Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

Chapter II

Dark.

Dark, and then patches of light.

Her first thought, her first feeling, trickled into her mind. Gone.

Her Sorcery was gone. She knew it immediately and with certainty, with every fiber of her being. It was as though a veil that had been sitting under her skin, binding her, suffocating her, had been lifted clean away.

I'm alive. And I'm free.

The realization was enough to encourage her to open her eyes. Soft light seeping in under a fluttering gauze curtain. The infirmary at Balamb Garden? No, no. Her eyes adjusted to what was unmistakably her childhood bedroom at the Caraway Mansion.

On the nightstand beside her bed, the photo of Julia Heartilly-Caraway that Rinoa had always kept there smiled serenely back at her. She curled her hand over her mother's wedding ring threaded on the silver chain that was lying next to the photo. Fingers shaking, she opened the clasp and fastened it round her neck as she did every morning. And yet now… Only one ring. Squall's Griever ring was gone.

She blinked away sudden uninvited tears from her eyes, and looked around. The contents of the room were just as she had left them almost five years before. Am I in the past? she wondered. Before I ran away from home and joined the Forest Owls?

Rinoa stumbled over to the mirror on her dresser. Haunted dark eyes stared back at her, a helplessly furrowed brow; wildly messy black bed-hair. No, she decided. I'm not a kid. I still look twenty.

She used her hairbrush to tame the worst excesses of her hair, and looked down absently at her pale blue pajamas. She strode over to the closet and rifled through the clothes in there, some familiar, some not. Unable to locate the powder-blue duster and arm warmers she had loved so much when she was younger, she found a denim skirt and a cream-colored blouse, which were good enough for now, so she put them on.

Rinoa slunk quietly down the stairs, listening out for any indications of her father's presence. She padded through the hall and looked into the lounge. There was no sign of General Caraway. Nor, it occurred to her suddenly, of a dog in the house. She wondered sadly whether Angelo would exist in a reality where Rinoa was still, apparently, living in her family home.

Hearing sounds from the kitchen, she nervously put her hand on the door handle and turned it slowly.

Mrs. Diviney, her father's housekeeper, spun to face her from her position in front of the kitchen sink, a soapy plate in her hand.

She looks older, Rinoa realized. The housekeeper's dark brown hair was definitely flecked with much more gray than she remembered.

"I was wondering when you'd surface. It's past noon, Miss Rinoa!"

Rinoa's mouth fell open of its own accord. She felt like a chastened child. "I… Sorry. I overslept."

Mrs. Diviney pursed her lips in a way that, Rinoa knew from experience, usually prefaced a scolding. "Overslept is what I'd call it if it were ten a.m. Midday is practically comatose. Goodness, what's gotten into you? You're not a teenager anymore!"

So I'm definitely not in the past, Rinoa thought. "I was… I was reading late."

Mrs. Diviney harrumphed. "You're as bad as your father, but at least he wakes up on time. I didn't know if you'd emerge in time for lunch, so I haven't started preparing it yet. I can do you a late breakfast now, if you ask nicely."

"Yes please," said Rinoa meekly. "That would be lovely," she added, with feeling.

Mrs. Diviney rinsed the bubbles from her hands and scurried over to the fridge, while Rinoa sat down heavily in one of the antique wooden chairs at the kitchen table. She watched in a daze as the housekeeper rustled up a simple brunch of scrambled eggs on toast, salad and milky tea, murmuring her thanks as it was placed in front of her. Each bite of the eggs felt like the finest meal she could remember eating. How long had it been since she'd eaten, anyway? Since before it all happened. Before she'd killed Squall. Was that days, years, or centuries ago now?

Rinoa put her fork down as a thought struck her. "Mrs. Diviney? May I have the newspaper?"

"Your father was reading it in his study before he left for work. I'll go and fetch it for you." The housekeeper bustled out of the room and returned a few moments later brandishing the Galbadian Daily Times. Rinoa thanked her and stared at the front page, her heart thundering.

The grinning face of Vinzer Deling, a man she had watched Ultimecia choke the life out of through Edea's hands, leered back at her. That was the first shock. The second came as she read the caption. 'President Deling meets with representatives from the interim Government of Timber for the first time since the ex-territory's independence.'

Independence. There it was. A few years ago, the independence of Timber had been her life's purpose. What had her goals been since then? To stay in control of her powers, to stop herself from hurting others? She had failed completely on both counts.

Did this version of me ever go to Timber? Did I just stay here all that time, living off my father's wealth?

She checked the date at the top of the newspaper: sure enough, it was the same year she had left, six days after Squall's death. Rinoa supposed that she had been kept unconscious in Esthar during the days that had followed. She skim-read the other reports in the paper, mostly local Deling City news, then closed it and excused herself to Mrs. Diviney, making sure to thank her again for the meal. Rinoa then crept into her father's study, crossing the room to scan the titles on the spines of the heavy volumes that lined the shelves on the far wall. She slid out a newish-looking book called 'Warfare in the Modern Era' and begun turning the pages.

It soon became clear to her that the Garden organization did not exist at all. The Sorceress War that took place twenty years ago was instead a normal conflict, triggered by escalating trade frictions between Galbadia and Esthar. Timber had been annexed during that time, as in her own reality. However, the scale of the Galbadian military seemed to be significantly smaller, and she could find no mention of the term 'life-long' in relation to President Deling. It appeared that Deling had been re-elected several times through the democratic process.

Esthar was not, and seemingly had never been, in isolation. The trans-continental express resumed full operation the year after the cessation of hostilities between the two major nations, and had been running uninterrupted ever since. She noted that the Esthar President was now a solemn-faced man called Silas Motion. Without Adel's rise to power, would Laguna even have traveled to Esthar, she wondered? Perhaps Laguna had never been born at all. Then her heart froze as she followed the train of thought to Laguna's son. Had Squall even been born in this world? Had her actions not only killed him, but now erased his entire existence from history?

Suddenly needing some air, she closed the book and left Caraway's study, walking straight out the double doors that connected the lounge to the garden. For a moment she half-hoped she would catch sight of a kennel out there, and Angelo would come bounding up to her in an overjoyed blur of dark brown and white fur. Yet there was only birdsong and the hiss of a sprinkler misting the green lawn. The world had changed, but the season had not. It was a bright early spring day, and nothing about it signaled anything out of the ordinary. How was it that everything looked so utterly normal on the first day of a new future?

Rinoa found that standing was too much effort, and kneeled down in the damp grass. She imagined how Angelo would pad up to her, rest her head on Rinoa's knees and look up at her with dark, mournful eyes. Then she found herself picturing Squall too, his battered leather jacket out of place in this manicured garden, as he leaned against a tree, thoughtful blue eyes gazing far away. I think I've made a new world, she told them both in her mind, but you're not in it. So where do I go from here?

"Miss Rinoa?"

She looked up. Mrs. Diviney's head popped out of the lounge doors. "Telephone call for you. A Miss Ellone Oakwright. Will you take it?"

Ellone? The surname was unfamiliar, but what did that mean? Was it another Ellone, whose memories were those of this new reality? Rinoa trotted into the lounge and placed the receiver to her ear, every cell in her body seemingly alert with trepidation.

"Hello?"

"Rinoa?" The tinny voice was unmistakably Ellone's. But which one? she wondered.

"Yes," she replied.

"It's, um, Ellone." Rinoa had a feeling that Ellone was as nervous as she was. Did that mean…?

"Hi. How… how are you?"

"I'm all right." She could hear Ellone swallow. "I was calling because… I guess I wanted to ask you something. Does the name Hyne mean anything to you?"

A wave of relief flooded Rinoa's body. "Yes. Yes it does," she replied firmly.

Ellone exhaled audibly. "Good. Would you like to meet in Deling Central Park? Say in about half an hour?"

Rinoa agreed, and ended the call. If Ellone was here too with her, she wasn't alone in this place. That, at least, was something.

Rinoa left the gated compound that enclosed her father's mansion, and set off down the wide boulevard that led to the center of the city. It was a route that she had walked countless times in her childhood, but it had been years now since she had even set foot in Deling City. Years, even, since she had walked anywhere alone, without Squall at her side to guard her from attackers and Sorceress-haters. She could feel her pulse racing, even as she saw for herself that no-one was looking at her; no heads were turning to stare at Sorceress Rinoa, no fingers pointing, no hushed voices or screamed insults. Here, she was… nobody. She was a normal Deling City girl out for an afternoon stroll. And the surge of relief, of liberation, of sheer joy was so blissful that she could hardly allow herself to believe it.

When she arrived at Deling Central Park, Ellone was sitting on a wooden bench, already looking at her. Neither of them spoke as Rinoa walked over the bench and sat down.

Ellone looked almost exactly as she had when Rinoa last saw her, mere hours and yet a whole epoch ago, except that she was now dressed more like a suburban secretary than a monster-slayer. She turned her large brown eyes to Rinoa, and this time there was no animosity in them, only apprehension. Rinoa gripped her hand, and as she did she knew for certain that it was the hand that had held onto her as the whole of reality had swirled and reformed around them. "I'm glad it's you," she said, finally.

"Me too," said Ellone at last, and she gave a small, cautious smile.

"How did you find me?"

"I woke up this morning in an apartment I've never seen before, but it's clearly supposed to be mine. When I realized I was in Deling, I went to the city library and spent a couple of hours looking at newspapers and books, trying to work out where or when we've ended up. Now I know that it's exactly as he - the ghost - hoped. Our own world, without the existence of Sorcery." Ellone shook her head slightly, as if in disbelief of her own words.

"In the library, I read that General Caraway still existed. I looked up the number for the Caraway Mansion in the directory and I thought it was worth trying, as a way to find you. I was worried they'd say 'Rinoa who?', or you wouldn't know who I was, but… here you are."

"Yes. My family home's just like I left it years ago, but I don't know what kind of life I'm supposed to have been living there." Rinoa gazed into Ellone's face, almost desperately. "Do you think it's just you and me that know? What the world was before?"

Ellone nodded slowly. "I think so. It's like everybody else's memories have been overwritten."

Rinoa watched as a small dog ran across the park in front of their bench, a furry bundle of excitement. "Do you think it's just temporary, and our memories will be rewritten too?" she asked quietly.

Ellone's eyes were troubled. "I don't know. I don't know anything. But I feel like… when it happened, you and I were in the eye of the storm. Everything changed around us, and we stayed the same."

She clutched Rinoa's hand with a sudden intensity. "Rinoa, is your Sorcery gone?" she asked fearfully.

Rinoa looked at her, surprised. "Yes. Completely. That… that's the whole point, right?"

Ellone visibly relaxed. "Yeah. I was just scared that maybe you hadn't changed. I… I still have my power. I haven't used it yet, but I can feel it there just as it always was. I suppose that must mean that it never derived from Hyne in the first place. There are still other forms of magic in the world that aren't Sorcery. From what I read in the library, there are certainly monsters around, though much less since the Lunar Cry from three years ago didn't happen. GFs seem to exist, on the basis of legends and sightings, but it doesn't seem like there's an equivalent of …Odine Lab to work on harnessing their powers." Rinoa realized that it was still difficult for Ellone to say the name of the man who had experimented on her as a child. "So no para-magic either, I guess," she continued.

Rinoa tried to form the question that had been floating in the back of her mind. "What I don't understand is, why hasn't more changed? With something so big gone, why was I born in the same family, in the same house, why do I even exist?"

Ellone held her gaze solemnly. "I don't know. I've got some feelings about it, though. The way I perceive time… maybe it's different to other people because of what I can do. I feel like, the changes we've made…" Ellone paused, seeming to collect her thoughts before she spoke again. "I see time as taking the path of least resistance, like the flow of electricity or water - those don't travel further than they have to, right?" Rinoa thought about this, and nodded. "I don't think time would go out of its way to change things that didn't need to be changed. Does that make sense?"

"Mostly. I think if anybody understood it, it'd be you, Elle. You sound like you see time almost as something sentient."

"Maybe that's true," Ellone replied thoughtfully. "I feel like it has an agency of its own. But I can't explain why I feel like that." She shrugged and shook her head. "Regardless, I seem to be living a pretty normal life here. As far as I can tell, I've kept my powers secret, or perhaps I never had them in this reality. I'm a waitress at a restaurant on the south side of the city."

Rinoa looked at her in surprise. Ellone grimaced slightly. "I found out at lunchtime when they called my apartment to ask me why I hadn't turned up. I panicked and cried off sick today. Also, the name on my door is Ellone Oakwright. That's the name of my original parents, before Raine adopted me."

She took a deep breath before continuing. "And… Rinoa… there's a photo on the wall in my apartment with them in it. Much older than when they were killed. And there's three boys. My brothers, I would assume. The thing is…" she trailed off and met Rinoa's eyes with a serious, almost nervous expression. "One of them is Squall."

Rinoa's breath caught in her throat as the pit of her stomach fell away. "Squall?" she whispered.

"I don't know how, but it seems he's still my brother. My guess is that instead of Raine taking me in when my parents died, they took Squall in when she died."

Rinoa reeled at this. Could she dare to let herself think that Squall might be alive in this world?

"Do you think he's still -"

"Just because I have a photo of him doesn't mean he hasn't died in this reality, too," Ellone frowned. "My parents too. They could all still have died, but for different reasons. What we did… it reshaped people's lives, but I don't see how it can have brought back people who were already dead." She met Rinoa's eyes uneasily, and Rinoa felt hot shame and guilt rise up in her gut.

"Ellone, I'm…" she began, and her voice stuck. The words wouldn't change anything, but she needed to say them. "I'm so sorry."

"I know you are," the older girl said quietly. She looked away and was silent for a few moments.

The headline from the newspaper suddenly popped into Rinoa's mind, and she gasped in realization. "Elle." Ellone turned to look at her. "Vinzer Deling's alive here. He should have died three years ago, but he's still in power."

Ellone's eyes widened. "Of course. You're right."

"Then… that means it's possible for Squall and your parents to be alive, right?" said Rinoa, hoping fervently that what she was saying could be true.

Ellone broke eye contact, her brow furrowed. "I don't know if we should pin too much hope on it yet. But I think we should try to find out. The photo I have seems to be fairly recent. It looks like it was taken in the town square in Winhill. I'm going to try going there. Would you… would you come with me?"

Rinoa almost couldn't take the sincere, almost pleading expression on Ellone's face. "After everything… You'd take me with you?" she breathed, watching Ellone's eyes.

Ellone held her gaze for a long moment, then looked away. "Your Sorcery's gone, everything we knew has gone and… I've got no anger left for you now. Maybe anger wasn't it, anyway. Afraid of you, yes. I've been terrified of you for the last year. But rationally, even I could see that you had no more control over yourself than Matron did when she was possessed. Also…" She sighed. "I know how much you loved my brother." Rinoa's eyes started to well up with tears. She hadn't realized just how keenly she craved Ellone's forgiveness.

Ellone looked down at her hands. "And I figure that all you and I have right now is each other."

"I think so, too," said Rinoa, and hesitantly covered Ellone's hands with one of her own. Ellone flinched ever so slightly, but didn't pull away, and Rinoa was grateful for that.

After returning from the park, Rinoa ate a quiet dinner with Mrs. Diviney, helped to clear the dishes away, and stayed up for the next few hours reading in Caraway's study.

She was so absorbed in reading an old article about postwar reconciliation between Galbadia and Esthar that she did not hear the door close quietly, and it was only the faint aroma of whiskey and pipe tobacco that alerted her to the fact that Caraway was now standing in the room.

Rinoa froze. How long had it been since she'd seen her father? It must have been at least two years. She'd met with him only once after the battle of Ultimecia, and the reunion had been brief and uncomfortable. It had been Quistis, of all people, who had urged Rinoa to attempt a reconciliation after she had been dispatched on a SeeD mission to assist the Galbadian Army with containing a monster outbreak on the outskirts of Deling. Quistis had returned full of admiration for Caraway's leadership qualities, and Rinoa secretly thought that her father was probably the serious blonde's type, as disturbing as the idea was.

"You haven't visited this room for a while."

She turned round at the gravelly sound of his voice. The general was standing before her in his army uniform, tall and solemn as ever. Caraway was much as she had last seen him, albeit perhaps with a little more gray hair around the temples, and deeper lines etched on his face.

"Sorry. I was just reading something. I should have asked first."

"I'm not chastising you, Rinoa."

There was a warmth in Caraway's eyes that she could barely recall seeing for years, perhaps since her childhood. He took a step towards her, and she involuntarily took a step back. He frowned, and for a moment his large brown eyes looked like Angelo's when she had been reprimanded but couldn't understand why. Confused, and sad. She felt a rush of pity for him. Pity for her father? What was happening to her?

She felt flustered, and tried to explain herself. "Um… the whiskey smell's a little strong, that's all".

Caraway sighed, but his frown vanished. "Ah. I see. It was a long card game. We rather lost track of our consumption."

He didn't seem particularly drunk. She nodded. "Did you win?"

He raised his eyebrows slightly. "Of course."

"I'm surprised those old guys still play with you. You must have taken all their good cards years ago."

"I let them win sometimes, just to give them a little hope to cling on to." His eyes creased into a smile, and Rinoa wondered how many years it had been since she'd seen such an expression on his face.

She stood in silence, uncertain how to respond to this unfamiliar man.

He seemed to sense her awkwardness, and nodded at her, the smile still lingering. "I have some paperwork to do in here, if you don't mind. You're welcome to stay and finish your book."

That would be weird. "No, I'm all done. I'd better be getting to bed soon."

Caraway looked slightly disappointed for a moment, then reached forward and actually patted her on the shoulder. "Goodnight then, Rinoa."

"Goodnight," she mumbled, feeling his eyes on her as she left the room. Rinoa climbed the stairs in a haze of muddled confusion, which gave way to sleepiness as she settled into her bed, wondering about Squall, about her father, about herself; each one so familiar and yet now, complete strangers.