vii. wishes
If the walls around him could speak they would echo the frustrations he senses. She paces around the living room in the middle of the night. He knows something is wrong; maybe the nightmares Rinoa spoke about weren't complete nonsense as he dismissed. Maybe he shouldn't have pushed her to enroll in SeeD. Maybe he should take her out to dinner more. Maybe he should focus on the present and less on their future. He could go on with the 'maybe' situations in head, but one always loops around in the back...maybe they should have just run away after the war.
He has far too much at stake.
Growing up, he didn't have a family that he remembered, yet in a blink of an eye he was given it all. Time has a sense of humor and Squall can try to bemuse himself acknowledging that maybe this was fate's way of giving him everything in return of defeating Ultimecia.
He was reunited with Matron, the woman who raised him when he had nothing. She is complemented by her husband, Cid, his mentor and acting father. He is stern, tactical in his leadership. Cid is guiding him to be a better knight, to help protect Rinoa during her darkest hours. He is a man grooming Squall to be the next leader of Balamb Garden. This is all the formulation in making Squall his protégé.
Then there is Laguna, his biological father, that he struggles with letting in. Even now, the idea of reconnecting is strange to him, but Squall is welcoming it to get his input on a looming proposal that has been on his mind for awhile. Laguna is warm and caring; Ellone actually inherited most of Laguna's better characteristic instead of him, and Squall can admit he is a little jealous of this. Laguna is the idealist and romantic that Squall aspires to be.
Great men who have, by fate, come back into his life guiding him.
Yet even with these two father figures in his life, Squall wishes it was easy to express his desires to a potential third.
-xx-
"Seifer...? It's me, Rinoa."
He often thought that the city was for tourists or the wealthy, but after living in it for a few weeks Seifer realized it's for the broken. It doesn't matter that his face was once plastered all over the papers and the news. No one cares here as they go about their business, and for Seifer it's the escape he has needed after a year of being public enemy number one.
"I'm sorry I ran off like that, it's just that I...I don't know what to do."
He walks everywhere, even when he can take the underground subway, because around him are filled with fragments of her throughout the city. Her favorite flower shop is on the corner of River Street and Third Ave. Seifer is distracted by the ghost of her laughter and the intoxicating scents of sugar while he reads for his law classes in Cafe Hyne across from his apartment.
"I wish none of this happened to us...I wish we could go back."
He pictures it in his head, as if the war never happened, walking home picking up Estherian take out in one hand and a bouquet of lilies in the other. He's a lawyer, pushing himself to success, and she owns a book store in their neighborhood. They live together in their walk up apartment with books, blankets and antiques that she has collected over the years. There's no Garden, no magic, no sorceress and no war, just them, living in the company of each other.
His foolish heart wishes this could be a reality.
"I need to see you, we need to talk. Seifer, please call me."
He runs in the morning, before the city is awake, to the front of the Deling City Arch. The last time he was here was during the parade, when his life was turned upside down, when it all went to shit. He tries to listen to the voicemail she left him again.
"Seifer...? It's me, Rinoa."
He screams while he throws his cell phone into the concrete pavement. No one can hear him as the city is still asleep. He watches the glass screen crack into a spiderweb of lies. Smash. Smash. Smash. His foot stomps on the broken device half a dozen times as he destroys the, already shattered, final link he has to her.
-xx-
Good girls do bad things sometimes and they can't explain why.
Her daydreams are of happier times, carefree days of storytelling and fantasy. She escapes here where laughter and Balamb sunsets fill her mind. She has not a worry, there's nothing to fear here. She walks in flower fields hand in hand with him, cheerful and free. Dandelion wishes and warm summer days. He is her knight, he will protect her.
The sorceress is coming. This is her plan.
The sorceress is coming. This is her plan.
At night dark shadows and blackness fill her broken, lifeless heart. Rinoa hears voices that whisper horrifying words in her head. Her reflection is of the witches that burned at the stake with their eyes gouged. She cries out, but no one can hear her screams.
Her nightmares have disappeared because she doesn't sleep. Everywhere she turns the ghost of him is there, haunting her. She misses him, she needs him, but every time she calls there is no answer. Rinoa walks in a daze searching for answers while she carries guilt on her shoulders that becomes heavier with each passing day.
Squall didn't deserve this.
And neither did Seifer.
-xx-