Disclaimer: FF8, not mine. This piece of fiction, mine.

Prologue

"Quistis!" Rinoa Heartilly gasped as she stopped laughing just for a moment. "I never knew your fans were so obsessed! Hyne, that's just sick!" Then, she went into a fit of laughter all over again.

Quistis Trepe shook her head and sighed. "It's embarrassing really," she murmured although one could see the mirth in her eyes.

Their third companion, Selphie Tilmitt, was beyond words, just laughing and banging her fist on the table, her cup of coffee long forgotten.

"Oh dear, Selphie, are you alright? Do we need to get you a doctor?" Quistis asked in mock concern.

The brown-haired girl shook her head, trying very hard to regain her composure although a few giggles leaked out here and then.

Rinoa smiled and glanced at her watch. "More shopping or should we get back to Balamb?" she asked her friends. She glanced at the numerous shopping bags on the floor and then looked closer at the receipts. "Hyne, Squall's going to blow a fuse when he sees how much we've spent."

"Don't worry, Rinny. Squally's not the type to blow a gasket," said Selphie in her usual cheerful manner.

Quistis covered her smirk with her cup of coffee. "Not at you anyway," she added.

Rinoa blushed and shrugged, reaching for her latte. True, Squall hardly, if ever, got mad at her but when they got on each other's nerves, they just glared at each other until they were on the floor, laughing.

The three women frowned as their cellphones all began ringing at once.

"Hello?" they chorused, answering their phones.

"Zell, whoa, slow down. Breathe,"

"Irvy! I can't hear you! There's too much noise!"

"Seifer! What in Hyne's name…?"

And all at once, the expensive SeeD standard cellphones came crashing to the floor.

Tears blinded Rinoa as she walked into the hospital room in Deling City. She nearly broke into a fresh round of tears when she saw Squall Leonhart, SeeD Commander, hero of the world, world's greatest swordsman and most importantly, the man she loved, lying prostrate on a bed. Blood had already seeped through the white bandages around his forehead and his face was so, so pale.

The nurse who had been tending to him, turned to her, her eyes solemn. "He was ambushed by revolutionaries, Miss Heartilly. He fought off two dozen of them but there were too many. We tried to cure him with magic but they did something to him that made him immune." she explained. Then, she clearly hesitated. "They…they thought he was with you,"

The statement hit Rinoa like Garden crashing into Fishermen's Horizon. They had been after her. They had hurt Squall to get to her. Over the months, she had heard about these people. They were purely against Sorceresses, no matter how good they were. And now, they had hurt her in the worst way possible.

She wanted to scream, to go into a fitful rage, to hit something, anything. But all she could do was run to Squall's bedside. His breathing was so shallow, she could barely hear it and she could feel his life essence start to slowly slip away with her powers, the powers that had landed him here in the first place.

"Squall! Please!" she pleaded, resting her hand on his forehead as the tears steadily streamed down. She focused all her magical powers on him and an almost blinding light surrounded the room as she tried to heal him. It was in vain. "Don't go," she gasped.

From the doorway, Selphie, Quistis, Irvine Kinneas, Zell Dincht and Seifer Almasy all watched in silence but Rinoa was oblivious to them.

Selphie shook her head in disbelief and turned to Irvine for support ("Irvy, tell me its all going to be all right.") while Quistis rested her head on Seifer's shoulder, closing her eyes and praying to Hyne that this wasn't actually happening.

"I…I never thought he would be the first to…go," Seifer murmured, looking down at the floor. "I always though it would be me. Hyne, I deserve it after all the things I did to him."

Quistis opened her eyes and looked at him. "Yet, he still found it in himself to forgive you," Her tone was not accusatory, it was laced with sadness, grief and a tinge of hope.

"He was always a good leader," said Irvine, wrapping his arm around Selphie, who nodded in agreement, her tears soaking the sharpshooter's shirt.

The brunette stood straight and dashed her tears away quickly. "It used to infuriate me but now I just want him to stare at us as if we were a bunch of idiots and say 'whatever'."

"HYNE DAMMIT! He's NOT going to die so don't act as if he already did!" Zell shouted angrily as he punched a wall, creating a dent in it. "This is Squall we're talking about! He's been through more than all of us! Hell, he's escaped death more times than I can count on my hands!"

"Zell," Irvine started but refused to say anything else.

If it was another time, Seifer would have made a crack about how Zell couldn't count at all. This was not one of those times.

The group turned wordlessly towards the weeping Rinoa silently, unaware of the words she was whispering.

Rinoa clutched the two rings on the chain around her neck tightly as she whispered. "I wish you had never met me, Squall, so you'd never have gotten hurt. You deserve to have a perfect life."

A soft, blue glow began to form around the rings just as the monitor beside Squall's bed let out a loud, long, beep. He was dead.

Rinoa broke into hysterics as the doctors and nurses crowded around the young man's bed, trying to revive him. Their efforts were in vain.

One doctor looked at her watch. "Time of death, 6 o'clock…"

The SeeDs rushed to Rinoa to try and comfort her but it was useless.

No one paid any attention to the rings that had linked together.