Run.

By: Miss Antagonist/Darkness Daresay

Author's Notes: I haven't written in a long time. I've been trying to write an original story but it isn't going so well. So I wrote this to help me get creative… Yeah. This might've been a nice chapter story… Oh, well.

You might not like this if you're the happy ending type of person. Or if you don't like seeing the insane child side of Squall. It's in Squall's POV, BTW. Reviews are loved. Even flames are acceptable.

Read&Review, alright? You'll make me happy.

…………………

They didn't hear me. They didn't hear anything.

I was there listening at the door quietly and still they didn't know that every word they spoke echoed in my empty heart and pierced every bit of hope I had… again.

Like a new death every time… Every time, another loss.

"…Quistis… um, I have a problem with my commander…"

"You're Lex, right?" Quistis asked tiredly. "What's the problem?"

"Well… he always talks about this girl… a girl we're supposed to save."

"A girl?" Quistis looks up at him, alarmed.

"Yeah… while we were on a mission." Lex replied. "We were in Timber Town and all we were supposed to do was scout the area. But… he kept saying the same thing…"

She shook her head.

"He… he made me check the same places again and again. Look for this girl. He said she was there. He called her his angel. He said he wouldn't let her fly away. He made me take three different girls, all who looked alike. And… I mean… did I do something wrong? I searched and searched. I found nothing. And he… he just glared at me… then he left. Who was I supposed to find?"

"No one, Lex. You didn't do anything wrong." Quistis replied.

"What happened? What happened to the commander?"

"The girl he was talking about. I know who he means. Rinoa Heartilly…" She replied, looking down, seemingly pained. "She was a good friend of mine. A fantastic person. Squall loved her dearly."

"Where is she? …What happened to her?"

"Well…" It took a while before Quistis at last looked up and to his surprise when she did there were genuine tears in her eyes.

"…She's dead."

At those words, my brain recalled every painful memory I had pushed into the back of my mind, hoping for them to be forgotten and remain untrue. Despite the thunderous ringing in my ears, I could still hear every word clearly; only now it was even louder… too excruciating to hear, yet still I couldn't bear to tear myself away from the truth.

I put my hands to my ears, trying to block out Quistis' voice. But then… I put them down again. I knelt on the ground and put my head on my knees agonizingly.

I was paralyzed to the ground. My eyes wide open, yet I was seeing nothing. How many times had this happened? How many times had I heard the truth? How many times had I refused to have it?

"Well… It was only around… seven months ago… It's painful to say even to this day." Quistis began distantly.

"I remember now…" Squall thought. "Every night, I remember. Her powers… too much for her body to contain… My angel… It was torturous not only for her, but for me. For all of us. I remember seeing Selphie weep helplessly as Rinoa's dead stare cornered us and we could do nothing but hold back our cries. I listened to her screams die down to whimpers of pain and her body change from livid to lifeless and cold. Her heavy breathing was the only sign that she was still alive."

"It grew worse by the day. Her sorceress powers were too much for one human to take, especially considering that in the past there were three different sorceresses at least to separate the magnitude of the magic to."

"…She even went into a coma. For three weeks, I agonized whether she would wake up this time. Her eyes remained closed, but only those three weeks of her silence did she actually appear peaceful and serene. She looked like she was… already gone."

"That coma worried people. The authorities were worried. They worried about the chances that when she woke up, another sorceress could've had possessed her. The powers of the sorceress frightened them even when in a body as tranquil as Rinoa's. They also feared she would've used her powers for evil if she had the chance."

"But would she have?" Lex asked.

"Turned evil? No one knew. Squall believed she never would've. I believed she wouldn't have gone to the dark side unless forced to. Even if she did, he would've protected her to her death."

"When she finally woke up, she looked me in my eyes but said nothing. I remembered her gaze. It was as sweet as ever, but her face looked tortured and afraid. Her face was crumpled up in pain, her eyes two childlike questions. She didn't know what was going to happen to her. No on did. They refused to let her out of the lab in Esther. They were supposedly working on controlling it. Those morons didn't even know what they were doing…"

"Soon, trials were held to have her killed before her powers got out of hand. Someone could've used it for the wrong side. We were all outraged of course, she did nothing wrong. All she did was try to defeat an evil sorceress. All she did was try to help."

"Finally…"

"The wrong side…"

"… Triumphed."

"It was…"

"…horrible…"

"To see how…"

"They tried to…"

"…kill her."

"…with a gunblade. To add insult to injury… they used MY gunblade."

"Rinoa's last known demand about her death was that it could only be Squall to kill her and only him."

"I never would've let her go. They argued with me endlessly…"

"But he ignored all their protests. They hated being ignored so…"

"They decided to just go ahead and kill her."

"Those bastards took Squall's weapon and pretended he had given the command."

"If Rinoa knew it wasn't Squall firing at her, her anger might've triggered her powers. It was becoming unstable."

"We tried to stop them."

"Of course we did. We did stop them. I wouldn't have let her die. But she did."

"Rinoa found out the truth. But she wasn't angry. She just surrendered her powers and let herself die..."

"It was amazing. Even though it was awful, she was still smiling… despite the tears rolling down her face…"

"She was too understanding. She should've let us fight for her."

"She wasn't shot. They never touched her. But… it was like; she had just decided to give it up."

"She was literally flying. Her powers erupted from all over her body, like an aura finally letting he go. Setting her free of her life and her curse. She opened her eyes once for the last time…"

"She looked so forgiving. Like she understood what they had to do… and she had decided to spare us the pain of the decision. She had made it herself."

"Then she closed her eyes again and just like that… the light was gone. The aura was gone. The sorceress powers were dispersed and deteriorated immediately."

"I recall seeing her limp body fall to the ground. She wasn't a sorceress anymore… and she was gone."

"…that was it. That was the end of Rinoa." Quistis sighed. "But it wasn't the end of Squall's story."

"What happened to him?" Lex asked softly, suddenly looking cautious like he'd done the wrong thing to bring up the topic.

"He's heard this story many times. And he knows what happened to Rinoa. He watched the whole thing with his eyes. He sobbed and was the first to run to Rinoa. But… he refuses to hear it again. He won't accept it. He doesn't believe it. And all of us are fearful to tell him for Hyne knows what he might try to do if he accepts the fact that Rinoa is truly dead…"

I rasped at the sound of the last word. I couldn't take it anymore.

I screamed. I screamed, I yelled, I howled, I just made every noise I could to stop myself from hearing what Quistis had to say anymore. The door opened and Quistis stared at me with wide eyes, still shining from her tears.

My eyes grew and I felt like a child. Scared and confused. I didn't know where to go, what to do next. I knew I was scaring Quistis, I was going fanatical. I was mad. "No…" I continued muttering and muttering to myself. I took two steps backward from Quistis.

"Squall!" She yelled, troubled at my present state. She grabbed my arm and tried to stop me from running away.

I pushed her away forcefully and she fell to the floor and hit her head on her table.

"Instructor!" Lex yelled. I stared at Quistis; I had bruised her arm and her head. She was just staring at me with more hot tears in her eyes. She seemed more pained emotionally than physically. She was worried, afraid of what I might do next. I know I should've calmed down and stopped being so hysterical.

But I ran anyway.

…………………

Run, run, and run. Run away.

It was dark and I didn't even know where I was running to. For all I knew, I would crash into a tree or fall off a cliff and die. But I didn't really care. I was practically begging to fall off a cliff. And I knew that I had to get away. I had to forget before the information sunk into my brain. If I let it go sooner, I could think it was just a dream.

Feeling the pain I did now, it was quite easy to understand why I had chosen the easy choice so many times before. I knew that like all other times, I'd forget again… eventually. I'll leave the thoughts of death in the darkness and pretend that light was waiting just around the corner. Running away forever sounded like a sad thought, but I hated to think of Rinoa. I hated to think that she was gone.


Regret, regret, regret.

I can say I don't regret anything I've done… but I do regret that she died. I don't regret that I don't remember it and I will forget it again. Because remembering, would be worse than forgetting. Remembering would be acknowledging her existence… and how it had come and gone.

I had to keep running. I ran 'til the last breath in my body had been used and I had to stop and take another. Then I ran again. I ran away. I tried to run away. I even realized that I was, in a way, running away from her.

But that was impossible… because, even in her pain, in her misery, in her weakness and in her death… the angel could fly. And she would always chase after me, flying ahead and waiting for me to catch up to reality.

She was there waiting for me. Like she promised.

No matter how far I ran, she flew right with me.