ANNOUNCEMENTS: Okay another day another chapter. I am determined to
finish this fic within the next week, I have set a deadline and you can
send me nasty emails if I don't finish. On a further note, I am still
looking for a job so let's keep our hopes up that I get one, eh? We
left Laguna in a pretty awkward position, let's see if we can lighten
things up, shall we? NOTE: I'm putting a little continuity from Nobus
in here, see if you can catch it, and if something doesn't make sense,
try reading Nobus.
AramiHeartilly: I like the twists, too. Let's see if you like these ones.
Charm 65: I'm glad you can find redeeming qualities in my work. Hope you enjoy this.
Jade Almasy: Thanks Jade, here's the continuation
Lynn-Minmay: Hopefully I can keep Laguna's character on target. If not, let me know.
Verdanii: YAY! Thanks, Verdanii!
Twin-Lance: I like to try and cover my bases. Thanks for the reviews on Nobus, I love reviews.
I worked hard on the dream with Griever, because I wanted to keep the story fluid and leave
no loose ends. Enjoy!
Karaoke Risa: I thought hard about whether I should have kept that part in, but came to the
conclusion that if Raine didn't tell Laguna, then I could technically add it and I felt it gave a
nice little touch to the whole Julia/Laguna relationship. Thanks for the reviews.
Dawn came and went, but noone could find Laguna, until Rinoa had the awe-inspiring idea of looking in the not-so-obvious places. She found him in less than a minute. She went alone.
Tiptoeing towards the man, Rinoa was careful not to make noise as she watched him skip rocks while sitting on the old fishing dock by the lake.
"Hello Rinoa."
"How'd y..."
"Old soldier. Some things never fade" the father said, skipping another rock one, two, three, four skips before it dislodged a frog from its perch on a lilypad.
"I guess there's no use in my dramatic, planned out entrance then. Maybe I should cancel the dancing moombas?"
"Heh. Sorry for spoiling the circus but this clown's not in a very festive mood. How did you know where to look?"
"When we woke to no you, Squall panicked a little, let's just say he was a little worried the local townsfolk would recognise you and offer you a great view of the countryside from six feet under. Him, and Ward went searching for you, Kiros started in the other direction, I thought they'd check the usual places, the Ragnarok, the town, Raine's grave, ad nauseum so I thought where would someone who'd lived here before go when he needed time to think? Away from nosy townfolk, somewhere comfortable where he'd been going for years, I checked the Chocobo crossing, the next place I could think of was by the water, plenty places to hide, a bunch of rocks to skip, frogs for entertainment, sounded like you"
Nodding, Laguna motioned for Rinoa to come sit beside him and handed her some rocks.
"You and me are the same, Laguna. I know I'm a girl and a lot younger than you and a sorceress to boot, you're a man, the President of the most powerful country in the world, a father and older, but the part of us that makes us so deeply ourselves is the same."
Laguna looked over to the girl, barely older than a child, so different from him,
"What would that be Almighty Queen of Knowledge?" he asked, skipping another rock.
"We both fell in love with a Lionheart"
The sounds of water falling and bubbling dominated the small space as fish swam and the old creaky dock the two people sat on rocked and sang underneath them as Laguna tried to think of where this conversation was going and why he felt like listening.
"My mother told me stories. She would tuck me in and sing me lullabies and tell me of the soldier that gave her the gift of using her voice. She told me how she thought she loved the soldier, but she also told me how that same nervous soldier dissapeared then she was able to sit at that piano and sing to so many people. I can see her holding me one night when I was five, two months before she died and rock me to sleep. I was sick and hadn't been feeling the greatest and it was late at night and my father had come in and kissed me goodnight, it made me feel like everything was okay. She sang to me as I sniffled and coughed and told me of the time she realized that the purpose of the soldier coming into her life was not to give her life a tragedy, a story to tell the kids of how love was taken away, but to teach her that everybody has a voice and not to use it is the real tragedy. I guess that's how I got to be okay, how I got to be able to love my mother as much as always, but not dwell on the fact that she's never going to be there to sing lullabies to my family someday. It took me a while to figure out that the soldier was you, and that you were Squall's father but I figured it out and it made everything right all over again. He's not a whole lot like you, Laguna. Squall's got the same Lionheart spirit that Raine had."
"Other than making me extremely satisfied that Julia remembered me and that my son isn't going to be following in the footsteps of dear old dad, why are you here, Rinoa?"
"Griever visited you last night."
"How'd you figure that one out? Wait, let me answer that: you're a sorceress"
"It doesn't take a sorceress to hear a grown man scream. I saw Griever, I felt him back when we fought Ultimecia. I recognised the sickening feeling he gives off in the way you cried in your sleep."
The president gazed sideways at the love of his son's life, the playful girl who thought her lot in life was playing practical jokes on her friends and making his son laugh, who knew? Maybe it was. Maybe not.
"It was the first time I got to hold my little girl. Ciel came after Griever showed me how he got to become the guardian of Raine's line."
"That wasn't all"
"What, did I talk in my sleep, too?"
"Sorceress, you're not revealing everything. I can tell"
"Can I use you in treaty negotiations? Secret Service, perhaps?"
"Laguna"
"Okay, okay. I'm opening up to a nineteen year old, how easy can it be?"
They smiled at each other, not much of a smile, but the intention was clear.
"Griever ... he told me ... ... I was the cause of Raine's death. He said if she had only called on him, he could have saved her! Above all the other guilt I feel, KABOOM! Guess what Laguna! You knocked up a dying woman! Go YOU! Having Ciel killed her! Would have killed Ciel too if Griever hadn't gone against all orders and took her."
Breathing a huge sigh and shaking away the tears, Laguna skipped another rock before continuing,
"We've paid the price, I lost my wife, you and Squall lost your mothers, I've lived with the guilt of watching my son grow up without knowing he even had a father, and I've lived wanting to know what my daughter would have looked like if she had grown older. We sacrificed, I fought, we battled, waged war, defeated some psycho-bitch sorceress, what more does Hyne want!? I mean, what next? Galbadia bombs Esthar and my son never wants to see me again? Why do some lives have to be so unfair when other people just get to be happy?"
"I can't answer those questions and I know you didn't want me to, but I can say this. I don't know much, but through the past year I've come to know how to be a sorceress. It took me asking why and how and all that, but it wasn't until I stopped asking questions that I wasn't capable of understanding and just used my sorceress powers before they started to work. I don't think we're capable of understanding, I don't think that's the point, I think the point is to stop trying to delve too deep into the mess of a world we're in and just trust that we can do something about it. When I let go my fears, I was able to defeat a sorceress. I had the power all along, I just needed to forget what I've been taught about sorceresses and evil and just do what I knew I could do. Without you, Squall wouldn't have been born. If he hadn't been born, he couldn't grow up to defeat Ultimecia"
"If Squall and Ciel hadn't been born, Ultimecia wouldn't exist in the future. Raine should have died a lot sooner than she did. Griever kept her alive until she had the twins. Griever saved Ciel, Griever will work for Ultimecia. What about that makes you believe Hyne's involved? Sounds a hell of a lot like self-preservation to me. Griever is petrified of loosing the bloodline, it's all that matters. More like we're suffering for Griever's screw ups than Hyne having a master plan"
Rinoa looked back at the man's face, she forgot how old he looked. She was used to remembering him 20 years younger from the vision-dreams Ellone put them under, now he just looked tired. His hair was greying, his eyes had laugh lines, wrinkles were beginning to form, but his eyes held nothing of the exuberant joy he held back when he was Laguna Loire, journalist, lover, soldier, idealist. Now he was just a President who had seen to much ugliness in the world. Hyne, give him a break.
"Raine! Come see this!" Laguna whisper-yelled, calling the flower picking woman over to his side. Trotting up beside him, Raine smiled,
"What are we looking at?"
"Shh. Over there, Ellone" her husband pointed, wrapping his arm around his wife to reveal Ellone playing with some Chicobos. Raine's smile widened as she watched the little girl flapping her arms while running in circles shouting,
"Wark! Wark wark! Wark!" with several of the small yellow birds playing along. As the small girl tumbled through the grass, husband and wife smiled at each other,
"She's so happy now" Raine said, wrapping her arm around Laguna and putting her other hand in his back pocket while kissing his cheek.
"She's not the only one that's happy" Laguna smirked, looking at his wife with a familiar glint in his eyes. Raine laughed, turning from the scene of Ellone falling down and the mother Chocobo picking her up by the beak to Laguna making bedroom eyes.
"What? O come on, is that all you men ever think about?"
Looking up at the sky, down at the grass, up Raine's leg, back up to the sky,
"Mmmm" he began, Raine interupting him by copying the sound he was making,
"Mmmm, do I really want an answer?"
"I'm thinking no, nadda, nuh uh, negativo, nope, come back later, not really, no"
As Laguna shook his head, Raine's smile grew broader as she chuckled and slapped Laguna's chest.
"Don't blame me, you're the one with your hand in my pocket"
"Ah, well maybe I should take it out?"
At Laguna's whimper, she giggled,
"Maybe I should put my hand in your pocket and see how you react"
"Laguna, I wouldn't have it any other way"
That was the only warning Laguna got as Raine twirled around and jumped on him, sending both of them careening to the soft grass.
"Woa! We're gonna get dirty!" Laguna spasmed,
"Dirty? We're going to get dirty? New invention: Washing Machine"
"Me and my big mouth" Laguna said, rolling his eyes and kissing Raine's smirking lips.
"I can put you and your big mouth to better uses" Raine drawled, kissing Laguna's ear as she licked his earlobe.
"Learning about the miracle of laundry detergent?" Laguna said, smiling innocently,
"Don't you know it" Raine muttered, biting Laguna's lower lip and drawing it out slowly before raking his chest with her fingers and kissing him to his pleasurable groans.
Rolling over, Laguna pulled Raine's yellow sweater off and flailed it over to the side,
"The sweater is Off!" he said triumphantly as Raine threw his jacket beside the sweater before looking up and around as Laguna reached for the bottom of her camisole.
"Wait"
"Wait? Wait? You expect me to wait?"
"Ellone"
"Yeah,"
"What if she y'know, sees us"
"Lifelong scarring?"
"That's what I'm thinking"
Laguna gave a defeated sigh and fell down onto the grass only to get right back up as he and Raine saw Ellone racing up the hill on the back of the mother chocobo.
"Yaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!" the little girl shouted, bouncing on the large yellow bird.
"YES! GO CHOCOBO!! Take her away!" Laguna yelled,
"Make sure she's home for dinner!!" Raine yelled out to the chocobo, who warked and ... waved? The couple began laughing as several chicobos trampled over them in a b-line for their mother.
"STAMPEDE!!!" Laguna shouted as Raine shrieked and leaped to straddle Laguna's lap, laughing her head into his chest. After all signs of little girls and birds were gone, Laguna deadpaned,
"Well that was exciting... Raine you might want to take a breath... it wasn't that funny"
"Hahaha... I know... hahah..." taking a sigh, she looked into the eyes of the love of her life while biting her lip,
"Where were we?"
"I was going to comment about the beauty of your camisole and ask if it was a casualty of the last Loire paycheque, you were going to tell me yes, and do I like the colour, to which I was going to say yes and I think it looks better crumpled beside your yellow sweater"
Raine rocked her hips slightly on Laguna's, eliciting a groan from the man now holding onto her hips, then running his fingers up her sides to pull off the light blue camisole. Kissing deeply, Laguna and Raine pulled off Laguna's t-shirt, unbuckled his trousers and her jeans and spent the next 43 minutes groping, moaning and shouting each other's name in ecstacy.
"He really believes it's all Griever's fault"
"Have you ever thought that maybe it is?"
"But Hyne..."
"Hyne's spent the last four hundred years equalising the equation."
Rinoa cocked her head to see Squall's face better as she traced his facial scar with a finger. She had gone back to the bar after talking to Laguna, but he didn't follow her back. Now she and Squall sat on the couch amidst the scaffolding and paint cans folded together, as the rain poured and Kiros and Ward went to keep a secret surveilance of their friend and President.
"Think about it, Rinoa. Griever was never supposed to be guarding one family line. He alone unbalanced the world powers, Miketa, Raine, Ultimecia, me, we're all products in one way or another of Griever getting involved."
"Are you saying "
"I'm saying that Griever made this mess, and someone had to put the world back into balance, we did that by defeating Ultimecia, we're living for Griever's mistakes, now that there's some sort of balance maybe all that's left is Ciel. She seems to be the last loose end."
Rinoa sighed,
"Hyne, Squall I've got it. Remember when we were fighting Ultimecia and Fujin was in surgery?"
"Yes, what has tha..."
"She was pregnant, Squall. It wasn't until after we defeated Ultimecia that she lost the child. Maybe... maybe I don't know, maybe Seifer and Fujin's child was going to hook up with ours?"
Squall wiped his face with his hand clearly not wanting to think about his former enemy,
"What makes you think that?"
"Call it Sorceress Intuition"
"Have you told him yet?"
"Not exactly"
"... Rin, he has to know." Squall closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose
"I know, but well... he's your father... you remember what happened with my dad"
"Yeah, I never knew I could dodge a bullet that close"
"Just be glad I had already cast protect"
"That a fact?"
"Yep" Rinoa said, adding a sultry, seductive quality to her voice as she turned around to straddle Squall and put her hands on his shoulders. Squall ran his gloved fingers along her sides, placing his hands firmly on her shoulder blades and bringing her down to kiss him tenderly. Running her hands on the inside of Squall's jacket, she went to pull it off, but Squall grabbed her wrists,
"Not so fast, first we tell Laguna."
"Awww, c'mon, just a quickie" the mischevious 19 year old said, lunging for Squall's belt buckle. Swerving to the side and grabbing her waist, turning her around to have her back to him, as he paused to stroke her stomac, Squall held Rinoa steady.
"Wow. Forgot how fast you are" Rinoa breathed, letting her head sink back to his shoulder as he massaged her neck with one hand and drew patterns across her belly with the other. Leaning towards her ear, he whispered,
"Learn your opponent's objective, find the weakest points in their defence, use them to diffuse the situation"
"Are you always on, oh master SeeD Commander?"
"Are you always impulsive?"
Rinoa took in a breath, paused,
"Touche"
"You or me?"
Rinoa leaned up and licked Squall's neck. Squall replied by taking the hand at the top of her neck and turning her head forward then nipping her ear.
"I take it that you want me to tell him"
Rinoa nodded,
"Don't know why, it was your fault"
"My fault!? Mr. Squall Lionheart! It takes two, y'know!"
"Yea, yeah, at least I wanted to wait until we got a condom"
"Like I was going to wai... okay so it is my fault, but you didn't seem too down on the situation"
"I'm only human" Squall said, shifting to put Rinoa on the couch as he got up and fixed his jacket and gloves. Before Rinoa could counter his argument, the youth leaned down to kiss Rinoa's lips, with a learnt-from-Rinoa-conversation-ending kiss then released her to sigh and keep her eyes closed.
"I'll be back after I tell Laguna"
"Uh huh" Rinoa answered, clearly still in limbo.
Smiling to himself, Squall fluffed up his collar and began to stroll down the stairs, lifting his head up to drawl "Later, Rin" in his sexiest voice to another small grunt from his fiancee. Smirking to himself again, he trotted down the stairs and across the floor to take a deep breath and open the door. Who he opened the door to would surprise everyone beyond words.
AramiHeartilly: I like the twists, too. Let's see if you like these ones.
Charm 65: I'm glad you can find redeeming qualities in my work. Hope you enjoy this.
Jade Almasy: Thanks Jade, here's the continuation
Lynn-Minmay: Hopefully I can keep Laguna's character on target. If not, let me know.
Verdanii: YAY! Thanks, Verdanii!
Twin-Lance: I like to try and cover my bases. Thanks for the reviews on Nobus, I love reviews.
I worked hard on the dream with Griever, because I wanted to keep the story fluid and leave
no loose ends. Enjoy!
Karaoke Risa: I thought hard about whether I should have kept that part in, but came to the
conclusion that if Raine didn't tell Laguna, then I could technically add it and I felt it gave a
nice little touch to the whole Julia/Laguna relationship. Thanks for the reviews.
Dawn came and went, but noone could find Laguna, until Rinoa had the awe-inspiring idea of looking in the not-so-obvious places. She found him in less than a minute. She went alone.
Tiptoeing towards the man, Rinoa was careful not to make noise as she watched him skip rocks while sitting on the old fishing dock by the lake.
"Hello Rinoa."
"How'd y..."
"Old soldier. Some things never fade" the father said, skipping another rock one, two, three, four skips before it dislodged a frog from its perch on a lilypad.
"I guess there's no use in my dramatic, planned out entrance then. Maybe I should cancel the dancing moombas?"
"Heh. Sorry for spoiling the circus but this clown's not in a very festive mood. How did you know where to look?"
"When we woke to no you, Squall panicked a little, let's just say he was a little worried the local townsfolk would recognise you and offer you a great view of the countryside from six feet under. Him, and Ward went searching for you, Kiros started in the other direction, I thought they'd check the usual places, the Ragnarok, the town, Raine's grave, ad nauseum so I thought where would someone who'd lived here before go when he needed time to think? Away from nosy townfolk, somewhere comfortable where he'd been going for years, I checked the Chocobo crossing, the next place I could think of was by the water, plenty places to hide, a bunch of rocks to skip, frogs for entertainment, sounded like you"
Nodding, Laguna motioned for Rinoa to come sit beside him and handed her some rocks.
"You and me are the same, Laguna. I know I'm a girl and a lot younger than you and a sorceress to boot, you're a man, the President of the most powerful country in the world, a father and older, but the part of us that makes us so deeply ourselves is the same."
Laguna looked over to the girl, barely older than a child, so different from him,
"What would that be Almighty Queen of Knowledge?" he asked, skipping another rock.
"We both fell in love with a Lionheart"
The sounds of water falling and bubbling dominated the small space as fish swam and the old creaky dock the two people sat on rocked and sang underneath them as Laguna tried to think of where this conversation was going and why he felt like listening.
"My mother told me stories. She would tuck me in and sing me lullabies and tell me of the soldier that gave her the gift of using her voice. She told me how she thought she loved the soldier, but she also told me how that same nervous soldier dissapeared then she was able to sit at that piano and sing to so many people. I can see her holding me one night when I was five, two months before she died and rock me to sleep. I was sick and hadn't been feeling the greatest and it was late at night and my father had come in and kissed me goodnight, it made me feel like everything was okay. She sang to me as I sniffled and coughed and told me of the time she realized that the purpose of the soldier coming into her life was not to give her life a tragedy, a story to tell the kids of how love was taken away, but to teach her that everybody has a voice and not to use it is the real tragedy. I guess that's how I got to be okay, how I got to be able to love my mother as much as always, but not dwell on the fact that she's never going to be there to sing lullabies to my family someday. It took me a while to figure out that the soldier was you, and that you were Squall's father but I figured it out and it made everything right all over again. He's not a whole lot like you, Laguna. Squall's got the same Lionheart spirit that Raine had."
"Other than making me extremely satisfied that Julia remembered me and that my son isn't going to be following in the footsteps of dear old dad, why are you here, Rinoa?"
"Griever visited you last night."
"How'd you figure that one out? Wait, let me answer that: you're a sorceress"
"It doesn't take a sorceress to hear a grown man scream. I saw Griever, I felt him back when we fought Ultimecia. I recognised the sickening feeling he gives off in the way you cried in your sleep."
The president gazed sideways at the love of his son's life, the playful girl who thought her lot in life was playing practical jokes on her friends and making his son laugh, who knew? Maybe it was. Maybe not.
"It was the first time I got to hold my little girl. Ciel came after Griever showed me how he got to become the guardian of Raine's line."
"That wasn't all"
"What, did I talk in my sleep, too?"
"Sorceress, you're not revealing everything. I can tell"
"Can I use you in treaty negotiations? Secret Service, perhaps?"
"Laguna"
"Okay, okay. I'm opening up to a nineteen year old, how easy can it be?"
They smiled at each other, not much of a smile, but the intention was clear.
"Griever ... he told me ... ... I was the cause of Raine's death. He said if she had only called on him, he could have saved her! Above all the other guilt I feel, KABOOM! Guess what Laguna! You knocked up a dying woman! Go YOU! Having Ciel killed her! Would have killed Ciel too if Griever hadn't gone against all orders and took her."
Breathing a huge sigh and shaking away the tears, Laguna skipped another rock before continuing,
"We've paid the price, I lost my wife, you and Squall lost your mothers, I've lived with the guilt of watching my son grow up without knowing he even had a father, and I've lived wanting to know what my daughter would have looked like if she had grown older. We sacrificed, I fought, we battled, waged war, defeated some psycho-bitch sorceress, what more does Hyne want!? I mean, what next? Galbadia bombs Esthar and my son never wants to see me again? Why do some lives have to be so unfair when other people just get to be happy?"
"I can't answer those questions and I know you didn't want me to, but I can say this. I don't know much, but through the past year I've come to know how to be a sorceress. It took me asking why and how and all that, but it wasn't until I stopped asking questions that I wasn't capable of understanding and just used my sorceress powers before they started to work. I don't think we're capable of understanding, I don't think that's the point, I think the point is to stop trying to delve too deep into the mess of a world we're in and just trust that we can do something about it. When I let go my fears, I was able to defeat a sorceress. I had the power all along, I just needed to forget what I've been taught about sorceresses and evil and just do what I knew I could do. Without you, Squall wouldn't have been born. If he hadn't been born, he couldn't grow up to defeat Ultimecia"
"If Squall and Ciel hadn't been born, Ultimecia wouldn't exist in the future. Raine should have died a lot sooner than she did. Griever kept her alive until she had the twins. Griever saved Ciel, Griever will work for Ultimecia. What about that makes you believe Hyne's involved? Sounds a hell of a lot like self-preservation to me. Griever is petrified of loosing the bloodline, it's all that matters. More like we're suffering for Griever's screw ups than Hyne having a master plan"
Rinoa looked back at the man's face, she forgot how old he looked. She was used to remembering him 20 years younger from the vision-dreams Ellone put them under, now he just looked tired. His hair was greying, his eyes had laugh lines, wrinkles were beginning to form, but his eyes held nothing of the exuberant joy he held back when he was Laguna Loire, journalist, lover, soldier, idealist. Now he was just a President who had seen to much ugliness in the world. Hyne, give him a break.
"Raine! Come see this!" Laguna whisper-yelled, calling the flower picking woman over to his side. Trotting up beside him, Raine smiled,
"What are we looking at?"
"Shh. Over there, Ellone" her husband pointed, wrapping his arm around his wife to reveal Ellone playing with some Chicobos. Raine's smile widened as she watched the little girl flapping her arms while running in circles shouting,
"Wark! Wark wark! Wark!" with several of the small yellow birds playing along. As the small girl tumbled through the grass, husband and wife smiled at each other,
"She's so happy now" Raine said, wrapping her arm around Laguna and putting her other hand in his back pocket while kissing his cheek.
"She's not the only one that's happy" Laguna smirked, looking at his wife with a familiar glint in his eyes. Raine laughed, turning from the scene of Ellone falling down and the mother Chocobo picking her up by the beak to Laguna making bedroom eyes.
"What? O come on, is that all you men ever think about?"
Looking up at the sky, down at the grass, up Raine's leg, back up to the sky,
"Mmmm" he began, Raine interupting him by copying the sound he was making,
"Mmmm, do I really want an answer?"
"I'm thinking no, nadda, nuh uh, negativo, nope, come back later, not really, no"
As Laguna shook his head, Raine's smile grew broader as she chuckled and slapped Laguna's chest.
"Don't blame me, you're the one with your hand in my pocket"
"Ah, well maybe I should take it out?"
At Laguna's whimper, she giggled,
"Maybe I should put my hand in your pocket and see how you react"
"Laguna, I wouldn't have it any other way"
That was the only warning Laguna got as Raine twirled around and jumped on him, sending both of them careening to the soft grass.
"Woa! We're gonna get dirty!" Laguna spasmed,
"Dirty? We're going to get dirty? New invention: Washing Machine"
"Me and my big mouth" Laguna said, rolling his eyes and kissing Raine's smirking lips.
"I can put you and your big mouth to better uses" Raine drawled, kissing Laguna's ear as she licked his earlobe.
"Learning about the miracle of laundry detergent?" Laguna said, smiling innocently,
"Don't you know it" Raine muttered, biting Laguna's lower lip and drawing it out slowly before raking his chest with her fingers and kissing him to his pleasurable groans.
Rolling over, Laguna pulled Raine's yellow sweater off and flailed it over to the side,
"The sweater is Off!" he said triumphantly as Raine threw his jacket beside the sweater before looking up and around as Laguna reached for the bottom of her camisole.
"Wait"
"Wait? Wait? You expect me to wait?"
"Ellone"
"Yeah,"
"What if she y'know, sees us"
"Lifelong scarring?"
"That's what I'm thinking"
Laguna gave a defeated sigh and fell down onto the grass only to get right back up as he and Raine saw Ellone racing up the hill on the back of the mother chocobo.
"Yaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!" the little girl shouted, bouncing on the large yellow bird.
"YES! GO CHOCOBO!! Take her away!" Laguna yelled,
"Make sure she's home for dinner!!" Raine yelled out to the chocobo, who warked and ... waved? The couple began laughing as several chicobos trampled over them in a b-line for their mother.
"STAMPEDE!!!" Laguna shouted as Raine shrieked and leaped to straddle Laguna's lap, laughing her head into his chest. After all signs of little girls and birds were gone, Laguna deadpaned,
"Well that was exciting... Raine you might want to take a breath... it wasn't that funny"
"Hahaha... I know... hahah..." taking a sigh, she looked into the eyes of the love of her life while biting her lip,
"Where were we?"
"I was going to comment about the beauty of your camisole and ask if it was a casualty of the last Loire paycheque, you were going to tell me yes, and do I like the colour, to which I was going to say yes and I think it looks better crumpled beside your yellow sweater"
Raine rocked her hips slightly on Laguna's, eliciting a groan from the man now holding onto her hips, then running his fingers up her sides to pull off the light blue camisole. Kissing deeply, Laguna and Raine pulled off Laguna's t-shirt, unbuckled his trousers and her jeans and spent the next 43 minutes groping, moaning and shouting each other's name in ecstacy.
"He really believes it's all Griever's fault"
"Have you ever thought that maybe it is?"
"But Hyne..."
"Hyne's spent the last four hundred years equalising the equation."
Rinoa cocked her head to see Squall's face better as she traced his facial scar with a finger. She had gone back to the bar after talking to Laguna, but he didn't follow her back. Now she and Squall sat on the couch amidst the scaffolding and paint cans folded together, as the rain poured and Kiros and Ward went to keep a secret surveilance of their friend and President.
"Think about it, Rinoa. Griever was never supposed to be guarding one family line. He alone unbalanced the world powers, Miketa, Raine, Ultimecia, me, we're all products in one way or another of Griever getting involved."
"Are you saying "
"I'm saying that Griever made this mess, and someone had to put the world back into balance, we did that by defeating Ultimecia, we're living for Griever's mistakes, now that there's some sort of balance maybe all that's left is Ciel. She seems to be the last loose end."
Rinoa sighed,
"Hyne, Squall I've got it. Remember when we were fighting Ultimecia and Fujin was in surgery?"
"Yes, what has tha..."
"She was pregnant, Squall. It wasn't until after we defeated Ultimecia that she lost the child. Maybe... maybe I don't know, maybe Seifer and Fujin's child was going to hook up with ours?"
Squall wiped his face with his hand clearly not wanting to think about his former enemy,
"What makes you think that?"
"Call it Sorceress Intuition"
"Have you told him yet?"
"Not exactly"
"... Rin, he has to know." Squall closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose
"I know, but well... he's your father... you remember what happened with my dad"
"Yeah, I never knew I could dodge a bullet that close"
"Just be glad I had already cast protect"
"That a fact?"
"Yep" Rinoa said, adding a sultry, seductive quality to her voice as she turned around to straddle Squall and put her hands on his shoulders. Squall ran his gloved fingers along her sides, placing his hands firmly on her shoulder blades and bringing her down to kiss him tenderly. Running her hands on the inside of Squall's jacket, she went to pull it off, but Squall grabbed her wrists,
"Not so fast, first we tell Laguna."
"Awww, c'mon, just a quickie" the mischevious 19 year old said, lunging for Squall's belt buckle. Swerving to the side and grabbing her waist, turning her around to have her back to him, as he paused to stroke her stomac, Squall held Rinoa steady.
"Wow. Forgot how fast you are" Rinoa breathed, letting her head sink back to his shoulder as he massaged her neck with one hand and drew patterns across her belly with the other. Leaning towards her ear, he whispered,
"Learn your opponent's objective, find the weakest points in their defence, use them to diffuse the situation"
"Are you always on, oh master SeeD Commander?"
"Are you always impulsive?"
Rinoa took in a breath, paused,
"Touche"
"You or me?"
Rinoa leaned up and licked Squall's neck. Squall replied by taking the hand at the top of her neck and turning her head forward then nipping her ear.
"I take it that you want me to tell him"
Rinoa nodded,
"Don't know why, it was your fault"
"My fault!? Mr. Squall Lionheart! It takes two, y'know!"
"Yea, yeah, at least I wanted to wait until we got a condom"
"Like I was going to wai... okay so it is my fault, but you didn't seem too down on the situation"
"I'm only human" Squall said, shifting to put Rinoa on the couch as he got up and fixed his jacket and gloves. Before Rinoa could counter his argument, the youth leaned down to kiss Rinoa's lips, with a learnt-from-Rinoa-conversation-ending kiss then released her to sigh and keep her eyes closed.
"I'll be back after I tell Laguna"
"Uh huh" Rinoa answered, clearly still in limbo.
Smiling to himself, Squall fluffed up his collar and began to stroll down the stairs, lifting his head up to drawl "Later, Rin" in his sexiest voice to another small grunt from his fiancee. Smirking to himself again, he trotted down the stairs and across the floor to take a deep breath and open the door. Who he opened the door to would surprise everyone beyond words.