Hello, readers. This is a story that's been in my head for 2 years but never written until now. It takes place weeks after the end of the game, but focuses on the period a year and a half before the game. This chapter acts as more of a prologue. It's very short.

01: Disappearance

The mind is a precious thing. It is the core that makes the entire body function. Without it, the body is lost. Life is lost. Thought. Consciousness. Power.

Love

The mind controls thoughts and emotions. It is always working. Always active. Only when life is brutally taken does the mind cease to function. But if a life is not taken...if a life is merely imprisoned, the conscious mind continues. If the limbs are frozen, the the mind makes eyes continue to move. The mind keeps the heart beating. The mind keeps life present. This non-imprisonment then acts as the worst imprisonment of all. It is the cruelest of sentences, to be stuck-frozen and unable to move, while the mind still wanders. Still functions. Still takes note of everything.

Let me die...or wake me up. Let me be free. End this...please.

Rinoa understood. She understood why Squall spent so much time in his thoughts. The mind is a comfy and cozy place to be. It's a place where you can think and be what you want and be truly at ease and not judged. It's good to have friends who accept you for everything you are, but if you're so lucky as to be completely accepting of yourself and have your mind to escape too when you want to-why not take advantage of it? Understanding was one thing. Accepting was something else all together. Rinoa did not accept Squall's vacations into his brain. They happened at the most inconvenient times. Missions, briefings and dates alike

Squall had also become a magician of sorts. And a skilled one at that. Only the most skilled (and annoyingly frustrating) of magicians could disappear on a weekly basis like Squall managed to do. Without a word of warning, he would be gone from the school on a day she chose to visit, starting on the day after the celebratory ball. After a night of dancing and tomfoolery (and of course, the most romantic kiss she'd ever experienced on the terrace), all the SeeD cadets retreated to their dormitories. Rinoa suggested, before taking a train ride home to Timber, that they meet the next day. Spend some more time together before he had another mission. His lips pressed in a straight line and he seemed to look through her, rather than at her. He had disappeared into his mind. Right then and there in front of her. And without a word, he let go of her hand and went back into his dorm room, shutting and locking the door behind him without so much as a goodbye. In that moment she saw him walk into his dorm room and shut the door, she felt all the emotional and social progress Squall had made had suddenly gone in reverse and he was regressing back to what he was when she first met him.

He wasn't at school when she went to visit him the next day, and he didn't return until very late in the evening. He'd pulled off his trick. And then managed to do it again the next week and the week after. One day out of each week, he spent the entire day somewhere. A somewhere that no one wanted to disclose. But she wouldn't hear the 'I'm not sure' 'That's for Squall to say'-like responses anymore.

Quistis and Selphie jumped out of their skins when Rinoa slammed both palms on the cafeteria table top on the 4th week.

"I really don't mean to sound evil or invasive, but you need to tell me where Squall is going every week!"

"Rinoa, why does it bother you so much that you don't know? Everyone is entitled to their secrets." Quistis said, picking up the cup Rinoa had made spill. She set to sopping up the liquid with floral napkins.

"It's not a secret if everyone here knows where he is but they just won't tell me!"

"It's not that everyone knows!" Selphie had that desperate, on the verge of crying tone in her voice. It had obviously become a topic of distress for her, being forced to keep a secret from someone who was so distraught about not knowing "Only the people who were involved know about her!"

"Selphie!" Quistis hissed and Selphie's hands flew to her mouth.

"Her? Who her?" Rinoa fell down into the seat, her knees together and her feet spread apart, "Involved with what? Why don't I know?"

Selphie looked to Quistis, hoping she would resolve the issue. Quistis heaved a sigh and scooped up a small mound of wet napkins, "Because it's a secret." She dumped the napkins into a nearby trash receptacle and returned to her seat, "Those of us who had anything to do with it were sworn to secrecy by the higher ups in the Galbadian Government. We aren't allowed to talk about it."

"I'll be fine from here."

He never had to say those words to the guards. They knew he was entitled to go in alone. But it had become more of a mantra to Squall. It was his own way of saying 'I'm ready'. The ruins looked to be crumbling around him, weathered stones on the ground, cracks in the bricks still on the wall. The combination of rain, snow and age made for a shaky looking environment. But for some unknown reason or by the enabling of some unseen force, the Centra Ruins had yet to fall.

It was comprised of three levels, and the first was where Squall would spend his day. It had a circular layout, and the wreckage of fallen pillars was strewn about. The framework of what was once a solid building acted as windows without glass and enabled Squall to see out onto the Centra plains. In the center was something that looked to be the shattered remains of a stone pedestal on which something like a statue would stand. For a long moment, Squall just stood there, his eyes locked on the thing.

And then he moved again, abruptly. He knelt down at the foot of the pedestal and moved a loose paving stone. Centra ruins was riddled with ancient technology, and the glowing blue pad the paving stone had revealed was one of them. He placed his hand upon it and it whirred to life, making the pedestal shudder. It seemed as though it was about to rise out of the ground like a moving platform. But it didn't. In fact-it simply stopped.

But it had apparently done what it was meant to do, as Squall stood up. He reached out his hand and wrapped his fingers around...something. Something that couldn't be seen. But it was clear he was holding something. The way his fingers folded over the object and his thumb caressed what looked to be thin air, it was almost as if-

He was holding someone's hand.

The sound of shattering glass rang through the ruins and an invisible barrier seemed to fall in transparent pieces to the base of the pedestal to reveal a statue. A statue of a woman who's hand Squall was holding. She was solid, gray stone; her posture was that of someone who had been reaching out to another person-reaching out for their hand-before she'd been frozen in place.

But there was a life in her eyes. Life was present there.