Author's note: for an anonymous prompt I received on Tumblr when I asked for something to write old&wrinkled Squinoa: "You know I love you, right?"
A SEAT NEXT TO YOU
"You know I love you, right?"
Her whisper is faint, delicate like the skin on the slender wrist he's kissing. His smile is more vocalized than real, a sound she has come to understand, and love, and cherish, because he may look stern and hard to the world, but she's the one he chose to be vulnerable and tender with.
The mattress sinks under his weight when he lays down, and she lets him pull her to him, inhaling his soft scent of mint and citrus, and she knows her nose is tricking her, because she still smells leather and gunpowder and he hasn't worn leather or used a gunblade in more than forty years now. It doesn't matter though. He smells like home and she lets her nostrils fill with his familiar scent, feeling as protected and loved as she felt at seventeen, the first time she was wrapped in it.
"Even though I'm old and wrinkled?" he asks, rolling over to embrace her. She opens her eyes, looking at him. His whisper is coarse, rough around the edges as the scars on his skin. She gently moves a lock of gray hair from his eyes and stretches to kiss the faded scar on his forehead. He never believed her when she said he was the best-looking guy, and she sees in his little smile he wouldn't believe her now.
And yet. "Still the best-looking guy for me."
"Better than Kiran?"
She laughs softly at the mention of their son, and closes her eyes again, leaning her forehead against his chin. "Maybe. Still haven't decided on that one."
"Liar," he mouths against her ear, and she laughs, momentarily forgetting her initial question as he nuzzles her hair.
"Kiran got his good looks from you, so there," she retorts, and she feels his soft chuckle on her skin.
"You're gorgeous yourself," he finally replies, moving to look into her eyes, as he pushes a lock of her gray hair behind her ear.
She sighs, still not willing to let the playful mood shift back to serious. "Yeah, maybe at seventeen I was. At seventy I'm just old and wrinkled."
"Old and wrinkled and still gorgeous."
"You are biased, Squall."
"And you are stubborn, and I love you."
His smile is real, now, and she smiles too, relishing in the way he playfully follows her lead in the pillow-talk department. Her anxiety subsides, and she sighs, pushing her head under his chin and against his chest, to listen to his heartbeat. She feels its irregular rhythm and her magic throbs in kind.
"Worried?" he asks, sensing the shift in their mood.
She refuses to answer, and insists instead, "You know I love you, right?"
"Of course I do," he says, and she feels his chapped lips on her forehead. Always so delicate, her knight. Always so affectionate, behind closed doors. Always so attentive to her moods. She will miss him so much, and the idea of being alone when his time comes makes her feel bereft even now that she's in his arms.
He shifts, lying on his back and pulling her with him. She pillows her head on his chest, his heartbeat under her ear, and he turns off the light. The moon shines gently on the pictures they hung together on their bedroom wall when they moved here: their wedding, holding their hands as they rubbed their noses together in the middle of their flower field; Kiran as a newborn, held in his father's arms as she bends over them from behind, hugging her husband's shoulders; baby Lenna in her brother's arms; a family picture with the four of them, taken at Lenna's fifth birthday, one of the last they celebrated with Angelo; their children with their grandfathers; a large group picture with all their friends in the middle.
It's that middle picture that makes her uneasy, and he senses it, moving his hand to caress her arm, then gently threading his fingers in her hair, thinned out by age.
"We had a good life, Nini," he whispers, and he waits for an answer, until he feels a warm tear wetting his pajama shirt. "You know I'll be waiting for you, right?"
She laughs, amidst her tears, letting her fear of being alone clear for now, because she wants to enjoy her husband's presence, let him know how much she loves him, how much he made her life full, and complete, and astoundingly happy in its domestic simplicity.
"I'll find you, then," she says, and kisses his chest above his heart, willing it to give her a few weeks more, a few days more, just a little longer, as long as she needs to let him know he is still the center of her entire universe.
It all started with Zell, fifteen years ago. In retrospect, she should have known her restlessness was unusual; she had chalked it up to Kiran's impending nuptials, and when Kavya had phoned, a few days after her son's wedding, to tell them Zell had died suddenly during the night, she didn't think about the way her powers had kind of warned her that something was going to change.
The pain was too strong, and her husband had just lost his lifelong best friend, and they had found comfort in each other. Her restlessness was pushed aside, and they had mourned their friend together, and when the new routine had settled, with Zell's absence still keenly felt, but painfully accepted, she had forgotten about the way her powers had throbbed around her heart, back then. Edea was no more; Cid was no more; and with nobody with some kind of experience to talk to about it, she had brushed the strange sensation aside, thinking it was just the way a sorceress mother could feel about her beloved son leaving the nest to marry the love of his life.
But then it happened again. With Watts. With Selphie. With Nida. It never mattered who it was; her powers grew restless, her heart felt squeezed, and she knows, now, they were trying to prepare her for the pain she would feel, when Zone called her to gravely announce that Watts had succumbed to his illness, when Irvine showed up on their doorstep sobbing about Selphie not making it, when Quistis crumbled in her arms, in the hospital, when the doctor told her they needed her permission to let her husband go.
She knows, now, her powers are telling her someone else is going to leave her, and it's so much stronger this time, so much deeper, she can't help but think this intensity means her husband, and this awareness makes her even more restless.
So she asks him, every night, if he knows she loves him. She wants to ask so much more - does he know how much of a lifeline he is, to her? Does he realize how proud she is of him? Does he know how she feels incredibly humbled by being loved by someone like him?
He jokes about being old and wrinkled, and he teases her before reassuring her, but she just wants to know if he knows he is her meaning, how much he means to her, and how big of a hole he will leave in her life when his heart will fail him.
But some other times she thinks it may be her, after all. Maybe her powers are telling her she needs to find her successor, that she needs to prepare her husband. The idea of leaving Squall is even more terrifying than finding herself alone is, and when the icy fingers of her magic squeeze painfully until her heart throbs, she takes Squall's left hand, brings it to her mouth and kisses the wedding band she put on his ring finger forty-five years ago, like he has done many times, all these years, when she was insecure and needed reassurance.
She remembers, when they were young and their love was new, exciting, and wonderful, they went to Timber and found an old woman from Centra telling stories in the pub, while she read the future with worn cards in faded colors, and dispensed wisdom along with reassurance about the good things and advice about the bad ones. She remembers the woman telling someone the most important thing in life is saying I love you to your loved ones, because you never know when you won't be able to say it anymore.
At seventeen, she didn't understand. At thirty, when her father's drinking eventually caught up with him, she leaned against her husband as her father's coffin was laid next to her mother's, and started to grasp it. At fifty-five, when she sat down with her husband to tell him about Zell, she got it.
Lenna scoffs when she tells her she's too young, there are things she'll understand when she's as old as her mother is, but it's the truth. At seventy she understands things she didn't get before, and she knows that old Centra woman was right. You should tell people you love that you love them.
And as her ice magic chills her entire being, she fights against the urge to wake her husband up and tell him.
Just a little longer, she silently begs, watching her husband as he sleeps. Just a little longer. I need to tell him I love him, just one more time.
Turns out it was him, after all.
Rinoa realizes it when she wakes up one morning and it's suddenly colder, like something turned to stone inside of her. She looks at him, at the lips, slightly parted, she kissed goodnight just a few hours before. The tears that cut her throat threaten to choke her, as she sits up in bed and places her hand on his unmoving heart.
She allows herself a few moments to tell him she loves him, and she will find him, and he better wait for her as he promised, all those years ago, and as all the times he promised during their years together, and as he promised just last night. She pictures him laughing as he did when they mentioned their promise in jest, and she realizes it's almost like he knew he would go first, and the way he managed to make her feel protected and loved and safe, even when she is so bereft, is so astonishingly him.
She cries with her forehead pressed against the faded scar, on his chest, left by the ice lance that almost pierced his heart, redirected only by the sheer force of Edea's will, fighting through her possession just to save him.
The first time she cried for him, then. And the last time she'll ever cry, now.
In the night, when she closes the door of her bedroom, when she is finally alone with her thoughts and her feelings again, she crumples, feeling again like the seventeen-year-old who clung to his ring while Esthar's army took her away to the Sorceress Memorial.
Here, she doesn't have to be strong for their children, and she places on her nightstand the cup of tea her daughter-in-law, bless her loving, amazing, and generous heart, has given her while trying to avoid hurting her more by wishing her good night. Rinoa wonders if she'd get the piece of advice of the old Centran woman. Maybe not, she decides, but she's glad her son has her strength to lean on, and she suspects that Lenna will also get the final push she needs to acknowledge her feelings. So much like her father, her baby girl, both inside and out.
She sighs, sitting on Squall's side of the bed, curling under the covers, trying to find in his pillow his comforting scent of mint and citrus again. There is a strange smell of flowers, so reminiscent of their flower field that she thinks it may be a delusion.
Or maybe she is going crazy.
She listens to her powers, feeling their throb around her heart, turned even icier now that Squall is no more. They throb and throb, going lower and lower, in a deeply unsetting movement, until they seem to curl, making her gasp for air as they feel like her children did, when they were nestled in her belly and kicked hard against their father's sweet caress.
She doesn't know what to make of it, and as they keep moving and squeezing and chilling her to the core, she wonders if this is how Edea felt, when her knight was so far, so unreachable.
For the briefest of moments, she wonders: could it be another sign?
Yet, as she finally finds the scent she's looking for, it doesn't matter. Tomorrow, maybe.
When she opens her eyes, the smell of wildflowers is almost overpowering. She thinks she may be dreaming, and tries to close them again, moving her hand towards the side of the bed Squall used to occupy, to grab his pillow and center herself again through his scent.
But her hand touches flowers, and she opens her eyes again, propping herself on her elbows, wondering at the way her mind has decided to trick her into thinking she is seventeen again, old clothes and young body and all.
There's a timid sun, shining on their flower field through a couple of clouds. The air is filled with the scent of flowers, and there's a soft breeze that ruffles her hair, carrying the smell of a cleansing storm. She realizes there's an animal somewhere nearby – a seagull, maybe, crying over the crashing waves of the sea.
It's Centra.
It is so comforting, and it is so cruel.
She lays down again, pressing the heel of her hands on her eyes to stop the tears. In the distance, she thinks she can hear a faint bark, too, and everything, for a moment, is so unsettling she forgets there is no icy squeeze inside of her now.
Has she gone crazy?
Are their children safe, if that's the case?
But then a wet nose presses against her cheek, and when she moves her hands from her eyes her fingers meet the soft, thick fur of a dog. She sits up, gratefully closing her arms around dear, old, cuddly Angelo, because it doesn't matter if it's just an illusion, or if she's going crazy; she just wants to to feel something that's not mind-numbing pain.
She has opened her mouth to tell her dog she has missed her so, so much, when she finally sees him.
He is standing in the field, his hands in his pockets, glorious in this delusion as he was against that wall, back when she told him he was the best-looking guy. And his voice is as deep and soothing as it was back then, when he laughed at her silly enchantment to persuade him to dance.
"I've been waiting for you, Nini."
She laughs and she cries, springing to her feet in a way her seventy-years-old self wouldn't manage anymore, and throws her arms around his neck, pressing her face against the fur of his leather jacket, inhaling his scent of mint, and citrus, and wildflowers, and cleansing storms, and gunpowder, and leather. When he pulls her against him, gently touching her head while leaning his cheek against her hair, the feelings of longing she gets from that simple gesture knock the air out of her lungs, and she lets out a strangled sob, clutching at his shoulders.
She will miss him so desperately, so thoroughly.
"It's ok. I got you, Nini," he whispers, and she realizes she's begging him aloud not to let her wake up. "We are- you are not sleeping, Rinoa."
She raises her eyes, then, scanning his face. There's a vague memory resurfacing now, amidst all the grief and the relief and the confusion, about going back to the time of the Knighthood promise, once the Sorceress surrenders her powers. She gasps, then, her eyes wide and filling with tears again.
"You mean-"
"Yes," he interrupts, sparing her the pain to say it aloud, brushing her lips with her finger, with a kind of longing reminiscent of all their time together.
"Our children?" she breathes.
"They will be fine. I think Kiran was expecting it to happen." He continues brushing her lips, and she kisses his finger, closing her eyes. "Lenna will struggle a little more. She inherited your powers. But Elois will stand by her side, and that should make her realize she's being as stubborn as I was, so there."
She chuckles, and tears stuck in her eyelashes roll down her cheek. He lovingly dries them with his fingers, and she closes her eyes, taking his hand to turn it and kiss his wrist, deeply inhaling his essence. It's so sad that her immense joy of being with her Knight again will mean so much pain for the people who love them both. "Zone will be so happy," she says, opening her eyes again and looking at him with a wistful smile. "And so mad we won't be able to gush over our children getting together, after all."
Squall makes a sound and pulls her close, touching her forehead with his. "We should go home," he whispers, as the breeze ruffles her air. "There are all our dogs waiting for you back there. This one," he says, nodding his head towards Angelo, who's pressing her muzzle against their legs, "just couldn't wait."
She smiles, and he smiles too, and she gives another little sob, for everything she has lost, and everything she has gained today. Forever doesn't look so gloomy anymore, and as he bends down to press a chaste kiss on her lips, she realizes this will probably be the last time she mentions their promise.
"I've found you."
He closes the fridge's door, pulling out a drawer to locate a corkscrew and open his father's favorite beer. He usually kept them for something important, something special to celebrate, and as he uncorks the bottle he thinks his father would approve.
The first sip is almost bitter, and something is closing his throat when he gulps, looking out of the window at the immense expanse of the ocean. His wife is sleeping, and now he feels like he can grieve without worrying her too much.
The second sip is more passable, but he still can't get how his old man could like something like this. He chuckles to himself, remembering their discussions about it. He will miss them. He will miss his father's private smiles, his mother's gentle voice, and the way they looked at each other, as in love as they were in the old pictures they hung in their bedroom. He will miss them, and he selfishly wishes his mother didn't pass so suddenly and so soon, but he knows they are together, now, and his pain feels a little lighter.
"Kiki?" comes a voice from the kitchen's door. He turns and looks at his sister; her brown hair tousled by uneasy sleep, her gorgeous turquoise eyes rimmed with fatigue and loss.
"Come here," he says, opening his free arm, still holding the beer in his other hand. Lenna slips gratefully into his embrace, burying her face into his chest, and he soon feels her tears wetting his shirt. "Want a sip?" he asks, tilting the beer bottle towards her. She shrugs, letting out a small giggle, and takes the bottle from his hand, touching her lips to its neck just long enough to taste the beer her father loved so much.
"You think they are together now?" she asks, looking at the sky, as Kiran puts the bottle on the counter to engulf her completely in his arms.
"I think she found him," he replies, and then there is silence, only rarely interrupted by Lenna sniffling.
Then he presses a kiss on her head. "We should give dad's old gunblade to Elois. You know. Good omens and all that."
"Kiran!" she wails, and he gently laughs at the annoyance in her voice. As long as it is not pain, he thinks. As long as it is not loss. As long as she stops being stubborn and finally accepts love.
"I just want you to be happy, Nia."
She knows, and she shrugs, not before pressing an amazingly strong finger against his shoulder. "Don't scare him away and I'll be."
"Tell him he needs to be good to you or I'm going to kick his ass all the way to Trabia. And mind you, I'll take the long way around."
She chuckles, drying a stray tear on her cheek. "Uncle Zone told him the same thing."
"Uncle Zone will need to wait for his turn. Brother of the Sorceress trumps father of the Knight, I'm afraid."
They are silent again, both watching the sky, looking for a pair of twinkling stars, as their mother taught them to do when they lost their grandfathers.
Then, Lenna remembers her mother talking about a Centran old woman, reading the future in colored cards, and she thinks she finally gets it.
"I love you, Kiki."
"Yeah," he says, squeezing his arms around her. "Love you too, chipmunk."
When you get to the gates and the angels sing
Go to that place where the church bells ring
You know I'll come runnin', runnin' to find you
Author's note: ok it seems I can't drabble. The final verses, as well as the title of the story, are taken from the song "Seat next to you", by Bon Jovi. It makes me think of the loved ones I've lost so yeah. Sounded fitting. I hope you liked it!
Betaread with Grammarly as usual, feel free to point out mistakes. Thanks for reading.