Author's Note: New story. After thinking about the end of the game again, I decided that there were a couple of issues that I wanted to explore in a slightly less linear way, so this one will a little more free-form at times and will have a bit more angst than usual. Still, I hope my readers will enjoy it.

I do not own Final Fantasy VIII or any of its characters.

Thank you to everyone who reads/follows/favorites/reviews this. It is always appreciated.

Chapter One

The landscape surrounding Winhill had always welcomed ghosts.

Many years ago, the people who built the village had noted that the residents who passed away often continued to roam about as spirits. At first, these specters were feared and there were many attempts to drive them away. Eventually, the villagers learned to accept that, sometimes, some of their relatives and friends were simply too attached to their home to abandon it simply because they had departed the mortal realm. Fear and disgust eventually turned to a sort of wistful longing as those who were left behind sought solace in the possibility that they were not as alone as they might have thought they were.

Nighttime seemed to be a particularly inviting time for the spirits of those who had become a part of Winhill. The silver light of the moon and the distant twinkle of the stars in a clear sky guided them back to their home, back to the people who still loved them.

Standing on a grassy hill on the outskirts of Winhill, a solitary figure stood in front of a lonely headstone. He had never doubted the villagers' assertion that ghosts still lived here.

It was the sole reason why he continued to come back to this place.

Laguna Loire knelt down onto the gravesite, the ground soft and yielding due to a recent rain. He placed his hand onto the grave marker and bowed his head while closing his eyes. He never admitted it to anyone else, but whenever he did this, Laguna was certain he could sense Raine nearby. Sometimes, it was the scent of flowers that always accompanied her. Other times it was a faint trace of her voice calling out to him. No matter what it was, Laguna tried to absorb as much of it as possible, letting the sensations lull him back into a world of memories.

"Laguna, why did you stay?"

Laguna tilted his head quizzically at Raine, who was sitting next to him on the couch. Ellone had gone to bed hours ago, and the two of them had spent the last hour holding each other with little conversation, a rare thing when in the company of Laguna Loire.

"I thought you knew," he said, scratching the side of his head. "Because of Elle and…."

Laguna reached down to rub the ring on Raine's finger as a way to finish his sentence. Raine let out a sigh and pulled her hand away from his.

"No, I mean before that," she said. "After you were well enough to get around on your own. All that time while you were bed-ridden, you kept talking about how you weren't going back to the army so that you could finally become a world-traveling journalist. But as soon as you had recovered, you started to mention it less and less and then you ended up staying here instead. So why? What was it that changed your mind?"

Laguna let out a groan, and Raine looked over to see that he was rubbing his calf silently. She wasn't really surprised. This often happened when she tried to have a serious conversation with him. Usually, he tried to dodge it entirely with some flimsy distraction and she had half-expected him to try to do it again. The fact that his leg had cramped up, however, was a sign that he had been listening and was seriously contemplating her questions, so she patiently waited for him to reply.

"Um, truthfully?" he finally said. "It was your chicken casserole."

"What?!" she said, glaring at him. "Are you trying to tell me that you left the army, gave up on your dreams and pledged to stay with me and Ellone just because you like my cooking?"

"No," Laguna stammered. "I mean, sort of, no wait, I mean…."

"Well?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Laguna grabbed at his leg again and took several deep breaths before answering her.

"Do you remember that one day not long after I started my monster hunting job?" he asked her. "That day when I got that Bite Bug needle stuck in my shoulder?"

"I remember," Raine nodded. "You kept whining while I pulled it out and bandaged your wound, even though the poison didn't have a chance to infect it."

"Yeah, um, and remember how you still had me spend the rest of the day at home?" he continued hesitantly. "And how I offered to help you around the house 'cause I couldn't do my normal job?"

"How could I forget?" Raine sighed, rolling her eyes. "That was the day that I found out that tea towels can be completely incinerated in seconds and that laundry detergent can produce Behemoth-sized suds if the wrong person is allowed to run the washing machine."

"Um yeah, that was a surprise to me too," Laguna said with a nervous laugh. "And here I figured that the clothes would just get a little cleaner if you added extra soap."

"I thought you were trying to explain your earlier statement," Raine said with a smirk. "So why do you seem so determined to dig yourself into an even deeper hole?"

"W-wait let me finish," Laguna said. "After you kicked me out of the kitchen, I…I was really feeling down. I just wanted to help, but it seemed like nothing I did would go right. I kept thinking about everything you had done for me ever since I showed up here, and I kept wishing that I could have just one moment when I could be something more than the guy you've had to put up with for all those months."

Raine's expression immediately softened, her hand reaching for his, her fingers stroking the back of his hand.

"For some reason, I suddenly thought about my mom, and I remember saying something about how I missed the chicken casseroles she used to make," he added. "I didn't think you had heard me say that, and yet that's exactly what you made for dinner that night."

"You never did tell me if it was anything like your mother's," Raine said.

"I know," Laguna said. "Honestly, it was really good, but it was nothing like my mom's. But that didn't matter. In fact, that didn't even occur to me until a couple days later. All I could think about that night was the look in your eyes when you sat down with me and Elle to eat. It…it was like all that other stuff that happened earlier that day had never happened. It was as if this was the very first time you saw me and I still had a chance to be the person I wanted to be around you…for you."

Laguna raked his fingers through his hair again while flexing his leg back and forth, trying to work out the remnants of his earlier cramp.

"It took me a little while to realize this," he said. "But after that I decided to stay because I wanted to keep on trying to become that person. And I guess I'm still trying."

Laguna was about to curl his fingers around the hand Raine had placed on his, but she moved it away before he could. He then looked over at her, questioning, as she shook her head.

"Loire, you goof, when are you going to learn?" she said.

Laguna opened his lips to ask her what she meant, but she put her fingers onto his mouth, silencing him. She then moved closer to him, her blue eyes seeming to gaze down into his soul.

"You always were far more than just some guy who I took care of for all those months," she said. "Maybe it wasn't obvious right away, and maybe I'm still working on figuring out what exactly you are, but somehow, I always knew that you are so much more than that. And the only person I need you to be is you."

Raine moved her hand away, but it didn't matter because Laguna was too overwhelmed to speak and too enraptured with the woman in front of him to want to try. Instead he wrapped his arms around Raine and held her close to him, determined to put everything he was feeling into the embrace.

"I love you, Laguna," she whispered into his ear. Laguna closed his eyes and held her even tighter.

"I love you…."

'Raine….'

Laguna opened his eyes to feel tears sliding down his face. That moment had happened years ago, but he still marveled at how Raine's words always managed to touch his heart, even now. After she died, he often thought that he would never experience feelings like that again and as time passed, that possibility became a certainty in his mind.

Still, Laguna was all too aware that words still had the power to affect him. It was part of the reason why he was sitting in front of his wife's grave late at night: to try to forget the wounds inflicted by words spoken to him. Words he had been afraid to hear. Words of anger and venom.

"You gutless fool."

"And just how did you think it would be?"

"You're pathetic Loire."

"Why don't you just go back to her?"

Laguna brushed his hands against his cheeks. He laughed bitterly as he thought about how his tears were the proof that validated the words that had been said to him. Crying would not erase the truth that had been dragged into the light in spite of all his attempts to hide it away from the world. But that didn't stop him from sobbing even harder as the memory of those words continued to echo in his brain. He then wondered why the people closest to him didn't seem to be able to see what should have been obvious to them by now.

"Mister President, there is something we need to discuss."

"It's a simple test. Only takes a few minutes."

"Perhaps now would be a good time to start making plans. Just in case."

Laguna fell forward, his palms spread flat onto the ground while shaking arms tried to brace him from collapsing. Seconds later, his hands clawed at the dirt and grass as anger surged up from deep within and shoved the sadness aside.

He remembered feeling scared when he heard those words. Thousands of panicked questions had filled his mind, and he didn't know how he could begin to figure out which ones he should try to answer first. But all of those questions seemed stupid and meaningless now when he realized that he had been oblivious to the implications of what was happening to him. Sitting here, shaking, all alone in the dark, Laguna hated how he had been too weak to look past his petty fears and appreciate what was being offered.

A fresh wave of sorrow soon washed over him, drowning his rage and any other emotion he could have into a cold, bottomless ocean. His tears increased in intensity and became heaving sobs. He remembered how he hadn't shed a single tear during either of the moments that were currently haunting him, and he couldn't fathom why he hadn't cried before or why he wasn't able to stop himself now.

Laguna shivered as the crisp night air chilled him and he struggled to breathe.

"Raine," he choked out. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Laguna continued to gasp out pleas for forgiveness for several minutes, but he knew that his words were the only ones that had no power. He carefully laid down onto the headstone and caressed the edges of it as he curled his body up into a tight ball. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he would have to return to the Palace soon or Kiros would figure out that he had disappeared. Laguna considered Kiros to be one of the most easy-going and rational people he knew, but he also aware of how swiftly that calm rationality was replaced with fierce protectiveness whenever his former commander and current Estharian president's security was threatened in any way.

Laguna clutched the sides of the grave maker as he tried to find the strength to pick himself off the ground.

"Please," he sobbed. "Raine…I…I can't…."

Laguna hiccupped as the words stilled in his throat. He then swallowed hard and scrubbed at his face as he tried to stop the flow of tears from his eyes. He didn't want to leave, not while he was still in this state, so he closed his eyes again and reached out for Raine's presence. Eventually his breaths grew steadier and he slowly pulled himself together.

'Just a few more minutes…I can afford that….'

He relaxed his body so he could lay prone over the grave, allowing himself the morbid pleasure of feeling as if he was lying next to her again, just like he did on so many precious, passion-filled nights. A breeze fluttered through his hair, and it felt identical to all those times Raine would twine her fingers through it as she soothed him to sleep.

A cloud drifted in front of the moon, blotting out the light. By the time it moved away, Laguna was gone, having finally begun his reluctant trip back to Esthar and to the vacant existence that awaited him there.