None of the security alarms had been tripped, but Cid Kramer knew something was amiss. Well, many, many things were amiss, he told himself, but something was particularly amiss in his office at that very second. He could feel eyes on him and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He turned his swivel chair around and looked behind him, wiping his eyes hastily and hoping that whatever entity was with him, it hadn't seen him crying like a baby.

"Who's here?" he asked mildly, trying to sound neither threatening nor welcoming. There was no answer. "Are you man or beast?" he added almost playfully. "Living or dead?"

"Living," said a voice behind him, from the door to his office. He swung the chair around again, disoriented. Before him stood a very haggard looking man with shoulder length, jet black hair. Something about him reminded Cid of the ravens he sometimes saw perched in the trees around the orphanage. "Sort of,"
Laguna added wryly.

"Mr. Loire," he said, smiling vaguely, taking in the man's stunned expression. "You didn't have to sneak in; you could have announced yourself."

Laguna stared at him for a moment before opening his mouth to say "You..." He didn't finish the thought, if he had a coherent one.

"Know of you? Of course I know of you. You're one of the men who sealed away the Sorceress Adel. Are the other two with you?"

Laguna seemed about to answer, when the tall, dark skinned man stood up from in front of his desk. How long he had been there, how he had gotten there, Cid could not guess. He only hoped he hadn't heard him crying.

Laguna knocked on the closed door behind him. "Come on in, Ward," he said. The door opened and a tremendous, callous looking man stepped in. He stood stalwartly behind Laguna, as if taking up his usual station in life.

"Gentlemen," Cid said, trying not to sound uncertain, "what brings you here?"

"Well," Laguna said, almost excitedly, "if you know who I am, you probably know why I'm here, right?"

Cid walked slowly from behind his desk and approached Laguna, looking into his eyes. Laguna didn't flinch, but Cid felt that the eyes of the man who had been hiding in front of his desk were on him once more, and he could actually feel him tensing up. He and the other man were obviously terribly protective of Laguna.

Laguna looked at him steadily. Cid couldn't see a hint of malice in his eyes. But there was a lifetime's worth of grief. Cid nodded, mostly to himself. He knew all too well what it meant for a man to lose his wife.

"What if," Cid said slowly, not answering Laguna's question, "there were another sorceress?"

"Then we'd seal her away, too."

Cid was surprised to hear that it was the man behind him who had answered before Laguna. He turned to face him. He was sure the man's name was Seagill. He'd heard it mentioned before. This man, he was a hawk. "Would you?" Cid asked. "Would you go through it all again?"

The man smiled at him without losing the shrewd look in his eyes. Cid might have been unnerved by this, had he not just lived through the most hellish few weeks of his life. He'd seen more unthinkable things in the recent past than he thought was fair for one man to see.

"We don't have much to lose," Seagill said evenly.

Cid decided that he liked him, this hawk, even if he was a little misguided. He turned to Laguna once more. "Mr. Loire," he said kindly, "to answer your question, yes, I do know why you're here. At least, I think I know, and in a way I'm glad you have finally come here. Understand that I couldn't exactly advertise this place with all the crises that are going on concerning children. Please, if you will all follow me to the beach." Cid stood aside and showed them to the door. He hated to see the hopeful and expectant look on Laguna's face, because he did seem like a good man and Cid regretted having to let him down.

He led them outside to a beach where a group of children played.


-------------------


They stood on the stone steps that led to the sand, where the children couldn't see them right away. Kiros watched as they all played together, with a sweet sort of envy. His own childhood had been somewhat lonely, and even though he'd had a family, he had often wished for a group of friends to play with.

He watched as a little blond boy sat patiently while a little girl with flipped up, brown hair drew on his face with a magic marker.

"There!" she announced when she was finished drawing on him. "It's perfect."

"Great!" the blond boy said. When he turned around, Kiros saw that his face was covered in shaky black lines. He made a loud war cry, and ran off down the beach.

"That boy, with magic marker all over his face" Cid said quietly, "has just been adopted. He doesn't know it yet. I have no idea where he came from; I only know where he's going." He turned to Laguna again. "Only my wife knows where they have come from."

"Where's your wife?" Kiros asked.

Cid hesitated a fraction of a second, but Kiros caught it. "She's gone. She left only a few days ago." He looked up and met Kiros' eyes. "To protect the children."

"Can we find your wife?" Laguna asked, throwing tact to the wind.

"I'm afraid not. The point is, Mr. Loire," Cid said, "since I don't even know where most of these children have come from, I wouldn't know if one of them was yours. And even if I did," he added sadly, and trailed off.

"Even if you did?" Laguna asked.

"The true Sorceress travels from one body to another, as researched by Dr. Odine, whom I think you know. She finds people, girls and women mostly, and inhabits them and uses them, you see. And when she leaves them, she retains what she learned and what she knew before. In other words, the true Sorceress still knows who you are. And I could never run the risk of letting her know who your child was, too. He, or she, would be put in incredible danger."

Laguna didn't answer as he stared down the length of the beach.

"I know," Cid went on, sadly and kindly, "that you're a good man, and that you're probably a very strong man, and brave. If you defeated Adel, you must be; all of you must be. However, you can't defeat the true Sorceress. We have to learn to understand her first, and we're a long way away from that. If you can't defeat her, then there's no way that you could protect your child from her either, should she find you. She had been using Adel when you sealed her away. You tricked her, you hurt her, and you took away her instrument of power. She's not going to forget you."

"So you're saying I'm a danger to my own child," Laguna said harshly.

"I'm sorry," Cid said.

"Yeah," Laguna answered bitterly. "Everyone's sorry. If I had a goddamn gil for everytime someone was sorry they couldn't help me..."

Kiros noticed that the girl with the flipped up hair had seen them, and was watching them talk, with a concerned look on her small features. She approached them without a hint of shyness.

"Hey!" she said to Laguna.

Laguna looked at her and smiled weakly. "Hi," he said, and crouched down to her level.

"You look really sad about something, but you know what?"

"What?" he asked.

"If you weren't so old, I'll bet we'd get married." She batted her eyes shamelessly at him. Then she looked up at Cid. "Could I have ice cream?" she asked.

"You have to wait until after dinner," he said, sounding slightly surprised at her behavior.

"Aw, damn!" she said, and walked away.

"Language, young lady!" Cid called after her. "I can only guess where she learned that," he muttered to himself.

Laguna looked surprised, but was smiling just a little.

-----------------


Cid Kramer was right, and Laguna knew it. He was a threat to his own child, just as his presence in Winhill had been a threat to the people there. He swore at himself mentally, and cursed his own life. He wished against wishing that he'd never gone after the sorceress. He had wanted to make the world safe for his child, and for Elle, and for all the children. He'd made the greatest sacrifice he could make (his own life wouldn't be so great a sacrifice, he thought,) and for nothing. He'd sealed one sorceress away, but had only gotten the true Sorceress pissed off.

Cid had been kind enough to put them all up for the night, but Laguna had not been able to sleep, and had gone down to the beach once more. He sat on the stone steps on the beach and looked out over the water. The sound of the ocean made him lonely, but anything was better than the nightmares he'd been having since Julia had died.

He remembered taking Raine to the ocean one time. It was the farthest she'd ever gone from Winhill, and he remembered the strange feeling of her growing nervousness, the farther she got from the town. She got more jittery with every mile he drove. "It's okay, you know, Raine," he'd told her. "Winhill will still be there when we get back."

"I know," she said, and laughed softly.

They'd driven for hours, listening to the radio and talking. At one point, Julia's song had come on the radio, and Laguna had finally told Raine the whole story of what had happened between Julia and himself. She told him it was the sweetest and saddest story she'd ever heard, and he had told her how glad he was that things had turned out the way they had.

When they'd gotten to the ocean, Raine had been amazed. The largest body of water she had ever seen before that had been a placid lake.

"You've sailed on waters like this?" she asked him breathlessly.

"Yup!" he said, taking in her admiration. "A bunch of times! I love it. It's so cool to be on a ship..." He remembered that he had talked at length about the sea, while she listened in rapt attention, before he spontaneously suggested that they spend the night on the beach.

Raine had looked surprised and a little skeptical. "We can't leave Ellone with Aunt Mattie all night!" she'd said, referring to the elderly lady who was watching Elle.

"Why not?" Laguna said. "She's stayed with her before, and Aunt Mattie knows that it's a long way to the ocean."

Raine thought it over, then had come up with another guilt ridden excuse. "I left my flowers outside, what if it gets cold?"

Laguna had taken both her arms and turned her to face him. "You know Raine," he'd said earnestly, "you ARE allowed to have fun and be a little irresponsible once in a while."

She'd laughed and looked down. "Am I that bad?" she'd asked him.

"There's nothing bad about you," he'd said.

In the end they had spent the night on the beach.


Laguna folded his arms across his knees and let his head rest on them. He couldn't imagine a future in which he'd ever stop crying over Raine.


"Don't run away!" a worried, whispered voice said, startling him. He looked up and at first he didn't see anything. Then, a young blond boy ran out from the room opposite the stairs where he was sitting. The boy wasn't tall enough to see over the high rocks by the steps, but Laguna could see him clearly. The boy turned and looked over his shoulder, and on his face, Laguna saw the most betrayed and desperate expression he'd ever seen on a child. He looked as alone and angry as Laguna felt.

"Go away!" the boy said. "Just leave me the hell alone!"

"Shhh!" the softer voice said. "You'll get us in trouble. You want Cid to get mad?" The owner of the voice, a blond girl, came out of the same room the boy had come from. She was the same age as the boy, around five, but she had a mature demeanor that looked strange on a girl her size.

"You don't understand!" the boy said to her.

She approached him cautiously, as if she didn't want to frighten him off or drive him further away. Laguna was amazed at how careful she was being with him. "I understand just like you do," she said. "I love Matron too."

"I love her best!" the boy argued. "And she's gone forever, and no one did anything to stop her. I heard Cid say she crossed over the sea, and I'm going to get her back!"

"You can't do that!" the girl said, and suddenly she looked panicked.

"Try and stop me," the boy said. But he didn't turn and leave. He stood watching the little girl as if waiting for her to make her next move.

And she did. The girl ran to him and grabbed him. Instead of struggling, as Laguna expected the little boy to do, he broke down sobbing as if his life was over. "Don't tell on me," he whispered.

"I'm not gonna tell," she said, "as long as you stay." She stroked his hair as if she were his mother.

For a moment, he let her hold him. Then suddenly he pushed her away and she fell on the sand. "Leave me alone! Don't baby me!" the boy cried. He turned and ran back into the house.

"Fine!" the girl shouted after him. "Leave!" Then she put her face in her hands and cried too.


"I woulda told," a small voice beside Laguna said, making him jump about a foot in the air. He turned to see the little girl with the flipped up hair sitting next to him. "He tells on ev'ryone else," she said.

"You scared me," Laguna said.

"Oops, sorry!" she said. "Why'd you and your friends come here?" she asked. "Are you gonna adopt someone?"

Laguna shook his head. "I'm looking for someone I knew," he said, feeling unsure.

"I guess lotsa people are missing. Matron is gone, she was like our mom. Lotsa the kids left. It started when Sis left."

"Sis?" Laguna asked.

The little girl looked out to the beach and hugged her knees to her chest. "Uh huh, Sis. Elle."

Laguna turned his head quickly in her direction as he felt his insides turn over. "Elle?" he whispered.

"Yup, she was like our Sis and we called her Sis, like for sister, even though she's not. She got taken away and then some kids left and then Matron."

"What happened to Elle?" Laguna asked, hearing his voice tremble.

"A man took her. Cid was mad at first but then he let the man take her. I was kinda scared because they were yelling and stuff."

"What man took her?" Laguna asked, his excitement turning to fear. "Do you know his name?"

"Nope," the girl said.

"Do you remember what he looked like?"

The girl smiled brightly at him. "Sure!"