Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Until the End of Eternity, and Longer ❯ Chapter Twenty Three ( Chapter 23 )

"Until the End of Eternity, and Longer"

By: Banshee Puppet

Chapter Twenty-Three

"MOM! MOTHER! WAKE UP!" Irvine shook the young woman helplessly, knowing only, her breathing was shallow, but she was still alive. There was still a chance that…

Laguna sat shaking, wrapping his arms around himself as if to fight off a bitter chill. 'This is…This…too much,' he thought. "I…I can't do this," he mumbled, his words shaky as tears started falling from his wide green eyes. Greif. Squall knew that look. His father was…and Irvine…and what about Jace? This couldn't be what she had in mind. It was breaking them. "It's too much!" Laguna sobbed. "Jace. I…don't make me watch you die again, please don't make me watch you….oh for Hyne's sake! I think I'm gonna puke."

"Damnit," Squall muttered. "Jace. What were you trying to do anyway? Was it worth all of this?"

"S-Squall?" Rinoa asked, tears brimming in her eyes with deep confusion, as if she wasn't sure if she was allowed to cry for someone she didn't know, over something she didn't understand.

Squall bit his lower lip, trying to find an answer for her. "Rin…I…just leave us be for now. Please. This is…a family thing."

Rinoa nodded, but a slight sniffle let him know that he'd just unintentionally hurt her feelings…again. 'I'll apologize later,' he thought, turning his attention to his shivering father when a voice hit his ear. "Squall…Squall…" It was almost an echo at first, before the vague silouette of a tiny brunette came into his view.

"Mother," he whispered.

Irvine and Laguna looked up, their eyes trailing to where Squall's gaze had locked. Again, Irvine could see something, like an odd disruption in the light of the room, but nothing solid. And through tear-brimmed, blurry eyes, Laguna blinked. "R-Raine???"

"Tell them…to please not worry. Jace and I…we've already made up our minds. So please don't cry for us. It's what we want. She'd explain herself but…well, she's over there right now…so…anyway, you should see her. I'd forgotten that content, peaceful look she could have when she isn't, you know, trying to change the world." Raine giggled slightly. "Anyway. We'll see you soon, okay? And tell your father…that we're sorry for leaving, but…we'll see you all again soon." Her voice faded as she walked over to Jace's solid body, a pained expression, but also, a wistful smile was on her face. "I'm coming now…Jace," Raine whispered as she leaned over the body of her sister-in-law and kissed her gently on the forehead. Raine's spirit faded into the still barely-alive body of Jace Kinneas, like it was being gently sucked in by a swirling cerulean vortex that opened there for anyone with any amount of spiritual awareness to see. A peaceful expression overtook the unconscious woman's face, making her look merely asleep despite all the wounds on her ravaged body. And Then, Irvine was forced to leap out of the way as that body began to heat up unnaturally, burning his hands through the gloves he wore as colors shifted, the blue vortex swallowing up the regenerated body of a woman who had been dead for fifteen years, and shooting up through the roof of the tavern, a ball of light, that, from a distance, most resembled a shooting star.

Irvine gasped, acting on instinct as he grabbed a startled Laguna by the wrist and yanked him away from the debris falling from the ceiling, where that bizarre ball of light impacted, and their silence was broken by a strangled "eep!" coming from upstairs as a tattooed blonde head looked down, wide-eyed, through a hole in the floor of Jace's old room, right where the television used to be.

"What in Hyne's name WAS that?!?" Zell asked with a gulp. "It singed my hair!" The martial artist flipped some slightly-charred bangs from his eyes.

"It was…uh…" Irvine scratched his head, trying to figure out how to explain all that Zell missed while he was upstairs messing with the radio, trying to contact Quistis for a pick-up.

"It was…love," Laguna answered after a few moments.

"Love, huh?" Kennedy asked as he looked through the hole in the floor and then up over his shoulder at the hole in his roof. "Does love come with a billing address? Because these repairs are gonna cost me." Sure, he knew what Laguna meant, sort of. He knew it had something to do with Jace, reckless cowboy that she was, but beyond that…

Laguna couldn't help a chuckle, as his face bristled into a small smile, then a grin, and a chuckle out of Irvine sent him laughing comfortably, smiling up at the sky behind Kennedy's head with that half-innocent twinkle that Squall had grown accustomed to seeing in his eye before all of this. "I'll take care of it!" Laguna said, waving a hand as if brushing the subject off. "You worry too much old man!" he teased.

And Squall couldn't help a small smirk. It was, however, interrupted by a strange buzzing noise.

"For cryin' out loud! NOW it decides to work?!?" Zell whined as he looked over his shoulder, leaning slightly as another small chunk of the floor to the upper level fell through and sent him plummeting down into a table. "OOHHOOOWWWW!!!" he whined, causing Selphie to chuckle off her silence and bounce happily at the sudden moment of normalcy. "Aaawww! Zelly! Are you okay?" she asked.

"Do I LOOK okay to you?!?" he whined. "My bangs are burnt. My ass is numb. I think I just sprained my wrist, and Kennedy is out of hotdogs!" Zell sighed. "Well, the radio works now, so you can call Quisty now, Squall."

Squall gave a curt nod in the blonde's direction before heading up the stairs…

"Quistis, it's Squall. Where is Garden right now?"………

ugh. Another short ass chapter. *shrugs* I must be cursed. Anyway, I'll be writing a short interlude next. (Short as in, even shorter than one of my chapters. I'm assuming one page max.) Then I'll be starting part two of this story, which I think will take place mostly in Garden and Esthar…maybe. Quistis and Seifer will probably show up too, finally, though they won't have major parts in this story. (Though I think Seifer will be important in the next one in this arc. Not sure yet, but….probably, anyways!) So, yeah, r&r. Uhm. I'm actually still making some very important decisions for part two, so if it takes me a little longer than usual to get that going, I'm sorry, but there are two or three things I have to decide right from the get go. Anyways, my lunch break is over and it's time for me to go to job #2 for the day, so I have to stop ranting now.

Until Next Time,

Happy Haunting,

~Banshee Puppet~