Chapter 13: Rainy Days
Rain poured down outside the stone orphanage, and the mood inside was one of gloom and boredom. The children sat together in the living room, draped across the furniture like limp blankets.
"There's nothing to dooo..." Zell was whining.
"We could play hide-and-go-seek again," suggested Sefie.
"But Matron yelled at us last time," Zell said.
"Matron yelled at you because you broke her glass," Quisty corrected him. "Why doesn't someone tell Squall to come back inside? He's gonna catch a cold out there."
Seifer sniffed. "He thinks if he waits out there long enough, Sis will come back," he said. "Stupid. No one comes back when they've left this place."
"Seifer, stop it," Irvy began, but Seifer had that smirk on his face.
"Who'd want to, with you bunch to come back to? I don't blame Sis for going away."
"Seifer, stop it!" repeated Quisty. "If you keep talking like that, I'm gonna tell Matron on you!"
"You can't tell me what to do, Quis-tis," Seifer continued. He ran out of the room.
"Hey, you can't--"
"Just leave him alone," Irvy said. "How about I go ask Matron for some paper so we can all color?"
"I don't feel like it," Zell whined again. "I'm going to my room."
"I'm going to go tell Squall to come inside," Quisty said.
Sefie and Irvy were left alone in the room. "Nobody wants to play all together since Sis's gone," Irvy said.
"Everyone's just sad 'cause it rained. I wanted to go play on the beach, too."
Irvy didn't reply. Although the bandages were off, his skin was still sensitive and pink in places, and Matron told him he couldn't play in the sand or in the sun. He was going to have scars...
"Cheer up. Maybe Squall will color," said Sefie. "Maybe he can draw a picture of Sis."
"Squall never wants to play with anyone anymore. He's--he's such a poop! I wanted to be his friend, but he doesn't ever even talk to me."
"He's just quiet," Sefie said.
"He doesn't do anything," Irvy continued, "and he's mean, meaner than Seifer!"
"Shhh!" Sefie said, looking over Irvy's shoulder. He turned around to see a drenched Squall, with Quistis beside him. Irvy was too upset to back down.
"I mean it," he said.
"Whatever," Squall replied.
"Irvy, no!" Sefie stepped between the boys before Irvy could start a fight. Squall just kept walking, and Quisty followed him.
"Get a towel," she said. "You're dripping all over the floor."
"It's not fair," Irvy said, not quite understanding his own jealousy. All he knew was that everyone loved Squall, even though he never seemed to return the love. "It's not faaair!"
*
"That's enough," said Ellone, awakening Irvine and Selphie. She wiped her eyes. "I knew things changed after I left, but I didn't know…well, thank you. I guess you should be catching your train, shouldn't you?"
"Aren't you coming?" Selphie asked.
"I wasn't invited," Ellone grinned. "And I'm not really interested. It's all official junk, isn't it? Boring…"
"Won't you miss your boyfriend?" Irvine teased. It was common knowledge now that Ellone was dating one of the SeeDs on assignment in Esthar.
"Eh, that's over," Ellone said. "Irreconcilable differences and all that. I'm thinking about traveling again. I got used to it, when I was with the White SeeDs...I'm starting to get restless."
"Really? We'll miss you, Sis," Selphie said.
"Wait a second, I'm not leaving yet!" Ellone said. "Not Esthar, anyway, but I guess I should be heading off. You kids take care, I'll try and catch you when you get back."
Ellone walked down the hallway, her mind made up to catch a glimpse of someone's recent past. The guilt that had lodged itself into her heart was too uncomfortable to ignore.
*
While the SeeDs and Estharian leaders boarded a train to the construction site, Esarene waited in a corridor of the Airstation. Only a few planes currently offered service to the other continent, especially with the issues in Galbadia, and fare was expensive. Esarene had the money--she'd be working overtime for a month or so to make up for it, but that she could handle. The feeling of being watched by a ghost she could not.
Did love make everyone feel this new and wonderful? Some part of her realized that it must, but it was hard to believe this sort of feeling could be ordinary. She felt lucky--Laguna was such an interesting, funny, smart, attractive, wonderful man. Again, she wondered if everyone felt that way about the one they loved, but in her own heart no one else could be so special.
And although she knew little about her, Esarene had to respect the woman he had loved enough to marry. She was more than a little jealous of Raine Loire, and it made her feel uncomfortable to think that if the woman had still been alive, Laguna would have been married to her.
Well, there was no point dwelling on the what-ifs. Laguna had been a widower for seventeen years, and Esarene had been alone for just as long. More than anything else, she wanted to be with him.
But it seemed right to go to Winhill now. She could be back in Esthar before Laguna returned from the construction site, and hopefully then she'd have a clearer sense of direction.
*
Esarene sat down in front of the grave and sighed. "So you're the one," she said. "His first wife. You must have been a wonderful person to have earned his love. I envy you.
"Perhaps, when you meet again in whatever comes after this, you'll be able to be with him again. Forever and ever. But would it be so bad to let me have him for just a little while, here in this world? If you know Laguna, you know that he needs someone to take care of him. And he's lonely. I can feel it.
"I may not be as good as you, but I'll do my best, I promise. Laguna deserves someone to spend his days with. Someone who can love him and be there for him. He deserves to have a family, to have children and watch them grow. I know that's what he wanted with you, but things went wrong.
"And he still loves you. He'll never stop loving you. And he's sad at heart, for losing almost everything that he loved. It's a tough burden to bear. You know how he is, always grinning and joking around--but I can feel that it's hollow.
"I want to make him happy, Raine. I know you would want him to be happy, and I think I can do it. I don't want him to forget you--but I know you wouldn't want to bring him pain. And it's been seventeen years. Wounds heal. Perhaps they leave scars, but they shouldn't hurt any longer than they have to.
"I love him, Raine, and I'll go on loving him whether or not I have your permission. I can't help it. But I didn't want things to go on behind your back, either. After all, I know that if Laguna loved you, you must be a wonderful woman." She didn't know what else to say, and just waited. For what, she wasn't sure--a dead woman couldn't reply--
Out of nowhere, she heard the gentle sprinkling of raindrops. A moment ago, there hadn't been a cloud in the sky, and the sun beat down heavily. Now, a cloud drifted by, showering the parched world with cool drops of water. It passed over Esarene, and she looked up, and for a moment saw a rainbow through the falling rain. The world felt more peaceful, more alive.
She stood, feeling as if something had been lifted in that moment. Her eyes widened as she realized that something she'd lost a long time ago had returned. "Thank you, Raine."
*
She couldn't get back to her room quickly enough. Her notebook was already full of scribblings, and she copied them into the computer console in her suite, turning them into something more coherent.
Esarene typed madly into the console, not knowing how long she sat there as the words flowed out of her. The story of Brylen--yes, Brylen, of years past!--and it was going onto the screen, page after page, the writer in a state of bliss. The novel that had been bottled up inside her for years was finally free, reborn, and the pain of loss and loneliness poured away with it.
*
Irvine became nervous when his mother didn't come to lunch or dinner, and went to find what was wrong. He knocked on the door.
"Come in," Esarene called. Irvine twisted the doorknob and found the door unlocked.
"Are you sick?" Irvine wondered.
"Come in the office, I can't hear you," Esarene called to him. She sounded positively gleeful. If Laguna's in there--though he claims to be at the construction site today... Irvine thought, turning pink. But his mother was alone, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
"I can write again," she announced, standing up and hugging him tightly. "I can write again! It's been seventeen years--seventeen years! But I'm writing! Look, I'm writing!"
"That's great," Irvine said. "Aren't you hungry, though?"
"I didn't even think about food," Esarene said. "What time is it?"
"Eight-thirty," Irvine replied. Esarene's stomach growled. "We can still get something to eat."
"Do you think you could be kind and bring me something back? I don't think I can stop." She flexed her fingers out--they felt a bit stiff--and sat back down in front of the computer.
"Don't your eyes hurt?"
"No," Esarene replied. She typed, her fingers seeming almost separated from her conscious self. The story had been bubbling in her brain for twenty years, and now it burst forth like a waterfall. I'm alive, she thought in gleeful wonder.
"Irvine, I feel like I'm twenty years younger," Esarene said. "I haven't written anything since my brother died--not a single word. I tried, but I couldn't. And I just existed. And now I've met you, and Laguna, and I've come back to life. And now I'm being reunited with another very old, very close friend. I almost feel like his spirit is in this room, with us--maybe he's always been with me, I just haven't known how to listen."
"Your brother?"
"Yes. Irvine, meet Irvine." Esarene grinned. Irvine was a bit nervous, but it did feel like there was something uncanny about the room. He couldn't remember ever seeing his mother so happy. She always wanted to be a writer, he thought. She's--it's like she's realizing for the first time that a dream she dreamed throughout her childhood is coming true. The burden is lifted away.
"How it should have been," Esarene said, talking more to her story than to Irvine. "How it should have been, Brylen. Or Irvine."
Irvine turned to leave. Esarene was in her own world now, and he decided to let her make peace with herself without any more interruptions.
*
"Esarene?" Laguna knocked again. No answer still. He pushed the door and found it unlocked. "Esarene..." All he could hear was a soft humming sound, the buzz that was the pulse of Esthar. He followed the sound to the office of the suite, where a blue screen hummed an undertone, a lullaby for the sleeping Esarene. She had her arms folded on her desk, her head resting on them.
He touched her shoulder.
"Don't bother me, go ahead and read it," she mumbled. "I think you'll like it, Irvy..."
Since when does she call her son Irvy? Laguna wondered. The screen displayed the lines of a story, and Laguna scrolled up to the beginning. There were so many pages...is this what Esarene had been doing? She'd written all of this?
Esarene was a writer? Laguna began to read.
"Once upon a time," it read, "once upon a time there were two children, brother and sister. It was so long ago that the years no longer mattered. Their names aren't important. But one day, the brother asked his sister to tell him a story, and she did. She told the story for years, even after her brother was no longer with her. And it is the story that remains."
"Oh, Laguna, when did you get here?" yawned Esarene. She stretched and sat up in her chair.
"You wrote all of this?" Laguna asked. A smile tugged at the corners of Esarene's lips, but her vigor of a few hours earlier failed her.
"I can write again," she said. "My fingers hurt."
Laguna took her cold hands in his and warmed them with his breath. "How long have you been in here?"
"I don't know, what time is it?"
"Five AM. I just got back from the construction site, and I wanted to stop by if you were still awake."
"I don't even know when I fell asleep. I've been in here since I got back from Winhill this morning."
"Winhill?" Laguna echoed. "You were in Winhill?"
"Yeah, there was something I had to deal with," she said. Something Irvine had said still nagged at her. She stood up. "Is it just because I remind you of your wife?" she wondered.
Laguna hadn't even thought about that. It simply hadn't occurred to him--they were almost nothing alike. "No," he said. "When I look at you, I don't see Raine. No, not at all. You're two very different people. Raine would never get into a water fight with me. She'd disapprove of the whole idea. Justifiably, of course.
"A lot of time has passed since then. I'm not the man I was at the time, and...you're not who you were. We're the same, and we're different, too. Like, how we've both got children we didn't see--and, oh, am I making any sense at all?"
Esarene sighed. "To tell you the truth, I've never felt this way before--not the way I feel with you," she confided in him. "With Irvine's father--I was just infatuated, really. I let myself get tricked into thinking I was in love, but this is totally different. I don't know what to do."
"Me neither," Laguna replied. They stood in silence, Esarene's forehead against his chin, her hands still clasped in his.
"What are you doing here at five in the morning?" Esarene asked him.
"I missed you," Laguna whispered. "I couldn't think about anything else. I'm sorry to disturb you--"
"It's all right," Esarene assured him. "It's all right. It's about time, isn't it?" She broke away from him for a moment, just long enough to shut the computer down. Then she embraced him again. Laguna returned the embrace, running his fingers through her thick waves of hair. They stood there for some time, in silent company, not knowing what to say and not needing to know.
"I...I should probably get back to my room," Laguna said awkwardly, breaking the silence.
"Then I'm coming with you," Esarene replied.
