It's because of Ellone.
The public record won't show it. Too many of the men in her life will make sure that her name is kept to as much of a minimum as possible—in all the wrong places, but, she knows they are trying.
But if she could narrow it down she knows it returns, not to a moment in an orphanage off the coast of Centra. Not to a Garden, or the SeeDs that it grows.
It comes down to a two year old girl who didn't die when she was supposed to.
.
Kiros Seagill arrives in Winhill in early summer, a year after he watched his life flash before his eyes on the short trip down a cliff in Centra.
His life DID flash before his eyes. He had never believed that happened, always thought it was a dramatic thing people said when what they really meant was their last moments were filled with regret.
Kiros is not a man with many regrets, though, and he did not see the things he wished he hadn't done, or reflect on all the things he was certain he was going to miss. He saw…his life. His parents. His training camp days, when he first met Laguna and Ward. All of their time together.
And then he saw darkness, overwhelmed by how cold the ocean was, and tried desperately to regain his sense of which way was air, and which way was death by sharp and solid rocks.
How any of them survived only Hyne knows. But it was death by rocky sea or death by Estharii bullets, and while a little warning might have been nice on Laguna's part…he saved them. Both of them.
Kiros does not expect to save Laguna. He isn't sure he even expects to find Laguna, even if this is the town he's heard soldiers on leave whispering about. A deserter. Refusing army med. Laguna did always find a way to make himself infamous.
Dumb luck, Kiros and Ward would tell him. And he would laugh—they would laugh—because it was true.
Kiros misses that.
He misses his friends.
He finds Laguna. Or at least—a version of Laguna.
Stepping off the train into this tiny village set in a gods-abandoned part of Galbadia, all Kiros can think was how bored his friend must be. No lights! No bars! No stories! In all their time together in the army, never did any of them talk about a place like this. And, Kiros thinks, holding his head up and pretending not to notice the suspicious stares of residents peeking through curtains at the man in foreign clothes and skin darker than anyone they had likely ever spoken to, I can't say I'm sorry for that.
This version of Laguna says he is happy, and doesn't want to leave. Kiros honestly thinks it's Raine, for months. His friend has no idea how to talk to women but they always seem to notice him, so for him to make the time to not just say hello to, but to…whatever that night with Julia Heartilly was, none of them could easily dismiss it. And yet…dismiss it Laguna has. Quickly. Emphatically. A year recovering in the home of someone who was apparently one of Julia's fans, and Laguna has no idea that she had married. That she made it as a singer. Does Raine just not talk about it? Later, he will laugh at the idea of Laguna talking about Julia in the throes of delirium after he washed ashore in Winhill, and Raine avoiding the subject alltogether afterwards.
Later, he'll laugh at anything he can find to laugh about.
But it's not Raine. Laguna loves her. Kiros knows him well enough to know this, to know that what he initially thought was just transference is much deeper, much more real. It isn't a crush, or puppy love. It's family.
But it's the little girl. Ellone.
Without her…Kiros will never say this out loud, but he knows Laguna would have accepted being transferred to a Deling City medical facility as soon as he was stable enough. Before he had a chance to fall in love with Raine. To fall in love with small town life—to fall in love with a family. He suspects Raine knows it, too.
So when Laguna calls him, long after his brief stint as Assisstant-Monster-Hunter of Winhill, Kiros can't say no. Because he has met the little girl who is being subjected to Hyne knows what at the hands of Esthar. But more than that, because he has seen the look in Laguna's eyes when Ellone is around. Has heard the change in his voice when he talks about her. Because he knows, that sometime in that year Laguna was officially listed as MIA, his friend became a father.
.
Sending Squall to the past was never meant to do all of this.
She claimed then, she wanted to change the past. But she has grown up with this gift, and knows better, and can't help but ask herself how much of what she did was just wanting to know? That seeing Squall that day in the Training Center, that watching him fight alongside an older, wiser, and just as anxious Quistis, sparked such an intense longing—no, sadness? Anger, in her, for all that was stolen.
Edea tries to assure her, she did nothing wrong. The wheels were already in motion. If anything, Ellone gave Squall the hope he needed when he had no hope.
Edea did not have to look into Squall's eyes when he fell, helpless, to the floor of the escape pod.
Ellone spent so much time, on the White SeeD ship, remembering her little brother. The only link she had left to her childhood. She spent hours, imagining what he was going to look like when she saw him again. How old he would be. If he would still look like Rai—like their mother. Creating elaborate fantasies to replace the last memory she had of him, as Cid held him back while he screamed for her from the stone steps of the orphanage.
The next time they met as brother and sister, he was just as broken. Just as defeated. And all she could do, was give him an even greater reason to despair.
.
They arrive in Esthar with little hope left in their hearts.
It has always led to this—the three of them, moving through the crystal streets of Esthar. They all enlisted for their own reasons, but all knew their paths would eventually bring them here. For revenge. For home. For the story. And then the war broke out, and…well, not many troops from Deling City avoided Esthar.
Kiros wishes they could have avoided this.
The after.
He and Ward disagree with Esthar, when the subject of shielding comes up. They have not been under the thumb of a sorceress, but the resistance has wanted it for awhile. Too many friends burying friends when those too afraid to stand up to Adel agreed to go to war. Friendships lost, families splintered, by those who honestly convinced themselves that what Adel wanted was for the best. That the invasions of other countries, the hunt for children to find a successor, was worth it. Some of the top resistance members even told stories of relationships that crumbled when parents were were willing to sacrifice their own children to Adel's hunt. If our child is blessed by Hyne, she cannot die, they would say, as if it made any sense at all to bring so many little girls to Odine. As if that was good enough, to rip a toddler from their mother's arms.
Never again. That is Laguna's promise, when Adel is finally shot into space, and they have begun preparations to leave, when he is asked to help with the "what comes next" because the people trust him.
He declines once, twice, and has said most of his goodbyes when he receives a letter from Winhill.
They agree to shielding when Laguna returns from a long walk through the city, after days of uncharacteristic silence and requests to be alone, and says he will accept their nomination for him to lead Esthar into their period of isolation. At least in the interim, he qualifies. He doesn't want it, and doesn't think the people will even give him the appointment, but he doesn't have anywhere to be. Not anymore.
In his eyes, the soldier Kiros knew is gone. While they traveled, it was like their younger days. Wrong turns and late starts. The most ridiculous efforts imaginable to earn enough money to sustain their journey across the world. Laguna, writing furiously on train rides and in hostels, muttering out loud at a conversational volume, and relying on his friends as his thesaurus. They laughed. They teased each other, and leaned on each other, and were every bit the team they had always been regardless of the last two years.
Kiros doesn't know what he thought would happen, after. He supposes, he thought they would find Ellone, and Laguna would return to Winhill. That sooner or later he'd have all of them living there, because he was a hard person to be away from. Because once Laguna got an idea it was hard for anyone to talk him out of it, and it was easy to believe him when he talked about the townspeople eventually coming around. (They aren't dangerous, he insisted. Just slow to warm up.)
The idea of losing Ellone again, of Raine…
In Laguna's shoes, Kiros supposes he would have made the same choice.
So Laguna is appointed leader in the interim, and then he is elected. The presidential palace stays largely the same, save for a large framed picture of Winhill Laguna remembered seeing at an art show in a suburb of Deling City while they were on the road and Kiros and Ward managed to track down and gift him on the night of the election. He is loved by most, and hated passionately by those who supported Adel, and he does not talk about the life he had before the Crystal City.
.
So how did he get from there to here?
Ellone stares at the water glass in front of her.
"Hope," she says after a little too long. "Hope that he could change things. Even if he couldn't change things for himself."
Shout out to Colobonema who is also writing an *amazing* Kiros fic for this challenge! I had this idea before she started posting hers and it helped me evolve mine to skim over a lot of the "searching for Laguna" parts and end up turning into something else entirely. I absolutely cannot honor that part of the story in the way that she is, and cannot recommend enough that you go read her submission!
I am aware of the extremely heteronormative language in the lines referring to Adel's search for a successor. I debated changing it to be more inclusive however-game canon states that Adel was searching for young girls to be her successor. I am happy to chat male/trans/NB sorceresses/knights all day long, but as this is referencing something established in canon, elected to stick with that. And the mention of people sacrificing their children is a direct dig at a horrifying story from a QAnon follower who murdered his two children because he thought they were demons. I'm actually pretty sure I have other stories where it's the female-presenting parent who tries to harm a child/children, I just happened to read that story while planning for my challenge entry so it made its way in.
This will have at least one more part. Famous last words.