Sorrow Catching Up (Closed writing unless someone asks to join in)
It's all your fault. They were the words that no one had said, but the words he figured everyone had thought about him. Somehow they were finally coming back to haunt him. He'd never let it get to him till now. But going through what few things he had with him now that he was settling in, he had found this one picture, and here he was staring at it. The three of them. Himself, Ellone and....Raine. All it had taken was just a glance at her face for these thoughts to come boiling up to the surface again. It's all your fault. They were the words that echoed in his mind as he was kneeling down on the floor not too far from the open doorway of his new residence. The cruel, cold, unfeeling truth kept tugging at his mind, and no matter how much he told himself it wasn't his fault, he couldn't help but think it was. Because in retrospect...it was, wasn't it? He didn't know why he felt like this. He'd never let something get him down and depressed like this before. No matter what he'd always tried to keep himself strong and positive. So why now? Maybe it was the fact that he had tried to keep so strong but in the process of it kept everything bottled in. Maybe that was finally catching up to him. It's all your fault. They were the words that first entered his mind, hitting him like a tidal wave when he first found out the news that Raine had passed. Sure, Ellone was safe now. But she wouldn't have been taken away in the first place if he hadn't left for to go talk to Timber Maniacs. He would've been there to defend her. And even now that Ellone was rescued, Raine...the one woman he had loved more than anything or anyone else in the entire world....she was gone. He hadn't been there to support her and take care of her when she needed him most. When she had been having their son. THEIR son. He'd had to take so long to retrieve Ellone, he hadn't been able to push himself to get her sooner so he could return home with her to Raine's happy, smiling, loving face waiting to greet them as always. It's all your fault. They were the words he could swear his daughter-...well...he considered Ellone to be his daughter anyways, though he supposed it was step-daughter, but that didn't matter to him- was thinking when she finally saw him again after all these years. He'd left her to an orphanage, believing they would take care of Ellone, and then left her to get dragged off to the White SeeD ship. She'd stayed in the orphanage and then the White SeeD ship for most of her life. The only reason for all that was because he'd left her in that orphanage, rather than trying to keep her in Esthar and take care of her...and he'd sent his recently born son to that orphanage too. His son...and Raine's son. THEIR son... It's all your fault! They were the words he was sure his son who he'd finally met would tell him if he ever knew what had happened. It was Squall who'd had it the hardest of all. His sister taken away from him at a young age, his father not there because he was sort of forced into being president of a country that was lost and vulnerable now that their cruel, horrific former leader was out of the picture for the time being. Squall had no one to depend on, or if he did, they weren't there for long. So, he became a loner, according to Cid and Edea, and he could just see it in Squall's eyes. The hurt, the resentment, everything that lied with him from his past. Maybe Squall didn't think about those feelings or maybe Squall didn't even notice them...but he did. He was sure Squall would hate him upon learning the truth of what happened...and that was what plagued him the most. Because no matter how much he tried to ignore it, he couldn't deny it. Not anymore. "...it's all my fault." That's when it happened. Laguna wiped the single drop that had fallen on the picture off of it with his sleeve and set it down on the floor so no more would land on it. It was the first time he'd found himself crying since he was a kid, maybe 7, 8 at the very oldest, as far as he could recall. All the pain, all the guilt, all the fear that he'd kept hidden away for so long...had finally caught up to him. Through tears that he couldn't stop even though he tried, he once again uttered the words that had made him crumble and break down in a matter of minutes just by thinking them again. "It's...all my...fault..." ((OOC: If you listen to this on repeat while reading this, it will probably just break your heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrjf-WCe4kU ))
