In your headcanon, do you think Rinoa and Squall would ultimately have a happy ending, years after the game? What does their life look like? Do they have kids? Does Squall remain a SeeD? Or are there too many complications from Rinoa being a sorcereress?
My headcanon is weird because I have like...novel-length post-game arcs that happen and I have no idea if I’ll ever finish writing them but, who knows? I hesitate to spoil the first question, but I suppose it depends on what your definition of “happy ending” is. For me, it’s happy, or at least, fulfilling. I don’t imagine them having kids. Squall remains a SeeD, but it is complicated, and he willingly cedes “commander” to Xu (they’re both happier that way, honestly). “What does their life look life” depends on the timeframe. They spend a year with Edea, safely away from the rest of the world so Edea can help Rinoa understand, practice, and control Hyne’s power, while Squall learns to support and balance her (and sometimes serves as target practice, haha). Continuing to live at Garden is more complicated in the beginning than it is later, as everyone tries to sort out just what having a sorceress around with a high-ranking SeeD as her knight actually means. Generally, the younger someone is, the less concerned they are, while the older 20-somethings and senior adults fret about the implications if Rinoa were to “turn.” It’s also just not super clear what “knight” really means, or if it’s anything more than a title + skillset. The confusion can be awkward and uncomfortable at times, and Squall generally hates his administrative duties, not because they’re tedious but because the idea of being responsible for the lives of so many people gives him horrible anxiety. It’s one thing to pledge your allegiance to one person, but the entire population of Garden? Including kids? He doesn’t feel qualified and it makes him miserable. He has ideas for how he wants Garden to evolve, especially with a more in-depth understanding of sorceresses, but no idea how he would go about implementing those changes. He’s still bad at asking friends for help (or even having it cross his mind to do so). But he does his job, because...? Of course he does. It’s his job. He doesn’t complain. This is Squall we’re talking about.
Long story short, that can’t go on forever. Being what he is to Rinoa while still having to manage Garden is overwhelming for Squall, and frustrating for Rinoa, who feels caught in-between his love for her and loyalty/attachment to the institution that raised him. It’s not even that they inherently conflict, but that it...just sort of feels like they’re supposed to? It’s too much for one person, too many competing priorities. It doesn’t help that there’s political upheaval all over the Galbadian continent complicating matters.
So, things change. For one, they pick up Ellone in Winhill, and she goes with them--not as a treasured prisoner, as she was on the White SeeD ship, but as a protected resident (who can leave whenever she wants). This is good, in that Rinoa has someone to talk to that both understands her situation, and has a lot of care for Squall. It’s good for Squall, too, for obvious reasons, though perhaps a little awkward, at first; he’s not the clingy child he used to be, not that he doesn’t have pangs of that, still. They have to learn to communicate, again. But the Sorceress/Knight and SeeD Commander titles can’t be unified, simply due to a lack of mental resources and being unable to be in two places at once. Squall steps down as leader of SeeD, and abdicates to Xu, but in doing so is given a new, more fitting responsibility: he’s both a tactical and diplomatic advisor on all matters sorceress, and, as there is still the supposition they will be fighting bad ones at some point in the future, he trains SeeDs to fight or contain them specifically (sometimes with Rinoa as a foil, depending on the exercise). This works for them both, in a lot of ways; for Squall, it’s a single, clear responsibility that doesn’t have a lot of ambiguities. For Rinoa, it’s a chance to feel useful, and to prove that she’s there to help, and working with her does help set some people who had mistrusted her before at ease.
It’s better, too, because it gives them both opportunities to spend time with friends that they hadn’t had, before, either to work with them, or just be in the same space. More freedom to go outside of Garden, be active in field projects and, especially in Squall’s case, missions. Rinoa has more space to keep in contact with the Forest Owls (which is a whole other mess) and to figure out what her powers really mean to her, as a person, and the fact it’s no longer “taboo” for her to simply exist somewhere helps a lot with that. She’s always a bit of a rebel, at heart, thinking little of questioning authority figures (or authoritative statements) on a whim. But there’s more direction to it, I think, and greater forethought about the consequences of words and actions. She does end up being living proof that Hyne’s power isn’t universally corrupting, even for someone as saturated with it as she is. Not to say she doesn’t make some nasty mistakes. But she isn’t another Adel or Ultimecia, or even Edea. She’s just herself, Rinoa first.Garden’s it’s own matter, and while he isn’t its leader anymore, Squall does what he can to shape it into the force of balance he envisions it being (and believes it has to become, if it’s to survive and have any success in holding its own against Ultimecia and any other future threats). He locks horns with Xu and others about this sometimes; the political and financial details are problems to be resolved, in his mind, not goals to be pursued. Where Rinoa might be concerned about the ethics of a mission, Squall’s is more practical; will this make the situation in the region better, or worse? Initially, that practicality extends only to the immediate results, and Xu in particular is often three steps ahead of him--that evolves over time, though, and they end up working together very well, for the interests of both Garden and anyone seeking its ‘services.’ Often with Rinoa and Quistis playing the angel and devil on their shoulders, respectively.
I’m not sure if that’s the sort of answer you were looking for, but I’m not sure what day-to-day would mean otherwise, unless you just mean...what kind of coffee does Squall drink when he’s groggy at 5am after two hours of sleep because a rexaur got loose in the main lobby...
I mean, black. The answer is black.
