First off, hurrah to a game that can keep you guessing and thinking and even biting your nails nearly two decades later. Thank you, FF team. You're pretty damn special.
Final Fantasy VIII wasn't always a terrifying game for me. When I first played it as a teenager I felt cheated. "This is such a silly game," I thought. "The plot, the characters. Goodness gracious, the events—it's all just so wacky!" (Uh, yeah, I sounded like that as a kid. Didn't you?) Years after the fact, I played it again as an adult. Good God, how blind we kids could be (not you, of course, kind reader, just a series of little Kimmaes). I saw so much more intricacies hidden in every bit of dialogue and scene than I ever could have hoped to as a child. It wasn't so silly anymore. It was intriguing. In some parts, down-right creepy.
Then I played through to the ending for the very first time. I couldn't quite figure out why, but by the time the last shot rolled and the sweet happy ending music lulled me into a false sense of satisfaction, I felt unnerved. After some brief research on the Internet, I found some pretty scary stuff to explain my fears. Since then I've been a big fan of the Squall is Dead theory. Most of it speaks to my experience, and it makes that impact and the end so much more hard-hitting. But one day, by accident, I was stumbling across the Internet and came across something that changed my mind. Something that was even scarier than the former theory's foundation.
Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec are not actual Latin words, but an anagram meaning succession of witches...with the word love left over.
And so, the following was born.
TL;DR: HOLY CRAP SHIT GOT SCARY FOR ME
Legacy of Hyne
by Kimmae
edited by: Moonstruck Kitten
I.
"Madam President, this way."
Rinoa followed Jor through the barrier, leading to the emergency skyway, remembering the moment she knew Beth would become what she was now. She had only been nine, knobby knees and permanent mess in her hair. Rinoa stepped into her room to find a gaping hole where there should not have been, sucking in light and toys. As soon as Beth saw her the hole vanished. The dresser toppled over, the mattress bounced out from the bed frame, and the dollhouse split in two. Beth stared. She did not cry or cower. She did not look frightened. She did not look like Rinoa's daughter.
The cushions were firm, supple, and had rarely been used. Her companions surrounded her on the remaining seats, and the skyway thrummed to life, drawing her away from the palace. The last time I'll see it, she thought. She had been in office ten years.
Laguna had fought for her campaign. Of course the public fought back; she had been a sorceress, unpredictable, dangerous. Even at her standing at the time, she was highly under-qualified for the seat in which she petitioned for. So had Laguna, back when he accepted the position, but that campaign angle had not worked for her. Odine and she had gone public on the success of containing her powers and the public was rightfully not convinced. No experience, other than mercenary work, also made her a poor choice as a presidential stand-in. There had been other candidates with strong platforms and strong contacts, but they had weak ideals for Esthar's future. All the while she kept asking herself if a life of politics is what she truly wanted, when the Galbadian civil war finally broke loose. Five years later, the public saw her in a new light.
The pod began to slow. She grabbed fistfuls of her dress on her knees, gently rocking back and forth. A habit she'd had since childhood. She let go and studied her hands. Her knuckles were starting to swell, the ache deep and persistent like small beasts gnawing on her bones. Liver spots were beginning to appear, the flesh going loose and thin. Time went too fast.
"No one can predict the future. There are no guarantees. Those were your words, Rinoa."
She closed her eyes and put a hand to her chest, as if to tell her heart to stay for another time. Once stirred, it would not stop for anything, but would bull forward, playing through the motions like a tragic play that would always be on stage.
"I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you..."
"Madam President?" Kiros was looking at her expectantly.
"Forgive me." She stood and followed briskly. Jor led the procession, while Kiros and Ward flanked her, leading her down a stairwell decades, if not centuries old. The Moon Shelter had only been used once, and for the purpose it was built for. Now Rinoa fled into its confines to escape the inferno above that her daughter had raged.
There stood a door preceded by barriers and blockaded by steel several inches thick. Inside there was upholstered furniture, a chandelier, throw rugs, afghans, doilies, tea cozies—a culture shock from a different country, a different time. There was something Dolletian about the decor, and a small bit of home to it all too. But the smell. The wood had been polished with lemon solute, but a strong base of mold could be smelt underneath it all, poorly masked by a thick musk. Rinoa coughed and covered her mouth while Kiros worked on the air circulation. The fan did little to clear the air.
Rinoa took a seat while the others secured the room. Jor was working with a computer so archaic she was amazed it still functioned. Jor was a father of three, younger than her but just as dedicated to duty. He had only been by her side for a year. She learned he had a habit of licking his lips in between sentences, which left him with a small wet spot on his enhancement suit after lengthy discussion. She knew that he liked Balamb seafood and loved travelling to the ruins of Centra. She knew he would die for her, and she felt shame that she could not say she would do the same for him.
The old machine groaned to life, cranking and clanking like some novelty toy. Jor looked to her. Eyes shielded with large polymer lenses and face covered by his enhancement suit, she could still imagine the look on his face as he waited for her instruction.
The satellite phone would allow her to call anyone across the globe. She had many contacts that she could have called upon once. No doubt Headmistress Xu would be calling council with the other gardens to discuss preparations for mobilizing against Esthar. Ambassador Quistis of the United Union would be rushing from one staffer to the next, monitoring the cease of communications with Esthar and the closing the pan-continental railway. And Squall, her Squall...He would be fighting his past, his trauma, and his duty. As the head of department of Esthar Garden, he would have a heavy hand in amassing an army of children to fight his daughter.
She had led a revolution, redesigned a country, improved diplomatic relations across the globe and officially eradicated the threat of sorceress destruction, but when it came to the duty of facing her friends, repenting for such a horrible secret sixteen years old, she had no idea how to do it and be the president she set out to be. Who would she call, in her darkest hour?
"Thank you, everyone, for standing by me," she said, staring at the floor.
When the silence carried on too long, Ward approached the console, motioning Jor aside. He looked at her with his piercing, stoic stare, that wide frown-smile on his face. Even now, in midst of the worst crime she had ever committed, Rinoa could not help but smile at that silly look. "You have good counsel to offer?" she asked. He had fought with Squall's father in the first Sorceress War, stood by him when Laguna was given presidency and her once she inherited the seat. For a time she could talk easier with Ward than she could with Squall.
He punched in a few commands on the control key, scrolling through directories she did not recognize. Then he connected a call and waited.
Laguna appeared on the monitor. He had gone so grey since last she had seen him. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes had run along his face like cracks in ice, pulling his smile down into permanent worry. The distress of Esthar's fresh sorceress attack made those cracks run deep. "Ward?" He rubbed the stubble on his chin. "I can't say I'd know why a mute would call me. But it's good to see you're alive."
Ward looked to Rinoa. She stood, hesitantly, and took her spot before the console. Laguna melted at the sight of her. The telltale wince and leaning would be the cramp forming in his leg. His eyes were more white than usual, his lips more thinly stretched, the fear on every inch of his face. "What did you do?" he asked. The question was so out of place for him; he oddly sounded much like his son.
The weight of his voice was hard to hold. What have we done? What have I done? Beth, I've doomed the world with you. Squall...I didn't want it to end like this. How did we get here?
"I've known for years," she confessed. It was freeing and crushing to let it go. Someone knew that was not her, not Beth, nor Squall. The world would know now. It felt better to admit her guilt. At least that much she could do.
"Why?"
It meant so much more than one Rinoa it was an open invitation to reflect on her life. Every step she took had already been taken, and she could not have strayed from the path laid out before her even if she knew what would happen next.
"I loved them," she answered.
She watched his heart break in his eyes. He had loved his granddaughter dearly as well, showed her the fun hidden behind every corner as she grew. It had been a few years since she wished to see him, so his only memory of her was the small girl with the high giggle and the love of wind in her hair. Now she had destroyed one continent and set the oceans on fire.
Laguna held his head in his hands and Ellone approached the console from behind. Even at her age she was still handsome; willowy, angelic, an ease in her stride. She was decked in creme coloured silk and cotton, a green scarf loosely looped around her neck. As part of an ancient habit she held her hands together before her, one covering the other in a comforting embrace as she watched Rinoa through the screen.
Laguna did not hear his adopted niece approach. Her touch was feather-light on his shoulder, but the way he moved, it held much more power behind it. Without looking at Rinoa he moved off his chair. Ellone sat and studied the president carefully. Remarkably her eyes looked like Beth's, the same shape and colour, but with a look of love her daughter's lacked.
"I've lost them," Rinoa said.
"I know."
"I thought we had stopped it."
"Odine said the success of the procedure was uncertain."
"Not that...when we were young, when you sent us forward..."
"Ultimecia."
"She died. We...stopped her. Stopped the cycle. Now she will..."
Ellone said nothing.
"I don't know what to do," Rinoa said. "My Beth...my...I don't know what to do. Not without him."
Shoulders rigid, lump in her throat, Ellone looked prepared to jump from a mountain top. "I sent you forward once. And once I sent Squall to you, when you needed each other most."
Rinoa remembered; a striking memory. Ultimecia had possessed her to release a sorceress from her confines in space. When Rinoa woke, she was flung out into nothing, spinning endlessly, doomed to die that way. When life support was failing and hope fleeing, she heard him. Ellone could send consciousnesses to others' pasts. Squall was sent to her present, and he was right there with her. For a long time she thought it was a hallucination, a blind grasp at an excuse not to kill herself, but Ellone had truly brought them together. That was Rinoa's happiest memory, the time she knew they would be inseparable.
It was not a happy look on Ellone's telling face now, however. "And I think I..."
"What? What did you do?"
"I can't tell you what to do next. But I can take you to a place that might give you answers."
Rinoa's heart leapt up. "To...Squall? You'll take me to him now?"
"Not his present." She lowered her head. "To his past."
The sound of those words made her face drain of colour, as if ready to vomit. "You've been there before."
She nodded.
An impenetrable wall went up around her. She'd had to build it, after the guilt of knowing the blood of thousands of lives was on her hands. This gift Ellone offered could very well be the crux of it. It was a fear she needed to embrace, and willingly stepped forward to see it.
"Show me."