Sweet Surrender
Chapter 1
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy belongs to Squaresoft and Kingdom Hearts belongs to Squaresoft & Disney, respectively. Also, Sweet Surrender by Sarah McLachlan is owned by none other than the goddess Sarah herself.
"C'mon Squall, you need to lighten up a little," the raven-haired girl called to Squall as he struggled with the over-sized picnic basket. It seemed that she had packed a feast for the two of them instead of a light picnic lunch. "Besides, you've been working too hard lately. It's not good for someone our age to be always thinking so seriously."
Squall glanced over to his companion with a wary eye. She was about 5 foot 3, with a pale complexion wearing a light blue duster adorned with angel wings on the back. Underneath was a black tank top and black shorts, with black, ankle height lace-up boots. The sunlight played off the natural red highlights in her hair, making it look almost as though there were a halo of crimson around her head. Squall knew that she was beautiful, and that he was lucky to have her.
"The SeeD exams are coming up soon Rinoa, and that in itself takes a lot of preparation." He dropped the picnic basket with a grunt, sending spouts of pollen from the many-coloured flowers that surrounded them airborne, and they drifted away slowly on the slight breeze. Squall stretched his arms high above his head, delighting in how the summer-time sun to warmed his skin then flopped rather ungracefully on the ground. He took off his leather jacket and set it beside him, glad to be free of its sweaty confines. "I'm hungry; I say we eat!"
Rinoa began to giggle, then leapt nimbly over some flowers and crouched down beside Squall, so close that her own chocolate eyes were staring directly into his own blue and gold-speckled ones while her breath tickled his cheek. Squall could smell the light, flowery perfume that she always wore, and could tell that she had been sucking on a peppermint not too long ago by the sweet scent of her breath.
"Aww.did I make the picnic basket too heavy?" Rinoa asked in a playful tone, a mock frown upon her face. She always found it irresistible to make fun of him. It slowly faded, however, as Squall frowned back at her, although not in a jovial way.
Suddenly, he cracked a smile that lit up his whole face, and pounced on Rinoa, knocking her onto her back. "Hey, stop!" she shrieked as he began to tickle her sides. "No fair! Angelo!"
Out of the flowers appeared her border collie: Angelo, rushing to help his mistress in whatever trouble she seemed to be in at the moment. Unfortunately, he was confused by Rinoa's shriek and now her laughter, and whined uncertainly, waiting to be told what to do.
"Go play somewhere Angelo," Squall told him, not ceasing his incessant tickling of Rinoa as he did so. Angelo barked and then ran off into the field again, probably to torment some small animal that happened to wander across his path.
"Traitor!" Rinoa managed to gasp out between peels of laughter, her stomach and face starting to hurt from her mirth. Squall stopped then, holding himself over top of Rinoa. If there were only one thing that Squall could take with him anywhere, even to life after death, it would be the memory of her smile.
Rinoa shook her head, her shoulder length hair swaying ever so slightly beneath her. "Why Squall, one would almost think you were having fun for a moment."
"That'll be our little secret," he teased, tapping the end of Rinoa's nose with his fingertip. "Besides, this little wrestling match has left me starving."
"Same here!" Rinoa agreed, sitting up. Squall sat back, and watched as Rinoa began to pull something out of the picnic basket.
Suddenly, there was silence. The wind had stopped rustling the petals of the flowers and the whole world seemed to be in an utter-stand still. The hair on the back of Squall's neck began to rise, and he slowly stood up, pulling Rinoa to her feet beside her.
"What's going on?" Rinoa whispered. It seemed wrong to whisper. It seemed wrong to even breathe.
"I don't know." Squall pulled out his gunblade, something that he had argued with Rinoa endlessly about bringing along with him. She had finally agreed, under Squall's want for protection should they need it. But this.emptiness, it was something that couldn't be beaten down with a gunblade and both of them knew it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Squall could see that Rinoa was slightly behind him, her eyes and nostrils wide as though she were something being hunted. Fear had paralyzed Rinoa, and she made no attempt to do anything other than breathe.
It was so still there, at that time. It's nothing that any mortal every alive has -or ever will-experience in their lifetime. It was as though everything around them had become like the night sky: so close and yet so far away at the same time. Like someone had taken the laws of the universe and turned them upside down, and everything was waiting for the new set of rules to fall back down on their heads.
Suddenly, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was no Rinoa, no flower field, no black or white. It was the total absence of everything. And Squall was frightened.
He tried to call out, but the words stuck to the back of his throat. He couldn't even utter a sound. It seemed that time stretched on infinitely, that he spent the rest of his life in a state of not aging while years of time crawled by. It seems that a lifetime can be condensed into a few moments.
Squall felt hard earth under his feet, and he almost toppled over onto his face, the feeling so strange to him after the apparent nothingness. He looked around and surveyed his surroundings. There was water all around him and he stood on one of a series of floating platforms. But it wasn't the floating platforms that made him so uneasy.
There was water all right, but it seemingly didn't follow the rules of any universe that he had been in. The stream stretched upwards toward the sky, flowing in an unnatural way. It seemed to be flowing into the sky, something that he had never encountered before on his many SeeD missions.
Throwing his head back, Squall could make out what looked like an old castle that floated in the sky. It was a light cream colour, and from what Squall could tell from this distance was that there were a multitude of small platforms hanging around the exterior of it, attached by nothing more than what looked like a wire.
/How come everything here floats?/ he wondered, turning his attention back to the closer platforms. /It would take someone with an infinite number of float spells to even consider something like this./
Suddenly, another, much more urgent though took hostage of his mind. /Did Rinoa come here too.?/ He hadn't seen her in the vast emptiness, but that doesn't mean that she isn't here.
His heart beating faster, Squall cupped his hands around his mouth and began to yell. "Rinoa! Rinoa, where are you? Are you here? Please answer me!"
Swiftly, Squall knew what he had to do. He glanced up and saw the nearest floating platform. /If only I could jump across them./ Without giving his mind too much time to process the thought, Squall Leonhart leapt crazily, his arms flailing to grab the edge of the chunk of earth.
If he had been in a more sane frame of mind, Squall would have realized that he jumped at an angle, and there was no way that he could have hoped to grab the platform from where he jumped. So instead of feeling solidity underneath his fingers, he began to fall toward the water below.
As he gulped in a large breath of air, he felt it become knocked out of him as he hit the solid surface of the water. /What the.?/ He gasped at the feeling, trying to draw more breath into his depleted lungs.
He glanced down and saw that sure enough, the water was supporting his weight although it was a sheet of glass. Squall stood up uneasily, keeping himself alert to the fact that it might be an illusion and the surface of the water might break at any second, plunging him into it's icy-looking depths.
Glancing back, he saw that there was a mound of earth standing up from the water not far from where he was standing. Squall slowly made his way toward the hunk of earth, making sure not to let too much weight be balanced unevenly at a time.
When he was at last standing in front of it again, Squall hoisted himself up quickly, not leaving his fate in the hands of the strange water anymore then he had to. A chill snaked it's way down his spine as he realized that if he fell from some of the higher platforms, it would probably do some serious damage, if not kill him.
Readying himself, Squall leapt from the island to the same platform he had tried for earlier. Unlike before, however, he made sure that he would reach it this time. Looking up, he realized that he had many, many more platforms to jump to. /For Rinoa/ he reminded himself.
Platform after platform, jump after jump, Squall made it higher and higher until he reached a platform that had a still pool of water sitting in it, one that obviously did not occur in nature due to it's perfectly rectangular form. /But you never know/ he thought to himself bitterly, /it could just be another reality of this strange place/.
He sat down beside the oasis, idly wondering if the water would be safe enough to drink. Squall absently dipped one of his fingers into the water and was slightly surprised when he found that he could plunge his finger in further than the surface.
Squall brought his finger back and placed it in his mouth, tasting it ever so slightly to see if it tasted any different from normal water. There was a slight trace of copper in the flavor of the water, so he decided against quenching his thirst with it.
/Rinoa.why are you resting? Get up, Rinoa might need you!/ the voice inside his head argued with him. Squall stood up, remembering his mission. Looking up, he saw that there was one more platform to jump to. This one was further from the others though, so he knew that he had to plan his jump carefully.
Taking a running start, Squall sprung as far as he could, launching himself across the empty space as far as he could. It was in the most literal sense a leap of faith, for Squall had no idea if he could even bridge half the distance, never mind the full gap.
When he felt the hard crust of the platform beneath his fingers, Squall pulled himself up, and saw another strange sight. /It seems that the only thing that's an oddity here is normality/ he thought to himself as he brought himself up to examine the thing of interest.
It was a multi-faceted crystal, cut with many outreaching spikes that seemed to glow a red colour from within. It stood on a tiny triangular podium, and rested on its apex. It seemed to resonate, and Squall felt the sudden urge to reach out and touch it.
Suddenly, the crystal flared a different colour and a floating platform different from the ones made of earth appeared before him. It was made of metal, and it looked to be supported by a thin wire that seemed too weak to hold anything of any significant weight upon it.
Squall hesitated, but then his let his instincts win out and stood on the small, purple platform.
It whisked him away at an incredible speed, and Squall almost fell over at the rate of acceleration. Small, translucent clouds whizzed by him at an alarming pace and suddenly Squall found himself at the entrance to the castle he saw floating in the sky.
The blocks were sand-coloured and made out of a substance that Squall had never seen before, and it had a smooth texture almost like polished marble. Looking around, he saw that there were more of the pointy crystals sitting around.
It seemed Squall had arrived at the empty castle.
~*~*~ A/N: Like? I've been working hard on this story, harder than normal, so please review ^_^ Flames will be used to warm my room.
Chapter 1
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy belongs to Squaresoft and Kingdom Hearts belongs to Squaresoft & Disney, respectively. Also, Sweet Surrender by Sarah McLachlan is owned by none other than the goddess Sarah herself.
"C'mon Squall, you need to lighten up a little," the raven-haired girl called to Squall as he struggled with the over-sized picnic basket. It seemed that she had packed a feast for the two of them instead of a light picnic lunch. "Besides, you've been working too hard lately. It's not good for someone our age to be always thinking so seriously."
Squall glanced over to his companion with a wary eye. She was about 5 foot 3, with a pale complexion wearing a light blue duster adorned with angel wings on the back. Underneath was a black tank top and black shorts, with black, ankle height lace-up boots. The sunlight played off the natural red highlights in her hair, making it look almost as though there were a halo of crimson around her head. Squall knew that she was beautiful, and that he was lucky to have her.
"The SeeD exams are coming up soon Rinoa, and that in itself takes a lot of preparation." He dropped the picnic basket with a grunt, sending spouts of pollen from the many-coloured flowers that surrounded them airborne, and they drifted away slowly on the slight breeze. Squall stretched his arms high above his head, delighting in how the summer-time sun to warmed his skin then flopped rather ungracefully on the ground. He took off his leather jacket and set it beside him, glad to be free of its sweaty confines. "I'm hungry; I say we eat!"
Rinoa began to giggle, then leapt nimbly over some flowers and crouched down beside Squall, so close that her own chocolate eyes were staring directly into his own blue and gold-speckled ones while her breath tickled his cheek. Squall could smell the light, flowery perfume that she always wore, and could tell that she had been sucking on a peppermint not too long ago by the sweet scent of her breath.
"Aww.did I make the picnic basket too heavy?" Rinoa asked in a playful tone, a mock frown upon her face. She always found it irresistible to make fun of him. It slowly faded, however, as Squall frowned back at her, although not in a jovial way.
Suddenly, he cracked a smile that lit up his whole face, and pounced on Rinoa, knocking her onto her back. "Hey, stop!" she shrieked as he began to tickle her sides. "No fair! Angelo!"
Out of the flowers appeared her border collie: Angelo, rushing to help his mistress in whatever trouble she seemed to be in at the moment. Unfortunately, he was confused by Rinoa's shriek and now her laughter, and whined uncertainly, waiting to be told what to do.
"Go play somewhere Angelo," Squall told him, not ceasing his incessant tickling of Rinoa as he did so. Angelo barked and then ran off into the field again, probably to torment some small animal that happened to wander across his path.
"Traitor!" Rinoa managed to gasp out between peels of laughter, her stomach and face starting to hurt from her mirth. Squall stopped then, holding himself over top of Rinoa. If there were only one thing that Squall could take with him anywhere, even to life after death, it would be the memory of her smile.
Rinoa shook her head, her shoulder length hair swaying ever so slightly beneath her. "Why Squall, one would almost think you were having fun for a moment."
"That'll be our little secret," he teased, tapping the end of Rinoa's nose with his fingertip. "Besides, this little wrestling match has left me starving."
"Same here!" Rinoa agreed, sitting up. Squall sat back, and watched as Rinoa began to pull something out of the picnic basket.
Suddenly, there was silence. The wind had stopped rustling the petals of the flowers and the whole world seemed to be in an utter-stand still. The hair on the back of Squall's neck began to rise, and he slowly stood up, pulling Rinoa to her feet beside her.
"What's going on?" Rinoa whispered. It seemed wrong to whisper. It seemed wrong to even breathe.
"I don't know." Squall pulled out his gunblade, something that he had argued with Rinoa endlessly about bringing along with him. She had finally agreed, under Squall's want for protection should they need it. But this.emptiness, it was something that couldn't be beaten down with a gunblade and both of them knew it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Squall could see that Rinoa was slightly behind him, her eyes and nostrils wide as though she were something being hunted. Fear had paralyzed Rinoa, and she made no attempt to do anything other than breathe.
It was so still there, at that time. It's nothing that any mortal every alive has -or ever will-experience in their lifetime. It was as though everything around them had become like the night sky: so close and yet so far away at the same time. Like someone had taken the laws of the universe and turned them upside down, and everything was waiting for the new set of rules to fall back down on their heads.
Suddenly, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was no Rinoa, no flower field, no black or white. It was the total absence of everything. And Squall was frightened.
He tried to call out, but the words stuck to the back of his throat. He couldn't even utter a sound. It seemed that time stretched on infinitely, that he spent the rest of his life in a state of not aging while years of time crawled by. It seems that a lifetime can be condensed into a few moments.
Squall felt hard earth under his feet, and he almost toppled over onto his face, the feeling so strange to him after the apparent nothingness. He looked around and surveyed his surroundings. There was water all around him and he stood on one of a series of floating platforms. But it wasn't the floating platforms that made him so uneasy.
There was water all right, but it seemingly didn't follow the rules of any universe that he had been in. The stream stretched upwards toward the sky, flowing in an unnatural way. It seemed to be flowing into the sky, something that he had never encountered before on his many SeeD missions.
Throwing his head back, Squall could make out what looked like an old castle that floated in the sky. It was a light cream colour, and from what Squall could tell from this distance was that there were a multitude of small platforms hanging around the exterior of it, attached by nothing more than what looked like a wire.
/How come everything here floats?/ he wondered, turning his attention back to the closer platforms. /It would take someone with an infinite number of float spells to even consider something like this./
Suddenly, another, much more urgent though took hostage of his mind. /Did Rinoa come here too.?/ He hadn't seen her in the vast emptiness, but that doesn't mean that she isn't here.
His heart beating faster, Squall cupped his hands around his mouth and began to yell. "Rinoa! Rinoa, where are you? Are you here? Please answer me!"
Swiftly, Squall knew what he had to do. He glanced up and saw the nearest floating platform. /If only I could jump across them./ Without giving his mind too much time to process the thought, Squall Leonhart leapt crazily, his arms flailing to grab the edge of the chunk of earth.
If he had been in a more sane frame of mind, Squall would have realized that he jumped at an angle, and there was no way that he could have hoped to grab the platform from where he jumped. So instead of feeling solidity underneath his fingers, he began to fall toward the water below.
As he gulped in a large breath of air, he felt it become knocked out of him as he hit the solid surface of the water. /What the.?/ He gasped at the feeling, trying to draw more breath into his depleted lungs.
He glanced down and saw that sure enough, the water was supporting his weight although it was a sheet of glass. Squall stood up uneasily, keeping himself alert to the fact that it might be an illusion and the surface of the water might break at any second, plunging him into it's icy-looking depths.
Glancing back, he saw that there was a mound of earth standing up from the water not far from where he was standing. Squall slowly made his way toward the hunk of earth, making sure not to let too much weight be balanced unevenly at a time.
When he was at last standing in front of it again, Squall hoisted himself up quickly, not leaving his fate in the hands of the strange water anymore then he had to. A chill snaked it's way down his spine as he realized that if he fell from some of the higher platforms, it would probably do some serious damage, if not kill him.
Readying himself, Squall leapt from the island to the same platform he had tried for earlier. Unlike before, however, he made sure that he would reach it this time. Looking up, he realized that he had many, many more platforms to jump to. /For Rinoa/ he reminded himself.
Platform after platform, jump after jump, Squall made it higher and higher until he reached a platform that had a still pool of water sitting in it, one that obviously did not occur in nature due to it's perfectly rectangular form. /But you never know/ he thought to himself bitterly, /it could just be another reality of this strange place/.
He sat down beside the oasis, idly wondering if the water would be safe enough to drink. Squall absently dipped one of his fingers into the water and was slightly surprised when he found that he could plunge his finger in further than the surface.
Squall brought his finger back and placed it in his mouth, tasting it ever so slightly to see if it tasted any different from normal water. There was a slight trace of copper in the flavor of the water, so he decided against quenching his thirst with it.
/Rinoa.why are you resting? Get up, Rinoa might need you!/ the voice inside his head argued with him. Squall stood up, remembering his mission. Looking up, he saw that there was one more platform to jump to. This one was further from the others though, so he knew that he had to plan his jump carefully.
Taking a running start, Squall sprung as far as he could, launching himself across the empty space as far as he could. It was in the most literal sense a leap of faith, for Squall had no idea if he could even bridge half the distance, never mind the full gap.
When he felt the hard crust of the platform beneath his fingers, Squall pulled himself up, and saw another strange sight. /It seems that the only thing that's an oddity here is normality/ he thought to himself as he brought himself up to examine the thing of interest.
It was a multi-faceted crystal, cut with many outreaching spikes that seemed to glow a red colour from within. It stood on a tiny triangular podium, and rested on its apex. It seemed to resonate, and Squall felt the sudden urge to reach out and touch it.
Suddenly, the crystal flared a different colour and a floating platform different from the ones made of earth appeared before him. It was made of metal, and it looked to be supported by a thin wire that seemed too weak to hold anything of any significant weight upon it.
Squall hesitated, but then his let his instincts win out and stood on the small, purple platform.
It whisked him away at an incredible speed, and Squall almost fell over at the rate of acceleration. Small, translucent clouds whizzed by him at an alarming pace and suddenly Squall found himself at the entrance to the castle he saw floating in the sky.
The blocks were sand-coloured and made out of a substance that Squall had never seen before, and it had a smooth texture almost like polished marble. Looking around, he saw that there were more of the pointy crystals sitting around.
It seemed Squall had arrived at the empty castle.
~*~*~ A/N: Like? I've been working hard on this story, harder than normal, so please review ^_^ Flames will be used to warm my room.