Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Until the End of Eternity, and Longer ❯ Chapter Thirteen ( Chapter 13 )

No own. No sue.

~~~~~~

"Until the End of Eternity, and Longer"

by: Banshee Puppet

Chapter Thirteen

~~~~~

Sunset. Laguna stood staring up at the angry white building that he hadn't visited since Mr. Donovan's death, and now it held his kid sister in its clutches. He clenched and unclenched his fists angrily as wisps of black hair brushed the shoulders of his blue military uniform. He'd only gotten back to Deling City that morning, and wanted to see Jace, but Mrs. D told him she hadn't seen her in a long time. She lived with her husband these days. One day, she just didn't come home, next thing she knew, people were asking her how married life was treating her daughter. Apparently, the Donovans were no longer a part of her life, but they spoke on the telephone occasionally, a few stolen moments here and there.

What stung more than anything was that she'd married that sadistic bastard to begin with. He'd seen her bruised cheek, the black and blues the shape of slender fingers on her arms, and she wouldn't leave. Because she loved him. As he stared at her still form in the dim hall light he wondered, `is this what love is? If that's true, then I want no part of it.'

Laguna took a few careful steps toward the sleeping woman. When had she become a woman? Even in this dim light, he could see how badly beaten she'd been. Everybody knew. Didn't she have any pride left? She used to be so proud. Didn't she feel any shame at letting him do these things to her? But she just lie there in uneasy sleep.

He sat carefully on the edge of the bed, taking her hand gently in his own so as not to disturb the iv in her arm or her troubled slumber, reached up with his right hand and brushed some stray locks of hair out of her battered face. Resting his palm gently on her fragile cheek, tears fell from his eyes and he kissed her gently on the forehead, thinking. `We protect each other? Forever? Yeah right. When did forever become such a short time? I've failed you Jace. . .couldn't save you. But why? Why didn't you want to be saved? Do you still not want it?' His lips lingered on her brow, just barely brushing it as tears fell from his eyes to her skin.

Jace came to slow waking, squeezing gently the hand she found in her own, eyes fluttering open in vague awareness of the wet drops falling on her face, gentle feathers of hair falling over a hand on her cheek, lips that pulled away quickly at the first signs of wakefulness. Sleepy green eyes looked up at him.

"Hey soldier boy," she smiled vaguely. "What'cha cryin' for?" she asked with a soft yawn.

He thought his heart would break in that instant, like he was watching a glass fall in slow motion, waiting for the impending shatter.

"Do you even know where you are?" he asked her, feeling nauseous, her speaking to him in this place like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"My room," she said. "I have my own these days, seems like," she joked. "They keep it empty, just knowing that it won't be long before I come back again. The nurses are really nice like that."

He wasn't sure she was entirely lucid until that last bit about nurses. She knew exactly where she was, and as he sat, dumbstruck with his mind swimming, she just continued talking.

"Max got mad about the letters. He said I was paying more attention to you than him. Sorry I haven't replied in a while, but my mail gets intercepted these days. He reads everything before I even know about it. It's okay though, I don't have any secrets. . .well. . .one. Look at you though, you're hair's getting so long. It really suits you `guni."

"He did that too, I suppose," Laguna scowled, noting the cast on her left hand.

Jace just shrugged. "He didn't like me writing to you. . .like I said. But I'm getting pretty good with using my right hand for that sort of thing. Right hand. . .that's so silly, as if anything else is the wrong hand. People can be really dumb."

"Just tell me why, Jace. Please. Why do you stay? Why don't you fight back? He hurts you. You think that's love? That's just. . ."

"No. It's not love. It's just possession. He thinks he can own me. . .and he does," she answered frankly, softly, as she turned her head away. "All the same I. . .I love HIM. It's pretty dumb, I know, but it doesn't matter what he does to me. I stay because I love him, for whatever reason. . .who knows? But I do. Heavens help me, I do. And if that means he can own me and do whatever he wants and treat me like a punching bag or something less than human, well. . .that's just fine by me."

`I want to go over there and make him stop, but the second I left, it would only be worse for her,' Laguna thought, bitterly clutching his free hand in a fist at his side that she couldn't see.'

"What's your secret?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You said you had one secret. What is it?"

Jace looked up at him and smiled, answering him with one word. "Life."

And the word echoed through both of the young men's sleeping minds and borrowed memories long into the morning.

Sometime in the mid-morning, Squall and Laguna were awoken by a rather obnoxious pounding on the door behind them. From the way the door shook, Squall presumed, once he had the mental faculties to presume anything, that it just HAD to be Zell.

A voice came from the other side of the door whining, "Come on man! I gotta pee!!" `Yup,' Squall thought. `Can I call `em, or what?'

He realized with a bit of embarrassment that somewhere in the night, they'd shifted positions and his head was cradled into Laguna's shoulder, arms wrapped around his father's waist, and also that Laguna wouldn't be able to move until he did.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and jumped up stiffly, splashing some water on his face.

"Stop whining!" he barked at the door. Laguna couldn't help but chuckle. Squall was back to his usual self, but there was a fragment of something in his eyes that seemed to tell Laguna that last night wasn't nothing, not just a moment of weakness for the young Commander.

". . .dad," he whispered. "If you say a single word about. . ."

Laguna quickly raised his hands in the air in defense and mock surrender. "I leave the matter entirely in your hands Commander Leonheart," he teased.

Squall growled at him and stalked out of the bathroom, and spinning on his heel, Laguna followed. "All yours Zell," he told the blond, who rushed passed him, missing the bizarreness, or choosing not to mention it until after answering the urgent call of his bladder.

Once everyone was seated at the table, Kennedy came over and handed Laguna a large mug of coffee. "No cream, three sugars," he announced, proud of his unflinching memory. "Scrambled eggs, two, four pieces of toast and strawberry jam, on the way. What'll the rest of you want for breakfast?"

A near unanimous call for coffee went up, except for Irvine, who wanted orange juice. "Can't start the day without it," he chirped in his frivolous way, all the while thinking about his recent journey into the past and that look in Laguna's eyes. `She must have been in bad shape,' he mused, not really knowing from his perspective if it was true, but it was her words that shook him most. `One secret. . .life.' Did that mean what he thought it did, or was he just reading too deeply into things? What he thought. . .life-his life. Did she know then that she was going to have a child, and still stayed, still risked it. . .for love? Or did she just mean what she always seemed to mean, that she lived life. . .but was what she was doing at that time. . .could that really be considered living? She was broken, body and soul. . .the fight all but drained out of her entirely. But she was a fighter, he knew. She saved the world. What made her change?

Kennedy smiled. "Jace used to have juice every morning too," he said. "Not orange, necessarily, but always juice. A glass of juice, two pieces of toast with raspberry jam, a banana, or a pear, and a cup of tea, unsweetened, with just a hint of lemon to top it off."

"Sounds good," Irvine said after some careful deliberation. A light breakfast, but perfect for starting off the day, it seemed. "I'll have that," he decided. "Never was one for eatin' heavy first thing."

Orders were tossed around, Zell and Selphie ordering enough for three people each, as usual, Rinoa striking a comfortable middle, a bowl of cereal(with strawberry and banana slices, upon Kennedy's suggestion), coffee heavy on cream and light on sugar, and a piece of toast with butter, not jam, and Squall, well, Squall decided, "I'll have the same as my dad." And on second thought, he added, "one sugar in the coffee," remembering how sweet Esthar's president liked his caffinated beverages, and it was way beyond Squall's tolerance level.

He got more than a few looks from his friends at his choice of phrasing, leaving them wondering why the two men had decided the bathroom floor in the middle of the night was an appropriate place for bonding, but seeing Squall's lips turn down more than usual, Irvine decided to interrupt the teasing session with, "You went to the dream world last night too, right Squall?"

Squall nodded.

"Shorter session than usual, wasn't it? Pick up any trinkets?"

Squall thought about this a moment and then shook his head in a negative fashion. "Not that I know of."

"I did," Irvine commented, and for a moment, Squall worried that the cowboy had gained more of Jace's bruises, but he just held up his right hand, and sure enough there was a Deling City General Hospital band around his wrist, a close fit, but not so tight that it cut off any circulation. He held an arm across the table so that Squall could inspect it, and the steely eyes seemed to cringe a bit as he read the name. *Kinneas, Jace. Blood type: O. Medications: none.* and et cetera.

Laguna unconsciously shivered over his breakfast. Eating had always been quiet time for him. Some people liked to chat while they ate, he supposed, but Laguna, he'd rather just eat and chat afterwards. . .for an extremely long time. But her name on that hospital id bracelet. "Which time was it?" he asked darkly.

`Which time?' Irvine thought with a start. `How many times were there?'

"How many times did you find her in the hospital?" Squall asked for Irvine, who's throat seemed to have decided to cease function.

Laguna thought a moment and then said, "Twice, I think. But I heard about other times later. Jace didn't keep things from me, and neither did the hospital staff. Everyone knew her situation, but nobody did anything to change it."

"Well, you were in your military uniform, and she had a broken hand. . ." Squall offered, hoping this was enough.

"Ah," Laguna nodded recognition, but went back to his eggs and toast, not seeming to have any need to say anything more.

"You remember. . .?" Irvine prodded.

"It was the first time," he said. "That I found her there, that is. My first leave after I'd joined. . .and the second time in my life that I really wanted to hurt someone. I knew then, if I saw Max Kinneas, he wouldn't survive the encounter, so I went to deliberate ends to avoid him while I was in Deling City. Because hurting him for hurting her. . .it may have made me feel better, but hurting him for hurting her would only make things worse for her in the long run." A sad smile tweaked the corners of his lips as he remembered. "She got so mad at me for trying to convince her to go that whole week, to go anywhere. She knew it wasn't healthy, that one day he might hurt her so bad she would never wake up, but Jace's heart was always fiercely loyal. Once she gave you a piece of herself, it was unconditional, and forever, and she didn't give pieces, she gave chunks. Such a big heart, and so passionate, every moment, every breath was so full of meaning for her. Sometimes, I could look into her eyes and just think that she would explode under the sheer force of her emotions. Just. . .BANG!!! Gone. And in the end, that's really how it was. . .but I'm jumping ahead." Laguna paused. "Liquid Nitrogen. That was Jace-a temperamental, explosive, hot-headed, stubborn foolish force of nature. But she also had a really unique understanding of the world and of people, the darker side of human nature." He paused again, thoughtfully, forcing himself to focus on a single point in time when it was obvious to anyone that a million memories flooded into him. "When I found her in the hospital, she said that she had one secret, and that it was life. I thought she was saying something really deep at the time. . .one of her philosophies about having no regrets, or living every breath of your life. . .but she was really telling me something much more simple. Her secret, life. . .it was you, Irvine. She kept you a secret from him for a long time, as long as she was able to, don't know what she was thinking, or why. I think she was afraid that he would make her abort you if he found out early enough in the pregnancy that it would involve minimum risk and hassle, but that's only speculation on my part. Whatever the case, you really turned things around for her. LIFE. . .it was you. Always. You meant everything to her. That's why she finally left. Telling this story. . .it's been helping me a lot. I'm seeing things much more clearly now. From that moment, when Jace chose your life, it was really out of her control, the choices she made after that. "You want to know what happened, what made Jace leave everything behind and arrive in Bella Maure. Irvine, it was you. Of course it was you."

~~~~~~

. . .blah, formatting. `tis makin' me groggy. But at least most of the chapters that are already written are up. . .few more to go, then I have to get over my writer's block and start writing new stuff