Based on prompts from the livejournal community 10 hurt/comfort and will hopefully be ten chapters done when I'm through. I don't know how good I am at writing good Squall/Rinoa fanfiction but hopefully I'll get better.

Waltzing on Mars

A series of Squall/Rinoa ficlets

First Prompt: Injured

[ the crane wife ]

The Decemberists, "The Crane Wife III"

And all the stars were crashing 'round as I laid eyes on what I'd found…

o

Feathers blew light and wispy on the breeze. Instead of falling down, like any normal thing would, the slightest puff of air was enough to push them up, up, into the sky. Her body didn't feel like a feather any longer. As Rinoa turned from the endlessly gray sky, she started to feel its shape. Every vein, muscle, and bit of fat all meshed under her skin. Gravity was taking hold and pulling her down, down…

Her knee was the first to skid against the damp, scratchy sand as she touched the earth, the skeletal remains of her wings barely keeping her balanced. She had done her best to keep herself from being swallowed by the ocean. She didn't have the strength to stand. Swimming would have been impossible. She managed to catch herself as she fell, her palms hitting the ground as her body bent and buckled, finally coming to rest on the beach. The side of her face was pressed against the wet grit, her entire body lying flat over the damp sand. Above her head, the wings folded and groaned. They hung awkwardly from her back like poorly raised flags. The strong ocean breeze ripped feathers right from the skin, each one leaving with a tiny, throbbing pinch in its place.

Rinoa tried to get up. Her arms were so weak, they trembled as they pushed against the soft earth. She felt a quiet rumble behind her, and then the cold touch of a wave rush up her body, making her sink deeper into the sand. The water ran back down over her fingers, arms, legs, soaking her clothes and dragging blood back with it. The salt stung, and the burning in her veins felt more real than anything she could remember.

Her vision was warped. Everything looked surreal. The long and light gray of the coast spread out before her like a painting. The water looked black and barely blue as somewhere behind the cloudy sky the sun was setting. It wasn't the sun that she noticed, though. It was the moon. She couldn't see it but it was always there, so close and powerful, pulling and churning the currents of the earth, stirring the magic that was too engrained in her bones now for her to ever look back. Here, alone, on the beach, surrounded by nothing but waves, she could feel it worse than ever.

Somehow, despite the numbness creeping into her sore limbs, she could feel the hard, cold pair of rings pressing against her chest.

She had to get up.

Slowly, painstakingly, she dragged her body up the beach. She dug her fingers into the muddy sand and pulled. Each time she could feel the sea rise up, looming like a monster, before the wave even touched her.

It was like a strong hand trying to pull her back in.

Her wings weren't working right. They feebly draped over the sand as she tried to move and mostly they just dragged, leaving behind trails of sticky, bloody feathers. They were filthy, but she didn't know what to do with them. She had been pushed way beyond her limit, and now they didn't even feel like a part of her anymore.

She couldn't be that hurt. Surely she had faced worse monsters before than the one she had just defeated.

She had to stop moving not long after she started. Her breath wouldn't come properly. Each gasp she took was not nearly enough to satisfy her lungs. Every part of her was aching. It hurt even to breathe. She lay in the sand, waves rippling at her feet and salt drying on her cracked lips.

She was dying. Nothing in the world could feel so miserable. This was her end, alone, falling apart on a beach, but what about the others? Selphie? Zell? Were they safe? Had she actually managed to kill it? What if she hadn't? What if she'd failed? What if it came back, bigger, uglier, meaner, how would they put up with it then? He would face it, of course he would. Squall would meet it head on, because he had a duty to defend the Garden and everything that threatened Balamb. He would stand against it.

All alone.

Rinoa could feel a fuzziness come to her limbs and saw black shadows creeping in on the edge of her vision. There were phantoms in the ocean, now. She struggled against it, focusing on the saltwater foaming on her raw, cut skin and the pain as a few more feathers were torn out by the wind. The world faded in and out, like a poorly filmed movie was falling apart right in front of her. The pain was driving her mad.

She couldn't help it as her conscious slipped, dragging her into dark visions of bloody hallways and slimy monsters with bat wings. Over and over, she watched the monster die, only to rise up again as another wave crashed on the sand. The tide was growing closer. It wouldn't be long before it took her mangled limbs and dragged them to rest. A hermit crab stood up before her, gigantic, bulging eyes rolling as its feelers swayed in the wind.

"Oh-ho!" it said, looking just as shocked as she was.

Have you come for me?

"Yes."

Black eyes, not black like the ocean, staring at her. They were so deep she was afraid she would fall in, so she dug her fingers into the sand. Black eyes filled with nothing, deeper than the last reaches of eternity.

You have to pass it on before you go.

But there's no one here but the crab. No orphanage this time.

"I won't do id!" she gasped, through the blood clogging up her nose. "I won' rip up time!"

"That's fine."

"I won'…I won'…I'm nod godda be a monster."

She looked at the hermit crab for approval, but he didn't seem happy or sad at this new development.

"I need to go home, now."

Rinoa reached for it, fingers slipping over sand and blood. "Waid…come back…come back."

She hadn't even thought of crying until then. It was more practical to save her energy than waste it on something so pointless. Still, her eyes grew hot and her vision blurred worse than ever.

"Don't let me die alone!"

She tried to remember how it felt with the warm sun on her face and the smell of a fresh breeze passing through fields and fields of flowers. It was so dark she couldn't picture the colors or the soft touch under her skin.

o

She was pressed against something warm and solid, a heart beating close to her ears. Her broken, tired limbs were clumsily sprawled over someone's lap, a strong arm holding her up. She pried her crusty eyes open and looked.

Squall's face looked back at her, pale and solemn, just like she remembered it. Her breath grew heavy again from the shock, warm, tingling relief running through her. It was much darker than she remembered, but there was a funny yellow light coming from somewhere, making his big nose cast a heavy shadow over his face.

"Hi," he said. His voice was calm and steady, solid like a rock, but his gray eyes were wild and red. Heavy bags sagging underneath them made him look older. She mustered up enough strength to reach up and touch his jaw.

"Hey," she mumbled, surprised to find there was a strange sort of laugh in the back of her throat. "…don' start crying."

It made him smile. Her fingers slipped and brushed his Adam's apple, coming to rest on his bony collar.

To her dismay, she left smudges of bloody fingerprints all down his neck. Shocked, she focused on her hand. Nausea wracked her body and she grabbed a fistful of his sweaty white t-shirt. She gasped for air but it wouldn't come.

"Help," she whimpered, her face twisting.

She had a bit of his necklace's chain and pulled so hard he had to bend over. His face blurred into a mess of shadows and light as her body convulsed. She tried to focus on him, on his face pinched tightly with concentration and the strange green tint that washed over him. The feeling in her body slowly melted away as something cool and sterile passed through her. She felt lightheaded from the smell and the sudden change in temperature. All the while she could feel Squall, tense and steady against her. Then, she realized what it was. He was drawing on whatever magic he had left in him to stop the pain. He was casting Cure, the strongest one that he knew.

"Breathe with me," he said, his hand carefully resting on her stomach. "Don't stop…just relax, let it in…"

She could feel herself slipping again. This time, she wasn't so frightened. The next thing she knew, Squall was standing up. The awkward, rough motion jarred her awake. Her head tilted and she could see the beach, exposed in the strange yellow light. Her stomach twisted as she saw the dark stains in the mud, the sticky feathers and the crumpled, bony remains of her wings. They had finally fallen off. She felt lighter without them.

She let her head rest against his shoulder.

She finally noticed the source of the light, the high beams coming from a pickup truck parked in the sand. For a minute, Rinoa thought he was going to dump her in the back, but he didn't. He gently placed her in the passenger seat, carefully arranging her legs and buckling the seatbelt around her. She couldn't help but slump a bit, she barely had enough energy to keep her eyes open, but the seatbelt did a pretty good job of holding her up.

Squall closed the door and climbed in himself. He started the engine and the truck struggled to climb over the sand. One hand was touching her knee.

"Don't you give up on me now," he said. "You hang in there."

Rinoa remembered to mumble something she hoped was encouraging before she nodded off, catching one last fleeting glimpse of the hermit crab carrying a scythe. He looked at her with his beady, alien eyes, then turned around and scuttled away.

o