Raindrops
Summary – (Post-game) Learning from the past doesn't always allow us to avoid repeating it. ...Or so one man perceives. One-shot.
Disclaimer - The beginning quote is from George Santayana, so I don't own that or Final Fantasy VIII for that matter. Yeah.
Author's Notes – Yeah, I know I should be updating Reinventing Me, but... I just felt like doing this. It's a very close stylistically to Pink December with maybe less of an odd narrative. Anyways, enjoy! Or... try to anyways.
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
If only that old adage had some actual pull in this world. I've never been one to forget events from the past or be unable to remember them and yet I'm perpetuating history's cycle. I've failed to prevent it from happening all over again. I've failed. Period. Some could argue that the long-term memory damage caused by the use of Guardian Forces could have made sense of this failure but I know better than to believe in loopholes. GFs may affect memory but there are things in our lives that we learn or experience that can never be erased. Their presence will forever linger on, consciously or not. This isn't some irrational theory based on sentimentality either – it's fact. Anyone who's ever met me knows that I'm not the sentimental type. Not in the slightest. And anyone who was present on that derelict Trabian basketball court eleven years ago would know how people can be drawn to others based on long-gone memories. There's the proof behind my statement. It's not wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking is something I've lost the ability to do four months and four days ago. I will always be able to count the months, weeks and days I've lost that ability along others that I'm not in the mood to discuss. The date will be forever fixed in my mind - this I will remember long after I have to add years into my mental calculations.
...It's hard enough dealing with this now, nevermind years from now. Truth be told, I'd get this life over with if someone wasn't counting on me to stick around. I'm not referring to my being the headmaster of Balamb Garden either. Anyone high in rank could easily take my place by necessity. Anyone who's brave or stupid enough, more likely the latter, could pull it off admirably as long as they kept plenty of pens on hand, a serviceable approval stamp and a good ergonomic chair. And I'm sure that theory's being tested since it's the scenario Balamb Garden is facing at the moment.
I'm off on leave for an unspecified amount of time. It's unspecified because I'm unsure if I'll ever go back. My mind's too preoccupied to deal with basic requisition forms right now and after eleven years of earning A-rank SeeD salary and several months' worth of a Headmaster's, I can afford to never come back and still live comfortably.
And to set the record straight, when I said live comfortably, I meant it in financial terms only. Too many things have happened last year to be able to live comfortably as the term implies. The aforementioned is something that'll forever be lost on me. Or maybe that was always the case and it took this to realize that.
No. That would be an outright lie. I have been able to live comfortably during that eleven-year span, albeit it was only when I knew I'd be coming back to her at the end of the day, whether it was from a mission or a dull day at the office. If that part of my life had been spliced out of existence and I only had the seventeen years prior to that and the four months after, maybe I could have made that claim.
No. Even that would be a lie. The ending point of that period in my life was morbidly bittersweet. I thought those kinds of tragedies were behind me for good, but I guess it was naive to assume that life would ever give me a break.
Correction. It was foolishly and hopelessly naive to assume that life would ever give me a break.
Continual loss and melancholy is what Squall Leonhart knows best, it's the reoccurring theme in his life so he should learn to deal with it because it'll never change. The cycle will never be broken. The past will forever plague him. Why should he get a break?
God, why don't I blame genetics while I'm at it too? There's a whole treasure trove of uncanny similarities to be found there. Maybe it's part of the reason it happened. Maybe I didn't learn from the past after all. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to Ellone when she was telling everyone about Laguna all those years ago. I wouldn't put it past me if I didn't; I thought of the man as a moronic oaf. So why would I listen about someone who I regarded as such?
Besides, that baby she mentioned could have been anyone and from what I was told later on, I had a stronger resemblance to my mother anyway. I wouldn't have connected the pieces by myself since the man didn't look anything like me first and foremost, nor would I want to voluntarily. If she would have somehow slipped in that I was that baby, I would have dismissed it as soon as it was said, told her she was mistaken, maybe coloured the response with a few expletives. I'm almost positive I would have. I did as soon just that when Laguna had enough courage to tell me a few months following the Ultimecia incident. Not to mention if you prodded her enough, Rinoa would have admitted that the only framed picture hanging in my dormitory had nothing to do with a random desire to spruce up my place.
Rinoa... I shouldn't have said her name. It's...too much. Too many things are coming back again. It's almost like accidentally ripping out stitches before they're anywhere near healed. You're back to square one, cursing you did whatever it was you did to set yourself back along with what you did to cause to beget all of this discomfort in the first place.
Well, one thing's for sure. I'm cursing now.
But at what moment does all this pain trace back to? If I wanted to be excessively cynical about the estimation, I could say over eleven years ago, when we first met on the day of the graduation dance. But I'm not going to be excessively cynical because that's not where it began, that would be immature extrapolation. She's given me more happiness than pain since then anyway. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have made her my wife eight years ago and we wouldn't have been the first ones to be married out of everyone.
However, even though it was big news at the time, it ultimately didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things; the weddings were more-or-less clustered together. Selphie and Irvine simply did things in reverse order, had a daughter first and married once Selphie had enough funds and time on her hands to organize the wedding down to the most insignificant details. To summarize, I've never seen so much confetti and meticulously-folded napkins in my life. I'm surprised no one suffered shock from attending their extravagant ceremony after our very simplistic one several months prior.
Not long after that, Zell married the girl he'd been with since the post-Time Compression celebration and maybe three weeks later, Seifer came back to the Garden and something must have eventually happened between him and Quistis because they had a wedding of their own roughly a year later. Now I assume the misuse of Confuse and Blind spells were at work here but I digress.
Anyways, I'm not going to go any further into the subject about marriages because they were all far too early in the timeline. Towards the end January, maybe even early February of last year would arguably be the more reasonable starting point here.
Regardless of the semantics, back then, Elle had been kidnapped by a group who learned of her ties with the President of Esthar and wanted to take advantage of it for a hefty ransom. It goes without say that I was one of the first to know about this and the first to sign on for the mission to find her. Fortunately for her, this group's inexperience and over-confidence eventually lead to their undoing. We were able to rescue her fairly quickly – when compared to the time it took for said president to rescue her all those years ago, that is. I started the search in February and she returned with the White SeeD in March.
All throughout this ordeal, I kept contact with Rinoa over sporadic radio transmissions. As much as I wanted her by my side and as much as she wanted to be there with me, I couldn't let her come along for the mission because of the unknown dangers involved. If it were any other run-of-the-mill mission, I would have had no qualms in letting her come, but rescue missions involving ransoms were always gritty. When things started to bungle up as they normally did, the criminals always became desperate and that desperation usually led to irrational bloodshed. As it turned out, I was right on both counts. I'd gained another scar to prove it.
Out of the three separate occasions where I was forced into close combat with some member of the group, the last of which resulted in a small but noticeable scar near my jugular. But when I came home on the second week of March, Rinoa hadn't noticed it, not even during the times where my necklace and bomber jacket were absent for whatever reason. This clued me in that her mind was obviously elsewhere, but at the same time, I wasn't able to figure out why that was. A couple of days later, when I couldn't take being in the dark anymore, I finally asked her to tell me what was bothering her. She answered me plain and simple.
I was going to be a father at the end of October.
Although we were the first to be married, it would come to no one's surprise that we would be the last to have any children. Selphie and Irvine already had their daughter and the rest eventually became parents sometime after marrying. Quistis and Seifer had a son while Zell and his wife had fraternal twins – a son and daughter. It would also come to no one's surprise that I fainted right after she told me. I hit the concrete floor nice and hard. Face-first too. It was a miracle I didn't break my nose in the process. As expected, after all of the initial congratulations were out of the way, I became the victim of mass teasing. It was a good thing I'd gained a bit of a sense of humour after all of those years or else there would have reports of multiple salary cuts that week.
After the initial shock had worn off in the consequent months, I gradually warmed to the idea, though it raised dormant insecurities in more ways that I could count. I remember a time where Rinoa tried to ease my nerves by placing my hand on her well-rounded stomach and told me that there was no reason to be scared of something that innocent. I felt a little more at ease until the phone rang and disturbed the peace. It was Xu calling from the office about a month-long mission in Trabia. I asked her if it could wait. She told me that I was the only qualified candidate for it. I was at a loss for words.
I hadn't undertaken any missions since I'd been promoted to Headmaster after Ellone's rescue – I wasn't supposed to undertake anymore missions, just paperwork. But even in light of the official job description, I knew that nothing was ever set in stone. If I was the only one who could do the job, Headmaster or not, then I had no option but to accept. The call was in mid-September and Rinoa was seven-and-a-half months pregnant at the time. It would be cutting it close to start with and the fact that Trabian missions had a tendency to run longer didn't reassure me in the slightest. I still had no choice. I had to accept.
Afterwards, I looked at Rinoa solemnly and asked if she was alright with this. She said, 'Don't worry, I'll be fine.'
Little did I know it would be the last words I'd ever hear from her mouth.
Upon completing the mission on time in mid-October, I came back to the Garden only to find that Rinoa was in the infirmary and had been there since the end of September. From what Dr. Kadowaki had told me, after the first week I'd left, she'd been coming into the infirmary on occasion, complaining about minor dizzy spells. The week after, it was constantly-decreasing energy levels. It was only the week after that she was finally admitted for supervision. And it only got worse from there on in.
By the time I came home, her condition had deteriorated enough where she didn't have the energy to speak and could barely scribble notes to communicate. At this point, I was livid for the lack of answers I'd been getting about her condition. Needless to say, 'inconclusive' was a word I learned to loathe quickly.
When she went into labour on the 31st after the stroke of midnight, I wasn't sure how the birth would affect her condition with the shaky information I'd been given previously. The doctors weren't sure of this either. It came down to two schools of thought. Either the delivery was going to complicate things or having the baby would alleviate the level of stress that the later-stage of pregnancy had taken on her body. When I'd fiercely hoped it was the latter, it was the last time I'd ever done any wishful thinking – I was wrong. She only had enough energy left to hold our newborn for a couple of minutes and to smile at both of us before she closed her eyes peacefully and never reopened them.
Since then, a parasitic void developed in my body that I haven't been able to get rid of. Immense guilt plagued me. And it still did whenever I thought of her, which was often. I wasn't able to protect her like I should have. I wasn't able to learn from Laguna's mistake and avoid letting Rinoa mirror my mother's fate. I let her slip away from me the very moment I went against my better judgement and accepted that mission. If I was there, I could have gotten her to stay for observation sooner and the issue might have been resolved. It not, I could have been by her side to comfort her for longer than I had at the very least.
Either way, it was only a matter of time before everyone at the Garden knew that Rinoa had passed away after she miraculously managed to give birth to our son. A son, as everyone surely noticed but no one had the audacity to comment on, carried a striking resemblance to her. The only person who didn't know was Laguna. I didn't have the– For all he probably knew, Rinoa wasn't dead. And despite the many one-sided attempts over the years we still weren't close. I wasn't in the mood to extend the olive branch.
Silently resting in a chair in my dormitory, I realized I had to get up when I noticed that Alex was fast asleep in the corner of his playpen. After getting up and walking toward the edge of it, I dipped my hands downward to reach for the small boy and pick him up. When his head rested against my shoulder, I thought heard some burbling. I looked down at my shoulder only to meet up with wide chocolate-brown eyes and an infectious smile. There was no doubt where he inherited those from.
"...What am I going to do with you?" I said in a soft tone I usually reserved for him. He burbled some more and one of his tiny hands grabbed hold of my nose. Removing his wiry digits so I could breathe again, I told him, "No, no. My nose isn't a play thing."
And sure enough, the very instant I let go of his little hand as I was walking towards his room on the left, his claw-like fingers latched back onto my nose again. I wasn't surprised by any stretch of the imagination. He was at the grabbing stage now. I had to stop wearing my Griever pendant because of it. Thank Hyne the smiling and laughing stage he seemed to be in as well didn't force me to hide more material things.
A little later, after I finally managed to put him down in his crib for the night, I retreated to chair again, ready to close my own eyes too. I haven't been able to sleep in my old bed since Alex's birth. Sleeping in the chair made it easier not to think.
Knock. Knock.
Lazily rubbing my eyes, I wondered who could be knocking at this hour. –That was before a quick glance at a nearby clock revealed that it was only seven forty-five. Getting back up, I took a couple of strides to the door and unlocked it, assuming it was Selphie or Quistis coming over to check up on me, their true intent always disguised with some kind of excuse.
I almost swung my door shut a second after opening it. I wasn't expecting him to show up at my doorstep.
"What are you doing here?" I hissed at the older man. I would have yelled but I didn't want my son to wake up.
"Listen, I know about Rinoa and how-"
"Well who doesn't? It's been four months already." I snapped. But before I could have gone any further, he interrupted me.
"-You didn't let me finish Squall. I know that you two had a son."
My chest seized up. Not only because of his statement, but because my son must have decided that making random cawing noises was much more interesting than sleeping at the moment. Even if I thought up some kind of elaborate lie, I couldn't deny the existence of a baby in the other room now.
In spite of this, I attempted to maintain my ground. "What of it?"
Laguna tucked away an errant strand of hair. "I heard that he looks an awful lot like Rinoa."
"So?" My resolve was fading fast but he didn't have to know that. "Babies are supposed to look like their parents."
"Yeah but Squall...I can imagine how hard it must be to raise a son who looks just like-"
"Yes, you can imagine but you wouldn't know, would you? You didn't raise me."
"Squall, we've been over this far too many times than I care to remember and I don't have the energy to argue with you today. I just want to talk to you about something."
Suddenly, my son decided that he wanted to make even louder cawing noises. "...Excuse me for a moment."
I darted into the nearby room and approached the crib in the left corner. There he was with his hands outstretched towards me and a big smile on his face, very satisfied with himself. I picked him up and I couldn't deny the emerging grin on my own face anymore. The tugging sensation near the corners of my mouth felt foreign and slightly awkward. When was the last time I truly smiled?
"...What am I going to do with you?" I told him again in a low but light-hearted tone. I held him right in front of me to see his reaction. When he gave me yet another toothless grin and a loud, shrill peal of laughter, I was certain that this was Alex's favourite question to hear. Then he poked me in the left eye – served me right for giving him a wide opening like that.
After I changed the way I was holding him so he was closer to my body, I heard the door creak behind me. I turned around to see Laguna behind it, edging closer to the frame. Much to my own surprise, I found myself opening the door instead of closing it. Alex decided to snuggle himself against the crook of my neck, only the tufts of his dark hair visible now. I looked at the older man calmly, not saying a word. He seemed to fill the void for me, albeit hesitantly.
"So...how are you managing?"
Instead of answering his question, I posed one of my own. "-Did it hurt the first time you saw me?"
Laguna looked bemused. "-What do you mean?"
"I know I have a strong resemblance to Raine." I said plainly. "Did it hurt to be reminded of someone who can't come back?"
"If it answers your question, it was a bit of a sucker punch, but it didn't take long before the feeling went away." He thoughtfully paused. "I take it you asked me that question to see if our reactions were the same?"
I stayed silent for the longest time before I decided to put Alex in the playpen again. I didn't feel like answering, opting to survey my son from the edge of the playpen. I heard footsteps and it wasn't long before he was on my right, peering down at Alex as well.
"What's his name?" he asked.
I supposed answering this question wouldn't do any harm...as long as he didn't make a GF joke after. I've heard enough of those to last me a lifetime, too many moronic attempts to lighten the mood around me. Jokes to which I normally replied, 'Well, at least I didn't name him Doomtrain,' or, 'No, I didn't name him after my favourite GF. He would have been named Quezacotl if I had.'
"His name is Alexander. ...I usually call him Alex though."
"Hm. That's a nice name for a grandson." he mused aloud. My heart stopped. Even though it dawned on me that I'd made him a grandfather quite a while back, it hadn't truly sunk in until now. Before I had any more revelations on the matter, he switched topics on me. "Squall...have you ever thought about raindrops?"
I furrowed my eyebrows, wondering if the small child in the playpen could have asked me a more sensible question. I concluded that he probably could have.
"Raindrops? No, why would I? It's only falling water."
"Whether you know it or not, you're on the right track here. Now, do you think we can control how the raindrops fall?"
"...Obviously not."
"Exactly. Raindrops fall where they want to; we have no control over it. The only thing we can do about it is to use an umbrella to avoid getting wet or change into a dry set of clothes later on."
"I fail to see what that has to do with anything." Not to mention I also failed to see why that man hadn't been admitted to a mental asylum yet.
"It's like life." he explained. "Some things will always be outside of our control. All we can do is choose how we deal with it." He turned towards me. "Do you see where I'm getting at?"
I did, but I didn't want the conversation to head that way. I didn't want a sermon from man who had no right saying it. He knew nothing of what I went through. Absolutely nothing.
"-Do you know how she died?" I asked abrasively. This caught him off guard, I could tell by his expression.
"To be honest, I don't. When Elle visited me in Esthar a few days ago, she didn't say much other than it wasn't long after your son was born."
"-She died exactly like Raine did."
The colour in the older man's face disappeared. "...Did she go through it alone?"
"No...I was there when she gave birth."
My plan backfired. I hadn't expected a follow-up question like that, I expected him to shut up and understand why I didn't want the sermon. I- Hyne...I'm so screwed up. Part of me wants to continue even though it'd mean telling him... What the hell is happening to me? After all of the months of suffering in silence, it's come down to this. I could back away and get used to that path of isolation again or I could...
"She died..." My throat started to constrict. "...She died because of complications towards the end. I wasn't there when they started happening because I was called away for a mission I couldn't get out of. I didn't get back until it was already too late to do anything. The doctors never figured it out."
"Hyne...I had no idea."
"Well now you do." I mumbled tersely. By this time, the little resolve I had was long-gone. Six feet under even. "I let history repeat itself. Because I left...I couldn't save her. She died because of me."
I thought felt a hand on my back. It wasn't comforting, it was just there. I was too numb to feel any of the comforting qualities it ought to have had.
"Don't you think I felt the same way all those years ago Squall?"
"...After Alex was born and Rinoa was gone...I started thinking about that. It made me realize how I only thought of myself when it came to what happened. I never looked at it from your perspective." I dared to directly look into his light-green eyes. "...It's why I couldn't tell you about this before."
"It's fine Squall, I understand." He paused. "But if you could, do me one favour."
"...What is it?"
"Don't ever think that history repeated itself. As far as I can see, you haven't made my mistakes. You never let him go."
I looked at my son and then I looked at him. "I don't understand."
"You weren't seventeen when I first met you, you were four."
If I had any energy, my eyes would have widened. But they didn't. I listened instead.
"I knew that Elle was being sent off on that ship soon so I managed a way to go to the orphanage for a couple of days before to make sure things were gonna be okay. When I got there, out of all of the kids I saw there, you were the only one who caught my eye because you stuck to Elle like glue. So I asked Edea about your story and she said that you came to the orphanage with Elle, not even a couple of months old. And when I connected the dots a few seconds later, I passed out."
"...So you left after you woke up?"
"If only it was that simple..." the older man reminisced, "When I passed out, Cid and Edea put me in one of the rooms where they knew Elle wasn't going to see me. But when I woke up, I still managed to have a visitor poking at my face."
He said it with a bit of a smile. I didn't understand how he could sound so cheery about this. Tales of abandonment weren't supposed to start off sounding so...cheery.
"After one good poke in the left eye-" he continued, "I sat upright on the bed. And when you looked at me with those curious blue eyes of yours, I just knew that you were Raine's boy. In that short time, you reminded me so much of her that it took all I had not to bawl like a baby, I wanted to leave before it got anymore complicated than it already was inside my head. And so I did. It was only when I was back in Esthar that I realized what I fool I was, but because of my duties as president, I wasn't able to go back until a year later and by that time, you weren't in the orphanage anymore so...I assumed you were adopted. After I met up with Elle all those years later, she filled me in on everything I didn't know."
An uncharacteristic sigh escaped his mouth. "No matter how hard it is, don't let how the raindrops fell ruin what you could have today or in the future. I made one mistake because of that and it cost having you in my life. Please, cherish every moment you have with Alex. Take advantage of what I wasn't able to do."
"But Rinoa isn't here to cherish him with me." I countered. Looking over at Alex again, I noticed that he was finally starting to fall asleep again. I allowed myself to frown. "...The fact that she won't be able to see him grow up is what hurts the most. I know she would have adored him. And I...I robbed her of that."
"Squall, don't blame yourself for something I doubt either of you could have seen coming. The important part was that you were there when it mattered most and I'm sure Rinoa appreciated it. You were there where I wasn't for your mother."
Seeing the calm expression on Alex's face, I couldn't help but think back to the only moment his mother had held him in her arms. I'd never seen her with such a serene and beautiful smile on her face and yet, it wasn't even a few minutes later when she wouldn't be able to do so ever again. Was it her way of telling me it was alright? That she was okay with the way things were inevitably going to turn out? There was only one thing I knew for certain. One thing she would want.
"...I won't let raindrops dampen my life."
Glassy-eyed, my father looked at me with the most serious expression I'd ever seen him have with anyone.
"Thank you."
Ending Comments – I hope you guys don't crucify me for this one. Usually I write happier ficlets, but I just couldn't resist doing it. It was like an idea that swallowed me whole, you know? Plus, if you've ever read Pink December, you'll notice that I basically went in the other direction.
Actually, come to think of it, I went in the other direction for the fics with Squall and Rinoa having a child. I mean, it might be just my imagination but, I noticed that in the majority of them, the child ends up being a girl who has Squall's eyes. Now while I know why most people use this convention, I felt proud stray from the norm for a change. And I think it worked out well for the most part.
Comments are welcome and I hoped you enjoyed it. ...Or suppressed the urge to throw poison darts at me. Either works.
-Emerald-Latias