FicWad

Chapter 4

Selphie looked so happy wrapped up tightly by her friends, and he needed to spend more time with Marlene if the sight of a happy girl surprised him.


He and Reno had a truce that they wouldn’t fight off duty, mostly because fights with eco-terrorists meant paperwork for Reno. Rude was content to follow Reno’s lead, especially if Tifa was around. In any case, Cloud just nodded to them, and Reno had some words with the tall blonde before sauntering off to the copter.


Cloud didn’t think he’d be much help navigating space and time, but he didn’t feel right just leaving them here.


“I’m not sure how I can help you from here on out, but if you should pick up a cell-phone, I’ll leave my number,” he said to Squall.


“Yes, thank you. For everything.” The man could barely keep his eyes off his woman, Rinoa. Looking around, he’d never seen a group of people so happy to just be alive. They were stranded through space and time, and laughing over tissues. He’d been wrong in thinking they were enemies, in assuming they were evil.


Maybe Tifa and Barrett were right; maybe he was paranoid. It felt nice though, to watch them, and know that he’d finally done something right. Maybe, like Selphie said, Aeris was watching and was proud that he’d helped, even if it was Tifa who did most of the work.


“Hey, if you two are done mooning over each other,” Seifer said, stunning Cloud out of his reverie. “We still need to find a way back to the past.”


“What are you talking about?” the tall blonde said, “We’re in the past. We need to find a path to the future.”


“Does it matter?” asked Cloud, honestly confused, “Have you devised a way to travel though time? It’s a moot point, isn’t it?”


“He’s gotta point,” Zell said, hands crossed behind his head and balanced on one foot. “An’ in the last few days I been wandered through Ultimeca’s castle, tossed about by Tiamat, compressed through time, thrashed by a Moomba, and I had’ta ride all day on a Chocobo being drooled on by this guy. So I say we go with cowboy, and get a full night’s rest in that creep-fest of a hotel, then play some videogames, and then we can talk about how to get back to Balamb and see Ma, okay?”


Which proved that maybe there were some issues that needed to be resolved. Still, after Cloud had saved the world, he hadn’t spoken for a week, so he didn’t have any room to judge when Selphie’s breakdown was simply a quiet cry, Seifer had a hysterical laugh and a blackout, and Zell’s seemed to be videogames.


They all took the tubes back to the Haunted Hotel, still sniping about when exactly they were, Cloud bringing up the rear. He thought he’d spend the night, then take a Chocobo back to Cosmo Canyon in the morning. Maybe jockey a few races for extra money in the meantime.


The others were all entering the hotel when he stopped dead in his tracks. They stopped too, to watch him.


“Cloudy,” said Selphie, concerned. “Are you all right? Do you know her?”


“What are you doing here?” he asked.


“It’s a haunted house, Cloud,” Aeris said, brushing the dirt of the flower patch off her skirt. “You’re supposed to see ghosts.”


“You are the one from my dream. With the flowers and my mother,” Rinoa said, and a small part of Cloud was hurt that she’d visit other people’s dreams, and not his.


“Oh, stop that, silly. I wasn’t in her dream, she was in mine,” Aeris chided him, then pulled a blue flower from her basket to thread behind his hair. He was afraid to touch her, for fear she’d blink away, but she didn’t seem to have the same inhibitions. “And I came to help these people get home. It’s dangerous to have a Sorceress out of her time. Mucking about with destiny and all that.”


“This is the right place, isn’t it?” asked Rinoa, the beginnings of angel wings starting to flicker behind her. “He was waiting for me here, like you said.”


“Mmmhmm,” Aeris murmured, caressing his face, his arms, tracing the red armband and the ugly blotches of Geostigma underneath his cloak.


“Isn’t this just some theme hotel?” asked Zell, peering hard at the building, but Seifer pushed him out of the way to rush up to it, putting his hands all over the side of it.


“I knew this place was familiar,” he said with conviction. “That it didn’t feel right. This is Her castle, just alone, unwarped by her touch.”


“Unused to the ravages of time,” agreed Aeris, dropping her hands from his him and walking over to Squall’s woman. “As yet, anyway. Rinoa, in this time, you are the sole Sorceress. Filling the gap we had here, for a few years. You should have the power to take this place outside of time, where it belongs.”


“Aeris, what do you mean, filling a gap? Is Jenova coming back?” Cloud asked angrily, but she wasn’t listening to him, no one was. Instead everyone was focused on the building, on Rinoa.


“But, I don’t know how to compress time,” she said.


“Aeris, answer me.” He followed her to the steps to the hotel, but she waved him off.


“You’ve been doing Time Magic this whole time, Haste, Slow, Stop spells,” Aeris said, smiling. “Just do a really big one, on the building and everyone in it.”


“Aeris, please.”


“But, Haste or Stop?” asked Quistis, “Are we in the past, or the future?”


“Aeris, I’m scared, I need you. I need to know if Sephiroth is coming back.” Pleading now, he pulled at her arm like a child, and she pursed her lips. Gently, she pushed him back away from her.


“Either. The past or the future. What once was old is new again. Of course he’s coming back, of course Ultimeca will try and try again. Don’t you realize it?” She glanced back at him with a melancholy look. “Evil will always rise up, but we should have hope, as long as there are people who rise up to fight it. People who struggle so we may live in peace.”


Rinoa closed her eyes and spread bright white wings wide. The building started to glow and vibrate, and Seifer rushed everyone inside. Cloud could hear Zell yelp, “I’m coming home Ma!”


The crowd thinned, Aeris strode back to him, and Cloud wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her forever, but Rinoa’s wings started to glow in rhythm, pulsing slowly, but then speeding up, and he knew he didn’t have time.


“I miss you,” he said simply, pressing his face into her neck. “I just miss you so much.”


“I’m watching you, you know. Wherever you are, I’m watching over you,” she kissed him gently on the head, and although things had gotten worse, they’d been working to make them better. And Aeris knew that. “And I’m waiting for you. I’ll always wait for you. But it’s not the right time just yet. So until then, continue to make me proud.”


Rinoa’s wings flared, brighter than anything he’d experienced, brighter than the very depths of the Lifestream itself, and when he could open his eyes again, the house, Rinoa, Aeris, everything was gone.


Cloud pushed his goggles down, and caught the flower from his hair.


Dio burst in. “Such energy! AH! My Hotel! Cloud, my muscles, where is my Hotel? What have you been doing?”


“Just seeing some friends off,” he replied, turning to leave. He could sleep in the jockey’s quarters tonight. “Has Tifa called? She’s probably worried.”


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Epilogue



“I’ve been thinking of a present to get you,” Seifer cried, swinging Hyperion at Squall threateningly. “How about some Despair!”


Squall narrowed his eyes at his rival, and the sword pointed at him. “I’m busy, Seifer.”


“Gah!” Seifer tossed the sword to the table with a clatter, and falling back on his office couch. “You’re always busy nowadays. It’s your damn birthday, skive off work.”


It was funny, because he’d have been done an hour ago if Seifer hadn’t been pestering him so thoroughly.


“These are cadet reports. You never think about the future, do you?” To which, Squall knew, would start off Seifer on his Romantic Dream spiel, which was a good twenty minutes he could ignore his friend and finish his paperwork.


Unfortunately, Selphie interrupted, because Selphie made sure that she was never ignored.


“Introducing, His Highness of Estar! Sir Laguna! Yay!” she cried.


“Oh, my Squall!” Only Heads of State, Selphie, and Rinoa ever hugged him, but they did with enough frequency and enthusiasm to make up for the rest.


Laguna held him out at arms length. “You look more and more like your mother every year! She’d be so proud.” Which lead to another over-ecstatic hug.


Quistis came in carrying a cake, Zell and Irvine brandishing bottles of champagne, Rinoa running in to peck him on the cheek. It had been an ambush, and he again leveled a glare at Seifer, who returned it with an unrepentant smile.


“To another year of living, and many more to come!” Zell toasted, and they all drank to that. Irvine made another toast to Peace, then Quistis to Friendship, and eventually they were drinking to Selphie’s toast to Moombas and Other Fuzzy Creatures.


The party dying down, Squall situated himself in the corner, content to watch his friends interact, Seifer and Zell already swilling straight from the bottle. His father had already made his exit, Ward and Kiros extracting him as he regaled increasingly drunken tales of the past. Rinoa came to sit down next to him, handing him another glass of champagne as she took another herself.


She downed the drink in one go, as she started, “When you think about it, I created Ultimeca’s castle to get us here. All those horribly powerful monsters, I created them. Tiamat was a house cat before I got to him.”


He pondered what to say. It was true, yes, but it had been necessary to get back home.


His confusion must’ve showed, because Rinoa just sighed, and, as a cue to how much she’d drank, sat on his lap. “Oh Squall. Zell says you should have Important Conversations on occasions where there is lots of booze, but Selphie says we should just leave them to someone else entirely. So, just tell me you love me, and kiss me.”


“I love you, Rinoa Caraway Heartily,” he said, laughing, “And I will struggle to the end of time to live with you in peace.”


“Squall Leonheart, you say the sweetest things,” she said, kissing him sloppily until Zell started whistling and she scurried off to giggle with Selphie. Seifer rolled his eyes, and he respected his space only slightly more than young girls and Heads of State, coming over to slouch against him.


“Did you mean that, struggle to the end of time stuff?”


“Yeah,” he said, and maybe he was a little drunk too, because his voice was harsh and he leaned back against Seifer. “So don’t go starting anymore wars.”


“Not me,” said Seifer, “But her. Sephiroth was Jenova’s son, her knight. She comes back through him. Ultimeca’s gone into her now. If she goes off, you aren’t planning on taking over the world for her, right?”


Squall took a hard look at his life, and remembered the sometimes, all-consuming love he had for Rinoa. Seifer had lolled his head against his shoulder, waiting for an answer, and Squall couldn’t say ‘No.’


Instead, he said, “If I do, promise to bring us back? You owe me.”


Seifer chuckled at that, burrowing his head into the fur on Squall’s jacket. “Yeah, promise. Me and my friends, we’ll take you down, go through time to get you two back.”


Irvine made some joke that had everyone rolling, quick hands moving with clarity even when the rest of him was wasted. He watched the play of Zell’s biceps as he caught himself falling backward, Selphie showing off complicated dance moves with strong motions, almost knocking over a glass that Quistis swiftly caught.


“You’ll thrash us both for sure,” Squall said to Seifer, who was drooling on his coat. “And we’ll all live together in peace. Just like this.”