't speak to how you view the afterlife, but if you're the kind that might still be watchin' all of us that're still here, you'll already know that's he's doin' alright for himself."
He let out a long sigh and smiled a genuine smile.
A voice from the base of the small hill sent a surge of adrenaline through him. "You're an unexpected visitor."
In a blur of motion, Irvine sprang up and whirled into a defensive crouch. He eased into a relaxed standing position when he saw who the voice belonged to. "President Loire?"
"Are you trying to make time with my wife, Mr. Kinneas?"
"I… Uh… No. No, sir."
Laguna smiled and clapped Irvine on the shoulder. "She's been gone for quite some time, Cowboy, and I still talk to her like she's standing right here beside me." He saw a questioning look flash across Irvine's face. "She's not gonna take offense if I make a joke, so there's no reason for you to be nervous."
"Okay. Thank you, sir."
"Please, call me Laguna. I already have enough people calling me sir despite my insistence that they don't."
"Right, then. Laguna it is."
Laguna took a deep breath and tilted his face to the sun. "There's nothing quite like being outside on a nice day is there? The sounds and smells always make me think of how… clean everything can be."
Irvine shrugged a tacit agreement but said nothing. Laguna didn't miss his lack of response and turned to face him with a cocked eyebrow and a half smile.
"Apparently that eyebrow thing runs in the family."
"So even though you wear the clothes of a cowboy - the epitome of an outdoor profession - you don't like being outside?"
"Oh, I like it just fine, but I tend to gravitate to bars, saloons, and taverns more often than not. The sounds and smells I'm used to are bottles knockin' together, stale smoke, the hum of a lot of conversations in a small space, cooked meat, a slightly out-of-tune cover band, and a lot of sweat."
Laguna swallowed heavily but managed to keep a straight face. "That sounds… um…"
"Disgusting?"
"In a word, yeah."
"Everybody's got their somethin', y'know?"
"And the clothes?"
Irvine shrugged. "I'm a gun for hire. If I wanna dress the part, my options are cowboy or soldier, and seein' as I'm a lackadaisical sort, soldier seems a bit of a stretch."
Laguna couldn't help but laugh. "I see you and Squall getting along famously."
"I was telling Raine how he's turned out."
"She knows. There's so much of her in him that it's hard for me to believe he's not her, just in another form."
"…uh-huh."
"She was always so determined. She'd get an idea in her head and there was no changing her mind until she was good and ready to have it changed. From what I've seen and heard, Squall's the same way."
"Oh, yeah. That jumpin' into space thing? That was determination if I ever saw it. Well… a mixture of determination and desperation, at any rate."
Laguna stepped around to the headstone, crouched, and started picking at the longer pieces of grass growing around it. "They got lucky. Really lucky. I'm sure that Raine's spirit still lives on in Squall, but it sounds absurd to say that she gave him the ability to fight against the vacuum of space."
"Y'know, ever since he realized he was in love with Rinoa, he's made some truly stupid decisions - jumpin' into space just being the most recent - that he managed to suffer no ill effects from. If you say that's Raine's influence offerin' a guidin' hand, I'll buy it 'cause ain't nobody that lucky that often."
"I'm familiar with that kind of luck, trust me." He gave a wry smile and stood to face Irvine. "I don't know that I would've wound up in Winhill and met Raine, otherwise."
The two let an amicable silence rest around them before Irvine gestured back towards the town. "I'm headin' back to the pub for some food. You wanna tag along?"
"Absolutely. Give us a minute and I'll be there."
"Sure thing. Raine, I appreciate you lettin' me ramble. Thank you." With a tip of his hat, Irvine turned and headed down the hill.
Laguna put his hands in his pockets and turned back to the marker. "Look at you. Making new friends without even trying. The skills you worked on tending bar never get old, do they?" He paused for a long moment. "I'm so sorry for not coming back. I spent so much time thinking about making the trip that I actually convinced myself I'd done it a couple of times. But now that the Ultimecia business is taken care of, I imagine I'll find myself with a bit more free time. Ellone, too. Not having to stay hidden away from the world will be a weight she's happy to part with. Squall, though?" He shrugged. "I've got some inroads to make with him before I can guess how he might want to spend his time. I'm going to catch up with Irvine for now, though. I'll come back up later, okay? I love you."
He kissed his fingers, knelt, and rested them gently over Raine's name before turning to follow Irvine's path down the hill. Without looking back, he called over his shoulder, "I'm thinking about buying a cowboy hat."
He knew no one else would hear it, but the breeze that picked up at that moment carried faint, glorious laughter with it that made him smile.
Summoner Luna was helping me to nail down a bunch of random ideas I've had in my head recently - none of which had to do with The Successor Challenge, by the way - and at one point, she says "Put names in one hat and plot points in another, right? So for a fic, maybe you pick Irvine out of the first hat and... I don't know... 'Visits Raine's Grave' from the second." And so, much to my surprise, here's my submission for the challenge. I'd love to say it wrote itself, but that'd be a lie. I did, however, rather enjoy writing Laguna even if I thought that pairing him with Irvine would be funnier.