Fairytale
By La Fata Aurora
Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply. I do not own Squaresoft/Square-Enix
Chapter One: So You Know Each Other, Huh?
It's official: they're lost.
"WHO THE HELL GETS LOST IN WINHILL?!" Rinoa Heartilly-Caraway yelled at nobody in particular, "And with GPS too!"
The angry brunette slapped the stupid GPS device perched over the dashboard of the rented Mini Cooper, the messy splattering of the rain over their windshield not helping either. It has been more or less an hour of driving around the Hyne-forsaken Paget Road, but up until now, she and her friends were still unable to locate that small dirt road that should have taken them to their destination.
"The storm must be creating an interference." Green eyes met hers through the rear view mirror. The irate driver sighed, for she has been thinking of the same thing, "Maybe we should go back to that pub that we keep passing by?"
"Desperado…" Blue eyes on the passenger side glittered with humor, "How very fitting, don't you think?"
Rinoa stopped flailing at the GPS. She exhaled sharply at this latest stroke of her luck, "Dammit. Hyne must really hate me!"
"Oh, there, there." Quistis Trepe gave her a friendly squeeze. Chocolate brown eyes met hers, and she smiled helpfully, "It's okay, Rin. Winhill is a small town, I'm sure we're just not looking at the right place."
"Yeah!" Selphie Tilmitt, sitting on the back, was quick to nod. "Or maybe the road got washed out!"
Despondent, Rinoa looked at all her mirrors before maneuvering the car back to the muddy road once more. She was still frowning but not as upset. Truthfully, if there was a silver lining in all this crap, it would be these two women that she considered her best friends.
Born out of Galbadia's wealthiest families, Rinoa, Quistis and Selphie had been shoved into each other's lives due to inevitable circumstances. Heiresses to insurmountable fortunes, it was only logical that they would end up in the same boarding schools. However, unlike the rest of their kind, these three girls luckily found love, loyalty and sisterhood within each other, helping them weather the storms of the past decade. In fact, it was in the name of that same sisterhood that brought them here in Winhill, under the mercy of one literal storm, while trying to regroup from the onslaught of one figurative storm back home.
Out of the three ladies, one could say that Rinoa Heartilly-Caraway was different for the simple fact that her mother, the late Julia Heartilly, was once a high profile singer-composer. In her heyday, she had been the darling of the media, a reputation that she benefited from, even after marrying Rinoa's father, the heir of Galbadia's most politically influential family, the Caraways. However, things made a drastic turn upon Julia's untimely death, when, for some reason, ludicrous rumors of adultery, deceit and murder began to surface, creating a ridiculous soap opera that fed Galbadia's gossip mill for years. Rinoa, then a teenager, was forcefully thrust into the spotlight and became Deling's new, albeit reluctant, past time—the beginning of her nightmare. Eventually, as stories of her broken home began to wane, the media's lenses found itself focusing specifically on her: her schooling, her relationships, even the mismatched color of her socks. Accusations of rebelling, in form of DUI arrests, theft and whatnot were plentiful, only to be replaced by news of an alleged sex tape the next day. It has been years since then, and one could have easily thought that the worst has passed, but with Galbadia's elections in the horizon, Rinoa was once again being painstakingly primed as an easy target by her family's enemies.
"The lights are still open!" Selphie chirped as Rinoa finally slowed the car, now approaching the pub along the curve of the round about. Quistis, being the one closest to the entrance, was appointed the task of braving the rain to ask for directions, much, much to the blonde's dismay.
A few minutes later, Quistis came out of the pub with somebody following her.
"Who in the name of Diablos is that?!" Selphie dipped her head to have a better of the passenger side window, mumbling loudly enough for Rinoa to hear. At the same time, the driver tried to discern a face through the fogged up window. It was futile, but from what little that she could make out from the poor lighting, the stranger was female.
"Hey guys, this is Miss Aerith Gainsborough. Coincidentally, she's the keeper of the cottage that we're renting for the length of our stay. She had the inkling that we'd end up here in Desperado once the road washes out, so she opted to wait for us inside." Quistis was saying as she slipped into the backseat, letting the dark blonde cottage owner occupy her previous one on the front. Aerith gave them a beautifully friendly smile that the two brunettes immediately took a liking on her.
"How do you do?" She nodded delicately, her long ponytailed hair bobbing with droplets of rainwater, "It has actually happened to some of the previous tenants as well, so I thought of waiting inside. This storm is pretty unnatural at this time of the year, so please don't worry about it ruining your stay."
"Oh, thank Hyne!" Rinoa smiled back, peeling the car back to the road. Aerith began giving her directions to an alternative route, which she explained the GPS couldn't have picked up because a good portion of it followed a road that went through the woods bordering the south of town.
"So, do you ladies know a lot about Angel Wings?" Aerith gave each lady an inquisitive look.
"Um well, Quisty was the one who found the cottage through a friend." Rinoa furrowed her brows together, looking at the road, "We saw pictures of it over the internet and I think its really lovely. I think Quisty also mentioned that its owners frequently sublet it when they're not in town?"
Aerith nodded, "Yes. My employers are very busy people, but once in a while, when they feel that they want to get away for a while, they find themselves here in Winhill. Angel Wings is actually their ancestral house; it used to be a manor house back before the Sorceress War."
"Wow! It's that ancient?" Selphie counted with her perfectly manicured fingers, "The last Sorceress War was like five hundred years ago!"
"Four hundred and seventy-five." Quistis corrected her, having obviously done her research. She turned back to Aerith, who nodded in confirmation, "I read in the website that the entire manor was broken into two after a big renovation? So, would that mean that we'd be sharing the cottage with someone else?"
"Oh no, no. Not at all." Aerith assuredly shook her head, comprehending Quistis' line of questioning. She recognized the name Trepe when the reservation was made, and it wasn't the first time that her tenants would be adamant about their privacy. "You see, the family who owns Angel Wings has been very good to me ever since I was young. They were rich-folk, but very generous, and they took me in when the orphanage could no longer keep me. I live at the former East Wing, that's the smaller cottage. So be rest assured about not sharing the place with anyone else but me, the keeper."
Rinoa made a left at the edge of the town. After spotting a marker that Aerith said she'd find, she turned right and drove into a clearing inside the forest.
"The local elders were discussing this storm situation in pub a while ago." Aerith chuckled, receiving inquisitive stares from the other passengers, "Well, like what I said, this storm is quite odd at this time of the year. They were saying that it should pass by tomorrow, tomorrow afternoon the most."
"Were they using shamanic stones like they used to in the past? I've read from somewhere that that is how they used to predict the weather." Selphie asked, scratching the back of her head as if it helped her think.
Aerith laughed, "Well, its true that they used to do that, but right now it's more on relying on how their joints feel."
Everybody giggled. Aerith jutted her index finger when they reached the other side of the forest, "Oh, we're here!"
"Welcome to Angel Wings, everyone!"
"Dammit!"
"SHHHH!"
"What in Ifrit's Hellhole does that supposed to mean?"
"Shut your trap, Zell!" a man wearing a cowboy hat hissed. He cautiously flicked his purple eyes over the cottage further down the left, heaving a huge sigh of relief when the lights didn't flicker open. "You don't want Aerith finding out we're here, right?"
Zell suddenly had this horrified face and quickly nodded. "Irvine, do you have the key?" He whispered to the cowboy.
"Oh shoot!" the cowboy hat guy, Irvine, groaned. He turned back towards the dirt road and carefully rounded the side of the house where an orange Lamborghini was strategically parked, away from view of the East Wing, "Seriously man. I think the last Zeio Nut Shot got into me too!"
Zell snorted knowingly as he watched Irvine open the passenger door. He took one look at the seemingly lifeless carcass sprawled onto it and smirked.
"Okay. Pockets." Irvine murmured as he searched the sleeping man's pants. It took him a moment before he realized that Zell was snickering behind him, "You're such a disgusting idiot, you know that?"
"Uhuh. Keep going." Zell nodded, crossing his arms together in satisfaction, "I'm telling you, this is Hyne's punishment, Irvine."
Irvine rolled his eyes and shoved a set of keys in his pocket that he found beside the sleeping man's hip. Sighing, he pulled the dozing guy up and unceremoniously tossed him towards Zell's direction.
"Hey!"
"You be quiet! If Aerith finds us here with her precious little brother looking like this, we might as well die a slow painful death while volunteering for the kindergarten!" Irvine snapped as he cautiously closed the car door, before helping Zell with the load of the sleeping man. Zell shuddered at the thought of those beastly little tykes and held their other friend by the waist.
"Fine."
"Yeah. Keep thinking that, and we'd get out of here scot-free!"
"It's not like we kidnapped him or something." Zell mumbled irritably. They rounded the house again and this time, they managed to unlock the door and slip quietly into the darkened house without accident.
Zell was about to flip the lights open when Irvine reached over and slapped his arm away, "What the—?!"
"Seriously, Zell! Are you really that stupid?! Nobody's supposed to be here right now and you open the lights?!"
"It's three o' clock in the morning, man! And plus, I can't see anything—damn!"
Their sleeping friend moaned as Zell randomly shoved him towards something. Irvine sighed, pulling them towards the general direction of what he knew were the stairs. "Come on, just visualize the place with your mind's eye and we'd be fine."
"Oh yeah. Says the guy who almost drove us to our deaths not even an hour ago."
"Just shut up, Zell. If only you would stop yapping and start walking, we'd be out of here sooner."
"Whatever."
They reached the second floor without, once again Thank Hyne, any accident.
"Where should we put him?"
"Oooh, it'll be funny if he wakes up in Laguna's room."
"Zell, inasmuch as I think that very humorous, I still want to keep my head where it is exactly, thank you very much."
Zell had the gall to snicker, "Chicken."
They opened some door at the far end of the hall and fumbled for a bit, shoving their sleeping friend on what they thought was the bed before walking away without wasting another second inside the scene of the crime.
Upon reaching the Lamborghini outside, Irvine was surprised that it was only now that he noticed a Mini Cooper poking out of the garage. He gestured this discovery to Zell, who became a little bit disconcerted as he is.
"Maybe Aerith finally decided to get rid of her bike?" Zell shrugged, slipping into the passenger side, "Man…that's some ugly bike she has. She's doing the world a huge favor by disposing that sight for sore eyes."
Irvine started the car, reversing. He found himself agreeing with Zell. Aerith did have such an ugly bike.
Rinoa sighed deliciously. She felt so, sooooooo warm and tingly all over, even down to the ends of her tippy-toes that she moaned happily.
Rolling her head face down to the pillow, she caught a musky scent that reminded her of the woods during autumn. She smiled at this, nodding inwardly in approval. A cold draft suddenly seeped under the blanket and she edged closer. Wait—
She sniffed, her eyebrows furrowing.
Fall? Metallic? Acidic? Ewwy? Isn't that—
Alcohol?
She snapped her eyes open.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Garnet, its too ear—"
Pause.
"Shit!"
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!" Rinoa screamed, pulling the covers to shield herself and shoving the intruder away at the same time. She gave him a suspicious glance and a second later, she started screaming again, "QUISTY! SEFIE! THERE'S A RAPIST IN MY ROOM!"
"A RAPIST?!" the intruder jumped back. He was so shocked his eyes were threatening to pop out of the sockets, "WHO ARE YOU CALLING A RAPIST?! THIS IS MY DAMN ROOM, LADY!"
Rinoa narrowed her eyes, her fists pulling the covers to her chin like a lifeline. It finally hit her how her bedmate looked like, and for a second she permitted herself to feel relief because seriously, what guy who looked like that would have to resort to violence in order to get a girl?
"Aerith said that owners are away!" Rinoa countered loudly, still a little suspicious. Okay, he's cute, hot even—she'd give him that. But what if he's a cute psychotic axe murderer who saw opportunity by way of her opened window? DAMN! She should have listened to Quistis and her constant droning about shutting the windows at night!
Mr. Gorgeous Axe Murderer blinked a few times. He slammed a hand on his forehead as if to stabilize his line of sight, groaning a bit, "Could you cut it out with the yelling? My head feels like its about to explode and you're not helping!"
"Well, excuuuuuuuse me! I'm not the one who had sleazy hands!"
He snorted, "And if I remember it right, you were edging closer to those same sleazy hands."
Rinoa turned red. She hit him with a pillow.
"HEY! Watch it!"
"I WAS DOING IT ON PURPOSE!"
"GOOD! Because if I didn't know better, I would have thought that you were seducing me!"
Rinoa stared at him angrily, following his line of vision. She looked down and saw that her pajama shirt was gaping open.
She hit him with the pillow again. Twice.
Before the intruder could bring himself react, the bedroom door burst open, Quistis and Selphie tumbling in.
"What in the world is going on in here?" Quistis demanded, her eyes falling on the bed. She saw a disheveled and very, very furious Rinoa poised to attack with a pillow, her target fruitlessly shielding himself for another assault. Quistis blinked a couple of times and suddenly found herself at loss of words.
"Well, what do you know…" Selphie murmured in disbelief before blowing out in full force, "You're that actor, aren't you?!"
Mr. Gorgeous winced. What is with women this morning that they keep yelling at this unHynely hour?
"Actor?" Rinoa appeared confused. She shot the intruder a scrutinizing look without lowering her fluffy weapon. "What actor?"
Now was Mr. Gorgeous' turn to look confused. He flitted his blue-gray eyes around her heart-shaped face to find any indication of sarcasm there, but he found none. He found himself smiling a tad bit.
"Squall LEONHART!" A panting Aerith appearing on the doorway forestalled Selphie's explanation, and once she found what she was looking for, the very delicate lady that Quistis, Selphie and Rinoa saw last night transformed into a fire breathing Ruby Dragon, very much ready to bite someone's head off "YOU HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO YOUNG MAN!"
Squall sighed.
Great. Yet another woman yelling at him.
"Yes, M'am."
This is going to be a long day.
A/N: Please tell me what you think! :)