Laguna looked up slowly, not even entirely sure where he was, much less who was kneeling across from him. He had a few moments of total non - reality, and for a moment couldn't remember what year it was or how he had gotten where he was. Either he was somehow in the past, or a dead man was looking at him, looking, from what Laguna could see through his hazy, swimmy vision, just as shocked as he felt.
He wanted to ask where, when, why and how all at once, but didn't manage to do anything but start sobbing into his hands.
He felt Kiros place a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't say anything. The reality of seeing Kiros once more finally hit him, and he decided he wasn't dreaming.
"So you're alive," Laguna said, as he tried to pull himself together. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and, looking up, he saw something like guilt in his friend's face.
"Yeah, I'm alive," Kiros answered. "You mean you thought - "
"Everyone thought so," Laguna said. "But no one really knew you except Ward and me, so no one knew." He took a deep breath and felt his mind clear, just enough so that he could understand the situation he was in. "God," he said, "if I were you, I would've slapped me stupid by now."
"I don't have to slap you stupid," Kiros said, and Laguna could hear the panicked anger in his voice. "What the hell is going on? What was this?!" He gestured to the guard rail where Laguna had tottered precariously moments ago. "This isn't because you thought... this wasn't about..."
"Don't flatter yourself," Laguna answered with a weak smile. Kiros didn't smile back; instead he looked frightened and somewhat dangerous. But then Kiros had always looked dangerous to others. It had kept him out of as many fights as it had started. "Partly, maybe," Laguna relented. "I dunno. I'm not really right in the head tonight and there was a couple seconds... well more than a couple I guess... where it all went to hell. I didn't know there was a train coming. That wasn't the answer I was looking for." He looked through the grating to the railroad tracks below, and was struck with the horror of what he had nearly done. "I didn't really wanna jump in the first place, I think," he said. "But by the time I got here, so damn drunk and, you know. I guess I woulda died, huh?"
He thought about what had brought him out on a lonely, drunken morning walk in the first place, and took a shuddering deep breath. Panic filled his chest so quickly that it hurt, and sobered him almost immediately. He tried to force the tears back, but they came anyway. Reality came once more and hit him with terrifying power. It really was real. It really had happened.
"Let's go back," Kiros said gently, and helped him up.
"Back? Back where, I don't even know where I was."
"Just come with me," Kiros said, steadying him as he tried to walk.
----------------------
The sound of a screaming baby filled his head. The baby was alone, abandoned, and starving to death. Its father had left and its mother was dead by its side.
The woman next to the child had long brown hair and was splattered with blood. Her eyes were open, a look of terror, loneliness and betrayal frozen on her still face.
Laguna took her in his arms, knowing, from having lived the scene so many times, that she would be cold.
"This is where I wake up screaming," he told himself in the dream. He knew the dream down to the last detail, from the chill of her skin to her blue fingernails.
But this time it didn't stop. Instead, he felt something wet on his shoulder. As still as Raine was in his arms, he couldn't let her go, even in the dream. Still trying awkwardly to hold her, he turned his head, and saw a dainty, bloody hand on his shoulder.
"You could have stayed with me one more night," a cracking, dry voice told him. "One more night would have made all the difference."
"I don't wanna be in this dream anymore," Laguna said weakly.
She turned his face to her with her cold hand. "Just reach me out, then, you will know that you are not dreaming," she said conversationally.
He looked at her bruised and bloody face. "Don't say that," he whispered. "Just leave that alone." It was his song, she had written it for him and he had so loved to listen to it on the radio. He wanted to keep it for himself. This dream was about to take that away from him. "No more, please," he said.
-------------------
"Hey. Laguna."
He sat straight up in the bed. Kiros was half lying down on the small sofa on the other side of the room, idly braiding his hair.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" he asked. "I know that you called for Raine, but there's more, isn't there?"
Laguna pulled the blankets around him, feeling cold and unbearably hot at the same time. No, he didn't want to talk about it. "I'm okay," he said, trying to convince himself as much as Kiros.
"Okay," Kiros said. "I'm here if you want to talk to me."
Laguna leaned back against the headboard of the bed. He could hardly believe that Kiros was truly alright, and with him again. He could believe even less that, a few hours ago, Kiros had stopped him from falling in front of an oncoming train. He knew that his comrade went around helping people all the time, sometimes without even realizing he was doing it, but it was his own actions that shocked him. He had been a step away from being killed.
"It's more than just missing her," he said suddenly to Kiros, surprising himself. "I do miss her, but it's more than that. It's knowing that I wasn't there when I should have been. When I promised I would be. That she was alone and she was scared."
Kiros nodded sympathetically. Laguna knew he had told him all of this many times since his wife's death, and would probably tell him a million more times. "There was no way you could have gotten back," Kiros said, also for the millionth time. "You only went away so that you could find Elle."
"Right," Laguna answered bitterly. "And once I found her, I let her go again. First Elle, then Raine. And knowing that I have a child out there somewhere. I see little kids sometimes and I start thinking to myself 'what if that one's mine,' you know?" He closed his eyes before going on. "Then I heard that you were gone, and Ward, forget it, Ward went nuts. And just when I thought that I lost everyone I could possibly lose, you know. Julia," he finished weakly.
Kiros frowned. "Julia?" he asked. "What about her?"
Laguna looked up in slow surprise. "You didn't hear about Julia," he said softly.
