The room was empty.
Laguna sat bolt-upright, heavy lethargy of sleep chased away by a sudden, striking fear. "Sukaru?" he called, eyes scouring the room for any trace of him. "Sukaru!"
"I'm here," came a voice, floating up the stairs. "I'm right here."
"Thank" Laguna stumbled out of bed, locating his boots and jacket more by blind luck than memory. "...I thought you ran off again."
Sukaru laughedand it was a beautiful sound, light and lilting and generous. "No. I didn't. Never again."
He rammed his feet into boots, his arms into sleeves, and checked to make sure the letter was still therestill resting in the pocket up against the seam, reassuring like a magic charm. It wasit seemed as if it had never been moved.
He chuckled nervously, making his way down the stairs. "I... I dreamed that you were a dream," he confessed. "It was... ah, strange."
"I'm not," Sukaru chuckled. He was hunched over one of the ubiquitous piles of paper, absently organizing them. "Trust meI'm here, Laguna. I'm real."
For a moment, Laguna just watched himunable to place the source of the great relief he felt, unwilling to try lest he inadvertently destroy it. "Did you find anything? ...in the mausoleum?"
Sukaru turned to him, staring with a kind of quiet pain that was enough to stifle him. "...no, Laguna. There was nothing for me to find."
"...I'm sorry," Laguna muttered.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Sukaru said, turning back to his task. He seemed somewhat subdued, nowas if there had been some kind of lingering joy in the room, fragile as a cobweb, that Laguna had brushed away with his question. He looked away.
Such fragile things...
"Are you hungry? I can make something."
Laguna put a hand to his stomach, realizing for the first time that he was. "Yeah, I guess... let's go to the bar, then. We can head over together"
Sukaru turned and smiledwith the same smile Raine graced him with whenever he had been silly, worrying about something he needn't have. "Don't worry, Laguna. I'm not going to leave you here. I promise, okay?"
Laguna tried to smile back, but it seemed as if some required part was missinghe could move his lips, but he couldn't feel anything. "I wish you could meet my son." He didn't know why he said it.
Sukaru stood, brushing the dust off of his hands, smile fading like a mirage. "Come on."
-
The bar was as well-stocked as Laguna always remembered it.
Sukaru didn't trust the bread or fruit, but there were jars of oatmeal and honey and preserves, and a small carved wooden box with fragrant tea leaves in the back of the cupboard. He prepared the food with the speed and confidence of one who had done so many times before, and set it on the table before Laguna had even considered offering to help.
"Breakfast," he introduced it, as if it was nothing special.
"I must be dreamin'." Laguna stared in disbelief at the spread, shaking his head from side to side. "Where'd you learn to cook like this?"
"Nowhere." Sukaru shrugged it off. "It's just oatmeal. Not that hard."
Laguna chuckled, already spooning down the first bites. "Raine always said I could burn toast."
"Yeah, but burning toast is easy. I've burned water before."
Laguna laughedand surprised himself by laughing. He sipped at the teacareful not to scald himselfand ate, amazed at nothing at all.
Soon enough the food was gone, and he leaned back with the tea glass in hand. "Sukaru?" he began.
Sukaru glanced at him, face open and honest. "Yeah?"
"Would you tell me about your parents?"
Sukaru smiled distantly, looking deep down into his glass. "...I can't really remember them," he confessed. "Just storiesstories my sister told me. She's older than I am, you know. So it's just that, and this feeling I get sometimes..."
"Sometimes?"
"That it was better. That things used to be better than they are now." He drank. "I like to think my mother was pretty, and my father liked to laugh. But my father never wanted to stay here, not reallyhe wanted to travel the world, and tell the world about what he saw. You couldn't do that here. Everyone's just interested in their own little lives, their house and their garden and their family and the things they have done and the things they won't do and the things they won't admit to doing. My father wanted to see the world, and he vanished. And then my mother vanished, and my sister and I were left all alone." He shook his head. "...I guess I must sound crazy to you, coming back to look for them after all this time."
"No," Laguna said, staring into his own tea. "No, it doesn'tactually, you sound like" he swallowed. "Well. What happened to youyou sound like my son."
"You lost him?"
"...I had to." He swallowed again, staring at the play of light on the ripples and waves. "Years ago, this place was attacked, and theythey took someone close to me. So I had to go find her, and I never could come back. ...not until now."
"I'm sorry," Sukaru said faintly. "...for both of you."
"You look so much like him. You have so much in common" he swallowed hard. Why can't you just be him? Why do you have to be so similar, but not the same? "...I wish you could meet him."
"What would you do, if you saw him now? What would you tell him?"
Laguna stared down into his glass. The tea was the color of pale sunlight, of yellowing pasts. "...I don't know, really. I guessI guess I would tell him that I was sorry. That I never wanted to leave him for so long."
"Do you think he would listen?"
I just try not to think. "I don't know. ...would you?"
"I don't know."
A moment passed in silence.
"...I wanted to come back for him!" Laguna burst, hand tightening on the glass so quickly and so sharply he was surprised it didn't shatter. "I wish I could have! But there was always one crisis or another, and before I knew it seven years had passed and I couldn't find him any more... then seventeen, and when I saw him one more time I didn't know what to say. And then he was gone, and I don't knowI don't know if I can find him again, or if he's ever coming back"
Sukaru said nothing. Light skipped across the table as he swirled the tea.
"I wish I would have told him. I should haveI should have done so many things differently"
The light continued to skip. "People make mistakes," Sukaru said.
"Yeah. I know. I just wishI wish this didn't have to be one of them."
Light danced in silence.
"...yeah," Sukaru whispered. "I wish so, too."
-
-
The fog was lifting.
It was still present, still all-pervasive, but it was thinning. Laguna could see the fences and the empty flowerpots on the other side of the Town Square, hazy but undeniably there.
"I don't know where to keep searching," he remarked almost to himself.
"Laguna?"
"What?"
Sukaru was quiet, staring at him until Laguna glanced back. There was something in his eyesa soberness, a seriousness that gave Laguna pause.
"...what?"
"Maybe you should go see the grave."
Laguna staredthen winced away. "Why?"
"So you'll know for sure. If it's not her grave, then maybe she is waiting for you."
The other half of the reasoning hung in the air between them, unspoken. And if it is her grave, you'll know everything you did here, the only reason you came here, was useless.
He swallowed. It was such a gamblebut it had been decided already, hadn't it? There was nothing he could do to change that, now.
"...yeah. I guess we should."
"I can lead you if you don't know the way."
"I think I know it."
"Good. Let's go."
He stepped out into the fog, and Laguna followed him. Sukaru moved with purpose and resolveno trace of the hesitance Laguna felt, commanding without imposing. Laguna didn't question it as they moved across the Square.
He stepped on something, and it crunched like clay beneath his boot. He paused.
"Wait!" he turned, staring back at Raine's bar. It was bathed in a ghostly illumination, bright sun burning through the fog to color it a pure, luminous white. "...I want to get something before we go."
"All right." Sukaru made his way to a bench, settling into it. "I'll wait here for you."
"I won't be long," Laguna promised, and left him.
-
The room was exactly how he had left it, and he felt a pang of disappointment and he didn't know why.
Standing in the doorway, glancing back and forth, he wasn't quite sure what he was looking for. But he felt sure he was looking for somethingsome kind of clue, a key to the mystery that wrapped itself around the town. He walked into the room, idly turning a few things over, feeling them solid and real under his fingers, and wondered why that should be such an unexpected thing.
He was shuffling through the old papers, skimming the headlines with little thought for content, when he chanced a look at the bed. Its old, white headboard hadn't been maintained, and the paint was cracked and peelingbut that wasn't what he noticed.
He noticed that someone had scrawled something across it in a belligerent hand, in a thick dark pigment that could only be blood. It lurched and jilted across the wood, profane and obscene.
(RAInE dIed HaTinG yOu, LaGUna.)
He approached it with the stabbing disbelief one might show to a sacrifice.
Something began to grow inside hima potent mixture of fear and pain, and hate followed itit swelled thick and dark inside him, overflowing with the taste of bile at the back of his throat. There was a thin trickle, nothing more than a suggestion of additional vandalism creeping beneath the sheets and the uneven blanket; he seized them and tore them from the bedframe, casting them across the room with callous disregard.
There was a mess of blood halfway between the head and the foot of the bed, splattered and old. It made a grisly pattern on the pristine sheets and Laguna couldn't decide if it reminded him more of rape or slaughter.
The ruins of the antique phonograph lay on the floor, the old batteries crackling and sparking. The sound flute shuddered, brief snaps of static angry in the air.
His entire body shook.
It was a lieof course it was a lie, the entire room was full of them, bolted and then unbolted, lonely and empty, with the old obituariesone of them had to be Raine's, he was sure, and that was a lie, too. Raine wasn't dead. She hadn't died hating him. She was still alive, still waiting for him somewhere, he knew that, the letter proved that
The letter had said she would be waiting by the window. Lies. All lies. But not all of it could be a lie, or
He picked up the phonograph and hurled it into the bedhead. It exploded into parts and static, a wistful five-note pattern spasming through the destruction. My last night here for you
All lies, always lying, telling him things he couldn'twouldn'tbelieve.
He grabbed the chair by the window and threw it at the headboard, and it shattered like glass without scratching the message. It still gaped at him, savoring his desperation, laughing at his pain.
He gripped the endtable and its papers in white-knuckled hands and raised it high above his head, pounding it down onto the ruin of splintered memories that did nothing to help him. He could hear it breaking, feel it cracking, but he was too caught up in the destruction
What would Raine have said, seeing him now?
He dropped it and shuddered to the floor, hands smeared with dust clawing at his mouth and face as if trying to feel what lay beneath. His eyes were pressed closed, but the message burned into his vision like a ghastly afterimage.
Splinters bit into his hands, and the blood where they stuck welled forth bright and terrible and new.
-
Sukaru regarded him curiously when he returned to the square. "Did you get what you wanted?"
Laguna couldn't even remember what that had been, any more. "There wasthere was"
"It's all right, Laguna," Sukaru interrupted him. "It'll be all right."
Laguna shook his head, stricken past speakingstricken past understanding.
Sukaru laid a hand on his arm. "Let's go."
-
The sun made a valiant effort, and streaked what limited vista there was with light. Sukaru lead him as he walked mindlessly, seeking out detail in the nothingness. Anything to keep his eyes from seeing the bedanythign to keep him from remembering.
There was a deer somewhere off the path, wreathed in fog. It jumpedit leaped higher than Laguna had ever seen a deer leap, and then vanished into the silver air. A crow called, interrupting rudely the silence of the hills.
"I haven't seen any monsters around lately," Laguna mused to himself.
"Caterchipillars and bite bugsthey don't like this kind of fog and light," Sukaru said, and for the first time Laguna realized that he had never seen either of those.
"No, I meantthere were these other things"
Sukaru looked over, eyes flat and quiet. "They looked like monsters to you?"
Laguna nearly choked.
Sukaru looked away, motioning to the hills. "This whole area used to be a sacred place," he said. "I don't know why, but II really like it here. It's so peaceful."
So peaceful. It had always been peacefulwhen he had proposed, when she had agreed, the picnics they had shared, the time he had spent stargazing with Ellonealways peaceful. It seemed nothing could change that.
He could see the grave already, all too soon. His step faltered, and Sukaru didn't miss it.
"I'll wait here," he offered. "You should go alone."
Laguna nodded, repeating false assurances and empty platitudes to steady his steps. The grave was high on a hill, just in the lea of the crestit waited for him, anticipation stamped in the shape of a stone as he ascended.
He knelt in a kind of silent worship.
The grave rested on the hill, a grey granite block in a sea of mist-capped green, and on the headstone was carved Mrs. Raine Leonhart-Loire.
She had died. She had died and been buried seventeen years ago.
He reached out to touch the engraving, shock spreading through him as from a bullet in his chest. His fingers never made it to the stonehe staggered back, lurching to his feet and stumbling backward and downward. "No. No"
"Laguna?" Sukaru started, rushing toward him. "Laguna!"
"It can'tshe can'tshe can't be! She can't be!"
"Laguna, what is it?" Sukaru's voice as he hailed him was laced with all-inadequate concern.
"I lost her," he moaned. "What now? What do I have left?"
Sukaru lunged at him, catching his arms. "You have some things. You have me."
Laguna wrenched himself away, retreating. The hurt, the utter disconsolate injury had to be stamped on his faceit was reflected in Sukaru's eyes. "I lost them. I lost my family. My family!"
"No. No, Laguna, you didn't"
Laguna shook his head, making the world list and spin dizzily around him. "I don't understand. I don't understand..."
His eyes were open, wounded and deep, begging someone to tell him something he wanted desperately to hear.
Sukaru looked at him, eyes wide and open and pleading.
"I wanted to tell you somethingever since I saw you, I wanted to tell you"
But what? Please, please, if it's"Tell me. Please tell me."
"I never could. I never thought I could."
Why? "Why?"
"It just hurt. You thoughtI don't know what you thought, that I was some stranger or something, someone just randomly here..."
It can't be...
"...but it's not that way. Laguna..." Sukaru's face begged understanding. "I am your son."
Don't believe it! his mind screeched at him, frantic and terrified at some unknown prospect. Don't listen to him! He's Sukaru, not Squall, and he's nothing like him
"I knew it," he said, and there were tears in his eyes.
"Father..." Sukaru staggered forward, wrapping his arms around Laguna and smothering a sob in his shoulder. "I missed you. I missed you and I needed you so much...!"
Tears were falling onto his rumpled shirt, and Laguna didn't know which were his and which had come from Sukaru. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Did you think I hated you? Did you think I'd be angry?"
It was like a dream, like the best dream ever come true at last. "I"
Something was wrong.
Sukaru's shoulderblades were twisting back against each other, and he had stopped crying.
"Did you think," he snarled, "that I could ever forgive you for what you've done?"
And with strength that no human could possess, he heaved Laguna upward and threw him against the grave.
The world exploded into stars, impossible colors bleeding and bursting against the inside of his eyelids. Through the miasma he could see Sukaru advancing, teeth set in a snarl and fingers rigid like claws. Laguna tried to scramble away, backing over the gravestone and kicking up dirt as he did so.
The fog was thickening around them, alive with some palpable evil. Cold tendrils like dead caresses brushed across his neck, down his shirt, around his knuckles and against his throat.
"Did you think I could love you? That there was any going back?" Sukaru lunged, hands finding Laguna's collar and twisting it as he struggled. Sukaru's knuckles were driving the cloth into his windpipe, and all Laguna could think was that his breath smelled sweet and sick, like rotting flowers.
"Please" he managed, and it could charitably be called a whimper.
"No. No please. There is no forgivenessfor you." He twisted, and Laguna flew threw the airtumbling, landing in the harsh grass that tore like thorns and nettles, clawing at him with some inspired vengeance.
Sukaru was coming closer.
He scrambled, fought to get away, crawling in a blind panic across the hard earth, heart racing and fingers seeking any hope for salvation in the biting vegetation. He couldn't stand. He tried and fell, stumbling and tumbling.
Skipping across withered grass, his fingers encountered the smooth grip of his machine gun.
He twisted away from it, recoiling as if bitten. He could notwould notshoot his own son.
He's not your son.
Sukaru was very near, cloaked in the mist like a soldier with his footsteps cracking the weeds. Laguna rolled away, hoping for another second, another moment, in which to regain his footing and flee.
There has to be something around here. A stick. A clump of loose dirt I can throw in his eyes
Once again, his hand came into contact with his gun, and so much of him wanted to take it.
No! NoNoNo!
Sukaru was on him, hands on his shoulders, hauling him back up toward the grave with force enough to kill. Laguna twisted, assuming wild contortions in order to escape his grip.
His hand brushed against the gun.
He flailed. His hand brushed against the gun.
NO!
His mind screamed it. The rest of him screamed yes.
The
grave was underfoot now and Sukaru was raising him up only to slam him
down onto the stone and Laguna without thinking while thinking far too
much put the gun into his chest and pulled the trigger back and shook
and shook
and shook with the reverb and
and Sukaru screamed, and it wasn't a scream any man could have made. Perhaps, though, it could have come from a childsomeone very young, lost, and dying all alone.
Laguna fell and his head smacked against the gravestone anyway, and for a bare second he swore that it was welcoming him.
Sukaru was falling, and the fog was tinted red around him. He hit limply the ground next to the headstone, staring at Laguna from dead, empty eyes.
"Father..."
The word rattled out of his lips, dry and faint and as faraway as his words in the mausoleum. Laguna struggled to his feet, even though the world seemed to be spinning and melting around him. He sincerely believed that his head would split in two, peeling back to expose grey matter to the freezing fog. "...no. No. I'm not."
"Father..."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, all right! You don'tyou don't know how much I wanted to come back"
"Father..."
Laguna wanted to scream, if only to drown out the word Sukaru repeated like a mindless broken record, jamming it over and over like a knife into his brain. "Shut up!"
"Father..."
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
"Father..."
He closed his eyes, raised the gun, and fired a single bullet that had the sound and thunder of every bullet he had ever fired captured and bound within it, and as the fog flash-froze around him the world tore itself apart.
A second later he opened his eyes, and the cataclysm was over.
Sukaru lay on the ground with his face blown in, white frost edging his ruined features. Blood had splattered and frozenon the gravestone, on the ground.
Laguna flexed his fingers and dropped the gun. There was frost on itthere was frost everywhere. It bit into his face, his joints, but he couldn't really feel it.
He gulped bitter air. "Sukaru!"
He fell to his knees.
There was a cold, cutting wind, and it was tugging at the edges of Sukaru's coat. It was pulling them back to reveal a torn bit of paper, fluttering weakly. With numb fingers, he took it.
It was crisp and yellowing, with a familiar script upon it. He pulled Raine's letter from his own pocket, fitting the torn edges together.
A perfect match. A complete letter, finished and signedand old.
Unfeeling fingers brushed across the lines in silent reverence, as if he could absorb by touch what failing reason refused to accept. He read it through to the end, and began to cry.
His tears were freezing in the freezing air, but he had not the will to know it.
-
-
-
In restless dreams, I see you.
Laguna...
You promised you'd come back for me, but you never did.
I wonder if you even remember.
It feels so alone now.
I'm waiting for you.
Do you still remember the chapel by the edge of town?
Or our little room, with the window that overlooks the garden?
It's broken now, did you know?
I can't ever seem to get it replaced...
I miss you.
I can't bear to think that you might forget.
I have so many secrets to tell you...
So many things I need to say.
I keep hoping you'll come back.
I might not have another chance...
I'm so afraid that by the time you get this, I'll already be dead.
That's what the doctors seem to think.
I'm so afraid of what will happen to Ellone, and to our son.
I'm so afraid that you'll never know he's yours.
He's beautiful, did you know that?
Laguna...
I love you.
No one in this town is willing to forgive you, but I will.
Even if you've forgotten me, even if you hate me...
I don't mind.
I still remember the times we shared.
The laughter...
The warmth...
The love you always gave...
I hope this letter finds yousomehow.
I hope it finds you well.
I'm sorryI'm so sorry for everything.
But I just couldn't bear to leave without saying
Laguna,
You made me happy.
I love you.
Goodbye.