They had all decided to wear pressure suits, just to be safe.
"Really."
"Not a one."
"Well. Let's see what I can do about that." Seifer said, conversationally. He did a few things on his console. "Yeah, she's right, nav is down. We're going to crash land."
Amy gulped. "Where?"
"I'll find out." He poked a few buttons. "The computer is projecting us to land in the inland sea at Esthar in approximately 25 minutes."
"I hope it's right."
"We all do." Kira said, softly.
Laguna Loire had come to Balamb in one of the Ragnorak's sister ships. So excited about seeing what was going on, he ushered everyone into the ship without a second thought and programmed the autopilot to take them to approximately one kilometer out from the 'scope's projected landing point.
On the way out there Squall stood with his hands in his pockets, uncomfortable. He wished Rinoa were there; she'd left for Dieling City two weeks ago. She claimed she just wanted to get to know her father better, but he knew; she wanted time away from him. Leadership was making him sullen all over again.
"Hey." Laguna said. Squall was struck with how many habits he and his father who wasn't a father (for a real father would have come and rescued him from the orphanage) had in common; for instance, right now Laguna also looked uncomfortable in his dress uniform, and had his hands in his pockets. If his hands didn't happen to be in his pockets at any given time, they were shoved under his crossed arms.
"Who do you think it is?" Laguna asked, idly.
"I don't know." Squall replied.
"I heard it could be your friend, Seifer."
"He's not my friend." Squall replied, automatically. Then he realized that he sounded like a two year old. "He's a work acquaintence."
Laguna didn't say anything.
"Why didn't you ever come?" Squall found himself blurting out. "Why didn't you ever come to see me?"
Laguna looked horrified. "What?"
"At the orphanage. Why didn't you ever come? Why didn't you ever take me away from there?"
Laguna was abashed. "I didn't know, Squall." He scratched his head, sheepishly. "The people at Winhill weren't exactly cooperative with me. I didn't realize it until I first met you."
Squall felt himself trembling; it wasn't something wrong with him. He hadn't been unwanted. It was just ignorance.
"What clued you in?" He whispered the question.
Laguna chuckled. "Kiros thinks you look like your mother, but...well, there's a family resemblance." He smirked. "You look just like my dad."
"Great." Squall said. "Just great."
"I wish I'd known." Laguna said. He rolled his eyes. "Being President is boring; having a kid around would have made it loads more fun."
"Being a leader isn't about having fun. It's about being responsible."
Laguna's eyes turned towads him, and it seemed to him that those eyes were laughing at him. "Is it really?" He seemed highly amused. "Squall...son...if you can't have fun with what you're doing, why bother?"
Laguna left his son whistling a tune. Squall recognized it; it was the song Rinoa's mother had written for him, "Eyes On Me." Squall would have brooded on his father's advice, but at that point the computer bleeped and announced that they had arrived at their destination.
They recognized the ship. It was, indeed, the small craft Seifer had taken to the black hole. There was no external response; everyone wondered if they would open it to find Seifer's corpse.
"Well...nothing we can do but look." Squall muttered, keying in the emergency airlock override, once Laguna's ship had towed it to ground level.
The airlock irised open, and Squall stepped inside, followed closely by Laguna and Edea. The air smelled burned, charred, almost dead.
Edea's hands went to her mouth, but she didn't let herself cry yet. She didn't know what was charred, after all.
The small group moved from chamber to chamber of the spacecraft. Finally, they stood outside the bridge level.
"We'd better go in, then, huh?" Laguna commented boredly. He pushed a few random buttons and the door opened. "Hey-hey."
Seifer...
Had never been so happy to see Squally-boy in his life.
"Holy shit, we made it." He said, his face splitting into a wide grin.
"We did." Amy acknowledged.
"We rock!" Kira said, doing a small dance.
"Cadet Durham, would you care to enlighten us as to just what the hell is going on?" Squall asked, politely.
Amy laughed. "Gladly, commander. Gladly. As soon as we get out of this hunk of junk and back to Garden."
"Amy..." Kira said, softly, later that night. Amy's room had been reassigned to her, and Kira was sleeping there on the couch until space could be found.
"What's up, Kira?" She asked. She walked into the living room and saw Kira plotting a program on the computer.
"You told me that you think this is our future; the future of humankind." Kira shook her head, blond curls scattering everywhere. "I don't think that's the case."
Amy frowned. "Excuse me?"
"I really don't. I took the data from the probes that you sent off before you left the first time, compared it to the data I recorded in my scout, and ran it through a program." She pointed. "Amy, this isn't the future. It's the past."