Chapter 1
Eight-year-old Ellone sat bundled in a blanket on the couch, shaking as Cid and Edea talked about her like she wasn't there.
Something crawled under her skin, an itch she couldn't scratch, and she was cold all the way to her bones. Neither tea nor a blanket helped warm her, and in the hours since the witch poured her magic and the remains of her consciousness into Ellone, neither Cid nor Edea paid her much mind.
They didn't ask the questions that mattered. If they'd asked, Ellone could have filled them in, but they were preoccupied with other matters, and Ellone couldn't seem to find her voice to speak up.
Beside her, Seifer snuggled himself under her arm, uncharacteristically serious and silent.
He refused to let her go. Not since the tall man and the witch appeared on the beach.
Everything Laguna sacrificed to save her was for naught. Power sought power, as Dr. Odine once told her, and she should have known better than to think she was safe here. It found her, latched on, and brought a hitchhiker with.
Seifer, none the wiser, was compelled to be near her, and Ellone couldn't shake him, no matter how hard she tried.
Laguna was probably dead. Ellone tried to reach out to him in dreams from time to time, but there was nothing on the other side but a static hum. She wished he was here now. Laguna always knew how to cheer her up, even if he didn't always know what to do.
They were all dead. Her parents. Raine. Everyone who ever tried to help wound up dead, and at age eight, Ellone believed herself a toxic thing that poisoned everyone around her.
Thoughts of running away crossed her mind as the Kramer's continued to discuss what to do next.
She hated what she was, for her parents and for Raine, for Laguna and his friends, and now she hated it even more on behalf of Cid, Edea, and poor, hopeless little Seifer who'd been dragged along for the ride. She would bring them down, burden them with the power she never asked for, and they would probably die too.
If she could have cried, she would have, but Ellone had no tears left. For as scared as she was, crying was pointless anyway. Tears wouldn't fix it or make it go away. Instead, she focused on the discussion-turned-argument unfolding before her.
"With what money, Edea?" Cid demanded. "We're already in the red. There's nothing else to give up!"
"We'll just have to look a little harder," Edea said. "You know what will happen -"
"You've been safe so far," he cut in. "I'm sure Ellone will be safe here too."
"A full-grown Seifer Almasy appeared on the beach with a dying Sorceress at his heels," Edea said. "That doesn't bode well for the future. Something is coming, and we need to prepare for it."
Ellone looked at Seifer and sighed.
You came with her, didn't you? That man was you, all grown up, wasn't it? And you don't even know why you want to be here with me, do you?
"And what do you plan to do, take Seifer with you?" Cid demanded. "He's only four."
Ellone looked to the boy at her side and wished she could cry for him. He was too little for this. How could a four-year-old protect her from anything? Unless her adversary was particularly vulnerable to ankle biting, mud pies, or temper tantrums, there was little he could do.
"We need to consider finding homes for some of the children," Cid said. "I know you don't want to hear that, but we can't support them all as it is."
"There has to be another way," Edea said.
It gave Ellone no peace of mind, no solace or comfort to feel Seifer there, and try as she might, he wouldn't let go. He was rooted like a tick inside her mind. An essential part of what she'd become, his consciousness an impossible remnant the witch left behind.
"I thought I got to choose," Ellone said aloud, interrupting their conversation, "who my Knight would be."
Cid and Edea both peered at her as if they'd forgotten she was there, and she cringed at the dark anger in Cid's eyes.
Neither had an answer.
As the older children were adopted one by one, more and more of the responsibility of helping out around the orphanage fell on Ellone's shoulders, a job she shared with Xu.
They looked after the younger children while Edea and Cid were busy making plans for the future that they didn't share with Ellone. The girls babysat and changed diapers and made sure Seifer wasn't sticking his finger in Zell's ear again and that Squall hadn't made himself a nest in a closet somewhere to escape all the others. They helped serve meals and tended the garden, did laundry and fed babies and all the other assorted domestic things required to make life run smoothly.
That wasn't to say the Kramer's dumped it all on them. With so many to care for, there was no other option, and Ellone, burdened by the burden she presented, would do what she could to make up for it.
Chores were no burden in comparison to the cold power flowing through her veins. Sometimes, she felt it at night, a steady throb in her blood, a wildness that wanted out, and it scared her.
Seifer always woke when it happened, and he would crawl beneath the covers and snuggle into her, smelling of dirt and something sweet from the bath, and it chased the darkness away. During the day, Ellone had her doubts, but in those moments, as everyone around them slept, and with Seifer's small body curled up against hers, thumb stuffed in his mouth, all her fears faded.
"I'm yer Knight, Elle," he would say as he drifted off to sleep. "I'll p'tect you."
And he tried. Oh, how he tried.
Seifer defended her from imaginary beasts with his toy gunblade and from dastardly cockroaches and spiders with the sole of his shoe. He was rarely outside her line of vision on purpose, he never strayed far, and as hard as Ellone tried to release him, he stood solid and firm in his Knighthood.
One morning, Ellone sat in the field as the children played with an eye on the dark line of storm clouds on the horizon. They would have to go in soon, as prospective parents were expected to visit with the children that afternoon, but she wanted to let them blow off as much steam as possible before they arrived. Certain kids could be rather cranky or destructive without adequate time to play, and these visits always cut into their afternoon recess.
Somewhere nearby, Squall crawled through the tall grass, pretending to be a lion. He let out the occasional roar as he built himself a den away from the other kids.
Ellone wished he was a little more engaged with the others. She imagined Irvine or Zell might be game to play with him if he let them, but he rarely did.
As thunder rumbled in the distance, Ellone decided it was time to go in. She called the children to her and assessed the group, to see who needed the most damage control. Seifer, Zell and Squall were the dirtiest, all three covered from head to toe in mud and bits of grass. Seifer sported various scrapes in need of tending.
Inside, she herded all three into the bath and filled a large, round metal tub with lukewarm water and bubbles and helped them undress.
Squall insisted on doing it by himself. It took him twice as long, but by the time Ellone was done wrangling Zell out of his clothes and had assisted Seifer with sock removal, Squall's mission was complete, and she plunked all three in the tub at the same time.
The water turned a dull brown right away and the pristine white bubbles became a dingy gray as they splashed and shoved and jostled each other. She scrubbed Zell's face as Seifer made waves by scooting his butt back and forth along the bottom and wiggling from side to side. Squall commandeered his own washcloth, too independent to rely on her help.
"I want the boats," Seifer said.
"We don't have time for the boats today," Ellone said. "Families are coming, remember?"
"Stupid famlees," he said. "Don' like 'em."
She scrubbed his dirt and blood streaked arms and examined his skinned elbows with a frown. Without thinking about it, magic swelled from her fingertips and covered his wounds in pale light. They were mended in seconds, and Seifer looked down at the pinkish scars with lopsided grin.
"Neat, Elle," he said. "Again!"
"Sis," Squall corrected and cast Seifer a harassed look.
When the boys were clean and dried and dressed, Ellone brought in the girls and gave them the same treatment. It never failed to shock her how dirty the normally prim and proper Quistis could get when she was in the mood for physical play. Selphie was almost always as filthy as the boys, so it was no surprise that Selphie had dirt caked in the creases of her arms and clots of mud in her hair.
"We played hairstyle," Selphie chirped, in a painfully cute little voice. "Quisty made me pretty!"
"She sure did," Ellone said and dumped a sand pail of water over Selphie's head. "It's my turn to play, okay?"
The prospective families arrived a while later, and the children were dressed in their best hand-me-down outfits, squeaky clean and in wildly different states of excitement.
Zell greeted them with his sunniest, sweetest smile, small and adorable and absolutely lovable, and Quistis was on her best behavior, prepared to wow them with her vocabulary and her decorum. Irvine and Selphie squabbled over puzzle pieces, and Squall retreated to the furthest corner with a book and his stuffed lion and ignored them, except to send a wary look every now and then.
Seifer found his way into Ellone's lap, as he usually did, and he stared at the strangers with a scowl.
"Don't need no famlee," he said. "Yer my famlee."
Ellone snuggled her pint-sized Knight close and watched as a visiting couple fawned all over Quistis and remarked on how smart and pretty she was. They were a nice couple from Galbadia, and dressed like they had money to spare. The woman looked enough like Quistis that people would assume she was Quistis' mother, and the man was handsome, with a slow, easy grin and a big, hearty laugh that Quistis warmed to by degrees.
Ellone couldn't put her finger on why she didn't trust them. They looked nice enough. They would take care of Quistis, better than Cid and Edea could with all these screaming kids at their heels. They would buy her pretty dresses and give her all the attention she deserved, maybe enroll her in gifted classes and ballet lessons.
These visits were hard. It was tough to watch the kids go, one by one, and Ellone decided her concern had more to do with the possibility Quistis would leave than with the parents themselves.
Squall eased himself into Ellone's lap beside Seifer and his head dropped to her shoulder. He too stared at the strangers, unwilling and uninterested in interaction with them.
Ellone tickled both their sides to ease their fears, and Seifer squealed as Squall giggled and squirmed away from her wiggling fingers.
"Again!" Seifer demanded when she stopped. "Tickle s'more!"
"You're not supposed to want to be tickled, silly," Ellone said.
"I wanna."
"Me too," Squall said quietly.
Whatever one wanted, the other wanted, too.
Ellone tickled their ribs and grinned at Seifer's belly laugh, which is somewhere between a maniacal cackle and a howl, and at Squall's quieter, more subdued giggles. When they couldn't stand it anymore, she blew raspberries on their bellies, which only made them laugh harder.
They loved her back with such purity and innocence, and Ellone had such a soft spot for the both of them. They looked at her like she hung the moon and the stars, and created the sun herself. No matter how dark her thoughts, they always brought her back.
Quistis left that night, her meager belongings stuffed inside a single bag, and as they waved goodbye from the steps, Edea burst into tears. Cid tried to comfort her, but she would not be consoled. As the new family walked away, Quistis looked back at them, and at the house, and raised her hand in parting, a heartbreaking amount of trepidation in her eyes.
Selphie was the next to go, a week later, to the Tilmitt family of Trabia. The Tilmitts were young parents of four boys, seemed like fun, loud people, and Selphie fit right in. She charmed them with her big green eyes and outgoing and industrious personality, and when she left, she barely looked back.
Irvine and Edea both cried for days.
Then it was Irvine's turn, and Edea didn't leave her room for nearly a week once he was gone. Cid promised it was for the best, but it did nothing to dry her tears.
Quistis returned two months later with a bruise on her face, shell-shocked and afraid to let anyone touch her.
"It was an accident," was all Quistis would say. "I didn't mean to."
Edea put her foot down. No more foster parents, no more adoptions. No more kids going off to the unknown. She canceled Zell's pending adoption to the Dincht family in Balamb, and turned away anyone who came asking.
Ellone was relieved that no more of the kids would go away. There weren't many left, and she feared the day someone might come and decide they wanted one of her boys.
The others, Selphie and Irvine, they didn't come back.
The year Ellone turned fourteen, the world began to change again.
It was no longer safe, even with Edea's enchantments, and the tension at the orphanage was at an all time high. At first, Ellone didn't know what to pin it on. It was subtle, but Edea's good humor slipped away a bit at a time and she stopped sleeping. Cid was gone for long, unexplained periods of time, and when he returned, all their conversation revolved around the plan.
Ellone paid closer attention to the news Edea listened to on the ancient and shoddily modified-for-cable radio in the kitchen, and what she heard wasn't good.
The rebels of Timber launched an offensive against their oppressors, the assault led by an organization named Forest Fox. Galbadia retaliated with deadly force, and Timber was in ruins, thousands of people in need of refuge. To the south of Timber, near the coast, tent cities popped up to house the displaced, many of them children.
Edea took in a pair of orphans from Timber as a favor to a friend, though they could scarcely afford to house more. They were already operating at a deficit and rarely used the electricity anymore to save money, and the house went without major repairs, but Edea didn't have the heart to say no.
Both children were wounded in the siege. Raijin's leg would heal, but there was no saving Fujin's eye. Xu stitched her a eye patch out of leftover purple satin from the sewing box and helped her style her pale hair so she could show it off. Fujin colored the patch black with permanent marker and punched Raijin when he suggested adding lace.
Seifer befriended them immediately. The three were nearly inseperable and always up to no good, especially after Seifer discovered they too possessed latent magical talents and felt less a freak for it. He'd tried to compare notes with Quistis, but her early experience in foster care discouraged her to the point of hiding it.
Not long after Raijin and Fujin came to stay, in the middle of the night, Edea woke Ellone from sound sleep and asked her to pack a bag. Ellone did without question, but was surprised when she was ushered to the beach and into a small boat on the shore. Cid rowed them through fog so thick, she couldn't see the lights of home, and no one explained to her what was going on.
Without saying goodbye, without any warning to the children, Ellone was gone in the night to parts unknown, and no one would tell her why.
In the morning, she sensed Seifer's rage from a hundred miles away. She lay in her bunk aboard the ship, beneath too many blankets, her skin crawling, and cried for the first time in years.
In her mind, she saw Seifer - red faced, tears streaking through dirt stained cheeks, hurling rocks at the back windows of the orphanage.
One by one, the panes fractured, and bits of glass glittered like starlight in the grass.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! I hate you, Elle!
Nearby, Squall, age nine, sat alone, facing the sea and folded in on himself as his eyes searched the horizon for any sign Ellone might be coming back.
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