Yes, it's a four-part series now. Shush.

- Gira

2. LOVE (IS DEAD) - "Rinoa! Rinoa, wait up!"

"I'm not going anywhere," the dark-haired girl chuckled. "Don't have a fit." Despite her words, the young boy running up to her still looked upset.

"You can't run away from me again," he said seriously. "You're too fast. I can't catch up."

"Okay, okay, Squall," she laughed, putting an arm on his shoulder. "I promise I won't run too fast next time." Squall crossed his arms in an attempt to look scolding, just like Miss Edea did when she wasn't happy with somebody. But since Edea Kramer was a tall and imposing lady and Squall Leonhart was a five-year-old, the effect was lost.

Rinoa laughed. "Oh! No! Not the 'evil eye', anything but that!"

Squall's façade cracked and broke. He giggled. "Hehe! That was good, wasn't it? I've been practicing!"

"It was great," confirmed Rinoa. "You looked exactly like her." In truth, he hadn't done such an exceptional job, but Rinoa knew that Squall was delicate that way. He looked up to her like a big sister, and she had come to think of him as a little brother… Though she was only seven herself, she could see that this place wasn't a nice one. Every day she saw the broken kids hiding in the shadowed parts of the place, only nine or ten hears on this Earth and already standing there with death in their eyes. Even worse were the older ones. They had… well, they had nothing. Nothing.

Rinoa would do anything for Squall to not end up like that. He was too precious. He had such a good heart.

twenty-two weeks later

That morning, Squall had woken up to a really bad feeling.

He just felt it. It was in the air. As if the world itself had saw it too and sent a warning to everyone… and it wasn't just the weather outside, oh no, even though it was darker and stormier today than Squall remembered it being in a long time. When he asked some of the other kids about it, they looked at him funny and didn't say anything. Even Miss Edea stared and said, "Don't be preposterous," which meant that something was very, very wrong.

Well, everyone seemed to know, so he went to find Rinoa. She would tell him.

Rinoa turned out nowhere to be found. He had even checked under the loose floorboards in the third-floor hallway, and even then, no Rinoa. She wasn't anywhere he could see, and that concerned him. So Squall huffed adorably and went off to find someone who knew where Rinoa went off to. He got the same responses as before, until finally, he came across a lead - from the worst possible source.

"Hey, kid. Looking for your mommy?"

Squall turned. There was only one person who dared to mention parents in this place, and that was… of course. Cassius.

"No," he said, very pointedly for a seven-year-old. "I'm looking for Rinoa."

"Yeah, your mommy." Cassius sneered. "What, can't find her? Lost your clinging post, have you?"

"…Do you know where she is?" Squall was suddenly all business.

"Sure I do," he said, sounding concerned. "Everyone does… except you. Tell you what, I'll tell you where she went, okay?" The twelve-year-old kneeled himself down to Squall's level. "I'll tell you where she went. But… I warn you now. It isn't pretty."

"Tell me."

Cassius sighed. "Okay… but don't say I didn't warn you." He paused a second. "Rinoa… she left. Just like that. Not even adopted. She just disappeared into the middle of the night, and I don't think she's coming back, if she had the guts to get out that way." Cassius sighed. "…Everyone has their theories… but… I guess they just didn't want to tell you, kid. Kramer probably gave them instructions not to say stuff to you." He frowned. "I guess they thought you were weak?"

"…I'm… not weak…" Squall managed.

"No, I know you're not. Just listen. I have my ideas." Cassius stood up, towering over Squall once again. He could tell by the way the boy gazed up at him, with those wide, horrified eyes, that the battle was won. "To be honest… I think she left because she couldn't take it anymore. Maybe someone did something. It could be me… or you. Or Kramer. Or anyone else in this stupid place. Someone crossed the line one too many times, and she just lost it." He took a breath. "Had to have been someone around a lot… or someone who made decisions that affected her… or…"

He strayed a glance downward. Squall was staring at the floor.

"…It was me," he concluded finally. His voice shook. "I did it. I did something. I…"

"…Maybe," said Cassius, with a pre-calculated amount of sympathy.

"All this time…" he breathed. "…I've been… she… she hated us… she hated me…"

"Yeah… sorry…" Cassius was being extremely helpful, of course, but Squall had taken up the reins on his own merit. He may have continued talking, or he may have not, but Squall didn't catch it - he must have missed it, being too busy running in the opposite direction. He missed something else, too, and that was the expression on Cassius' face.

It was the smile of a man who had done something awful and done it well.

sixty months later

Everyone who saw Squall Leonhart saw it. The construction was clear as day. Awful looks in his eyes were the most obvious indicator, but once you knew, every move he made betrayed him. In every word and in every step, one could practically see small machines chugging away in his chest. They were building a wall - a dark, bitter, ominous, spikey wall. It was natural, really, considering the manipulative mastermind he called a friend for the next five years. And then he, too, had left, in a much more pleasant way than he led Squall to believe Rinoa had. That was the last straw. Of course he needed to put up protection around his being, he saw that now, so he would never be affected by anything ever again. Anything.

So much for lion-hearted.

seventy months later

The hallowed throne of Kramer House's darkest corner had found a new inhabitant.

Everyone knew him by now as the Wallshadow. Even if they happened to hear his name in some conspiratorial whisper passed across the giant building, they would keep on calling him the Wallshadow, because that was what he was. He kept to the darkest bowels of the building, staring out at the rest of them with the sort of hatred in his eyes that made even the pluckiest of kids stop and propose some other activity for the day. It didn't help that he had grown tall and with a considerable amount of muscle, making his age and fate that much more apparent. The Wallshadow had become a part of Kramer House lore now, and everyone knew that no amount of 'help' from Edea Kramer herself was going to fix him, try as she might. There wasn't a way. One look at the Wallshadow and you saw that there wasn't a way. He was as stuck to that way of life as that name was stuck to him. And though this wasn't true, he seemed to have accepted it - calling out "Wallshadow!" would have earned an immediate response, in the form of a glare from under severely-overgrown bangs, whereas there would have been a second's hesitation on "Squall!"

As promised, his only foundation had been pulled out from under him, and it never came back. Ha ha, well, he wasn't intending on letting that happen again. Squall had watched kids come and go, and over time, he began to hate them. So much. When they came, he hated them for daring to wear those foolish smiles on their faces; while they stayed, he hated them for running and playing like nothing was wrong; when they left, he hated them based solely on the fact that those idiot kids had what he didn't. That hatred made itself comfortable in every fiber of his being, and it told him - just like a certain bully, so long ago - what it wanted him to believe was the truth. He couldn't tell anyone, he couldn't open up to anyone, because… well, look what happened! Rinoa hated him. Cassius triumphed over him. As far as Squall could be concerned, he was the dredges of the operation, the thing designed for bigger and better people to step on.

When he was a boy, Squall had been average-looking at best. After traces of this began to enter his system… well, all hope was lost. All that Squall could do was count the days until he turned eighteen - his only way out. Law decreed it so. Squall had memorized the words.

"…At eighteen years of age, any legal permission held by an appropriate establishment to house an orphaned child is officially terminated…"