A/N. Written for the May round at fictunes_lj. Playing with a pre-game Seifer and Rinoa sounded fun, so I told j_merc and she demanded I wrote it. Even if it is three months late. Oh well, better late than never.
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Never have, never will, just borrowing the characters.
Stories of Freedom
He's always known the princess's father would never approve of him, but that was probably part of the appeal. She was the fair maiden locked away by an evil lord and it was up to him to rescue her. Considering the role he'd given her father in that story it really came as no surprise that General Caraway quickly deemed him a Bad Influence on his daughter, accusing him of putting ideas in her young head and leading her astray. It was because of this not-so-white knight that his daughter was breaking curfew and breaking windows.
Maybe that was why the General had electronic locks fitted to all the doors.
It didn't stop the arguments though, the ones he heard between the princess and her father as he stood beneath her window and waiting for the door to slam and the locks to click into place. The window doesn't open far enough for her to climb through it anymore, but she throws her coat down – it may be summer, but there's still a chill wind about come nightfall – and he waits five, maybe ten minutes more for her to navigate the secret passages that lead down to the sewer system, helping her back to her feet and letting her to tuck the pinwheel away before telling her good morning.
They laugh and run for it, hand in hand, before the General has time to realise she's gone.
He's waiting when she gets back though at gone one in the morning, because her white knight tells her she has to go back sometime. But he'll see her again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that as well. She believes him, believes he can take her away from here, and that's why she can smile sweetly at her father and tell him she's going to bed.
The days are long and stretch on forever, but they still go round in circles; Deling is not as big as it seems.
So one day he borrows a car and they drive for hours, out to the ruins near the cliffs. They call it a tomb, but no one knows what king is buried there. Either way there's a strange howling that can be heard that might be the wind or might be a ghost, so she doesn't want to go inside. People get lost in there and never come back.
Instead she watches as her white knight climbs the ruins outside, strikes a pose and declares that he is the new king, and, of course, she shall be his queen and then they'll all be free to do what they want and help who they want.
Help who? She asks, suddenly curious, crouched on the dry ground staring up him. He's little more than a silhouette against the setting sun.
He puts on a show unlike any of his other tales of those dreams of whirlwind fairytales. There's something there, a light in his eyes at a story which isn't just in his mind: Timber. Timber needs freeing from the iron handed rule of Galbadia. He's seen the city and he knows Galbadia, and knows who is right and who is wrong.
She can see it play out in her mind as they dance the away the last night of summer, returning to late for even her father to be awake.
The General berates her over breakfast and Rinoa, for once, listens in silence as he tells her how bad that Seifer character is, and that she should stop seeing him.
She smiles at that, puts down her empty glass and pushes her chair back from the table, "There's no worries there, daddy, he's gone back to Garden; summer's over."
General Caraway doesn't know what to say, knows even less when he sees her pick up a bag, and catches a glimpse of the pinwheel fastened, gleaming, to her arm.
Kissing her father on the cheek Rinoa walks away, "And I'm going too, so you don't have to worry about me anymore"
"To Garden?" He can't believe what he is hearing.
"No," Rinoa laughs, and then she shuts the front door behind her, staring up at the blue sky. "I'm going to Timber."
She wouldn't stay locked up any longer as the wind began to pick up, the princess disappearing into the daytime crowds, following the echoes of stories and knowing her white knight would help her after she had set everything up for him.
What a lovely idea, a real romantic dream.