Disclaimer: Blah blah blah...I don't own Square's stuff or "Killer" by Alice Cooper...please don't sue.
A/N: Okay, let me start off by apologizing for the lateness of this update. I promise it won't become a trend. Whew...now that that's done, I'd like to thank Carie Valentine for beta-ing this story and Renegade Seraph and jellybean-kitty for two glowing reviews of last chapter. Don't worry, jellybean, I have NO intention of letting this story die ;) Anyways...on to the chapter!
Content Warnings: Swearing and mild violence. You know, the usual stuff.
Killer
"What did I do to deserve such a fate?
I didn't really want to get involved in this thing.
Someone handed me this gun and I...
I gave it everything..."
--Alice Cooper, "Killer"
"On your knees!" Captain Biggs ordered the small band of five Dollet soldiers that had evaded the Galbadian occupation forces for over an hour. Begrudgingly, the entire company complied, sending him glares that could have cut steel.
"Seize their weapons and restrain them," he ordered the nearest of the twenty invaders that fell under his command. They nodded and scurried to carry out the order. Biggs stared at the defeated defenders with a sort of smug satisfaction. After exchanging fire with and losing ten soldiers to this ragged group, he felt perfectly justified in taking pleasure as he watch them forced into prone positions on the sweltering cobblestone street of Dollet's commercial district…
And then he felt it. The tremor that ran through his body like a mild earthquake, not strong enough to move him but easily enough to make him gasp in surprise, was closely followed by a sound louder than any thunder he'd ever heard, louder even than the roar of a thousand lions bellowing in perfect synchrony. He winced and, cupping one ear with his hand—the other hand was busy holding his gun—he twisted his head in the direction he thought it had come from. He blanched.
Even from this far away, he could see that the top portion of the communications tower—the one building they had been ordered not to harm, under any conditions—had been literally blown to smithereens, leaving nothing but a charred, twisted network of girders where the satellite dish had once been. The Galbadians glanced nervously from one to another, tightening their grips on their weapons.
"The fuck…" he muttered, amazed. He snatched his short-wave radio from his vest and started shouting into it. "Whoever fired on the communications tower, STAND DOWN!"
There was a moment in which nothing but confused static erupted from the radio. Then, a garbled voice answered, "Sir, no one fired on the tower, sir."
"Then how—" His voice was cut off by a second explosion as the second level of the tower from the top shattered outward from the sheer force of the blast. Debris, from short steel support bars to the massive slabs of concrete that had made up the tower's outer walls, started to rain down around them, smashing through roofs and clanging against the street. Biggs shielded his head with his arms as he narrowly missed being impaled by a long piece of metal that twisted out of the sky above him, slamming into the ground by his feet.
He started to cough as soot from the explosions filled the air and glanced sideways at the Dollet soldiers who were peculiarly vulnerable to the falling debris thanks to their position. He saw one of them raise his head, a bitter smile on his face, and was instantly overcome by suspicion.
Even as a third explosion blew sent a new wave of deadly shrapnel tearing through the Dollet street, Biggs strode purposefully toward the soldier and reached down to hoist him up by the collar. The soldier's smirk became a look of fear as Biggs stared into his eyes, face contorted with rage.
"You did this, didn't you?" Biggs accused, giving the soldier a searching look. "You Dollet people, you set it up so we'd never get what we wanted."
"No, I'm afraid I can't claim credit for it," the soldier replied, his eyes narrowing as his defiant grin returned. "But I sure as hell wish I could."
Before Biggs had a chance to react, the pressure from a fourth explosion shattered the windows of all the nearby buildings, and any semblance of order among the Galbadian conscripts disappeared as panic eliminated rational thought, or, for that matter, anything save the pure, animal survival instinct.
The sky was falling.
The raw force of the first explosion had tossed Rinoa against the wall like a flimsy paper doll, yanking her neck and teeth and sending jolts of pain running down ever nerve of her body. She felt the tower shiver ominously and forced her eyes open, pushing herself up the wall into a roughly standing position.
"Rinoa!" She jerked her head toward the source of the voice and immediately regretted it as pain shot down her spine. Blinking the tears from her eyes, she tried to make out who had called her name in the dark, windowless hallway even as the tower trembled as though it was made of jelly.
"Zell? Quistis?" she shouted. "Is that you?" Another explosion rocked the tower, and she grabbed a hold of a metal support beam to keep herself from falling down again.
"Yeah, it's us!" Zell shouted back. By now, Rinoa could vaguely make out the two forms that stood side-by-side a ways down the circular corridor, right next to the door leading inside the metal column that housed their only route of escape. "Come on, this place won't last much longer!"
"Where's Lucy?" Rinoa screamed even as a more powerful wave of pressure from a third explosion bore down on her.
"I don't know!"
"I have to find her, then." Rinoa struggled to make herself heard over the creaking and scraping noises of the tower's frame, which grew steadily worse with each new explosion. She turned and started to pull herself as quickly as possible along the corridor, using the metal beams for support.
"Rinoa, wait!" Zell called out frantically, but the girl had already scampered away. "Fuck," he cursed, starting to run after her. Then, he felt a hand grip his arm and looked back to see a remarkably unruffled Quistis fix him with a gaze that could have frozen fire.
"Let her go," Quistis said, not bothering to raise her voice to be heard.
"But…" Zell squinted vainly; Rinoa's figure had already disappeared around the curve.
"She's not a child," Quistis reminded him, remaining composed as Zell seized the door handle to stop them from being tossed aide by the next explosion. "She can take care of herself."
Zell hesitated, staring searchingly into Quistis's cool blue eyes. "Fine," he muttered finally, and swung the door open.
The light film of ash that filled the air quickly became a heavy curtain, pouring from everywhere and nowhere and burning any exposed bits of Rinoa's skin. She coughed, but still grimly pulled herself along, driven by the same fiery determination that had brought her to this place.
She stopped to catch her breath. The cascade of hot ash—she now realized it must be coming from the vents overhead—subsided momentarily during the lull between explosions, giving her the chance to croak out, "Lucy? Can you hear me?"
To her and immense relief, a reply emanated from what seemed to be right around the corner. "Rinny?" The young girl's voice quivered as she spoke.
Despite the direness of their situation, Rinoa's face broke into a radiant smile as she saw the girl round the bend, pale and shivering. Rinoa rushed forward, forgetting to hold on to the metal beams in her haste, and felt her feet fly out from under her under the power of yet another explosion.
Even through the pain she felt as she was slammed against the wall a second time and the distracting noise of the little girl's scream, she could tell from the popping noises and the column of steam that pushed its way through a tiny hole in the wall—signs of water pipes bursting under incredible pressure and temperature—that the explosions were drawing ever nearer.
As ash clogged the hallway once again, Rinoa heard Lucy scream out a second time. "Rinoa!" She forced herself to stand up.
"I'm okay," she gasped, and suddenly Lucy was in front of her and had thrown her arms around her, sobbing uncontrollably. Carefully taking hold of an overhead beam, Rinoa stroked the girl's hair.
"It's alright," she said soothingly. "Everything will be just fine…"
Lucy screamed as the next explosion ripped down the tower's length, tearing the support beam Rinoa held loose and sending it swinging through the hallway at a crazy angle. Rinoa let go just in time to avoid being carried with it, and then ducked as the it swung back, scything through the air to slam against the wall behind her and sending chips of concrete flying through the air. She felt a small shard gouge through her cheek and moved to shelter Lucy protectively with her entire body, waiting as explosion wore itself out. Then, taking a deep breath, she hoisted Lucy up with both hands, ignoring the girl's cries of surprise and confusion and bearing her considerable weight. Sprinting down the hallway, one thought filled her mind.
The explosions are getting closer, and I still have to make it all the way to the bottom floor…
Squall watched in a sort of morbid fascination as, floor by floor, one of man's greatest achievements crumbled, the victim of one of man's most terrible achievements.
He, Irvine, and Selphie were relatively safe from the explosions themselves in their shelter behind the boulders. But, he kept a watchful eye nevertheless; there was always the risk of falling debris injuring one of them.
His reverie was broken as he heard a sharp intake of breath come from Selphie from her crouched position beside him. "Oh Hyne, Squall…look!"
As Squall's gaze turned toward the tower's base, his entire body froze. Quistis and Zell had just emerged from within, covered with soot and looking exhausted.
Rinoa was nowhere in sight.
And then, all of a sudden, he was standing, his legs carrying him toward the two, heedless of any possible danger. His brain was working in overdrive, letting loose a rapid-fire salvo of questions and thoughts as his body moved on its own. Why are they here? Where's Rinoa? Didn't they understand my orders? Where's Rinoa? Goddamn it, they could have been KILLED!
Where's Rinoa?
"Squall!" Zell exclaimed as his commanding officer seized him by the collar, raising him to the air with a look of cold fury in his steely eyes. Zell struggled vainly. "What the hell are you—"
"I told you to guard the square," Squall hissed. Zell squirmed.
"Yeah, I know, but—"
"This isn't the fucking square!" Squall roared, shaking his blonde subordinate violently.
"Squall, calm down," Quistis said, looking, incredibly, somewhat rattled. Without warning, Squall dropped Zell—who immediately buckled over, clutching his throat—and turned to her.
"Don't you get it, Trepe?" All trace of anger was gone from his voice now, giving it a hollow, dead sound. He stood perfectly still, showing no reaction even when another explosion claimed another section of the tower, blowing his hair back and covering them in a cloud of soot. Here at the tower's feet, they were near enough to the epicenter of the explosions to be reasonably certain that the biggest bits of debris would be blown far away...at least until the detonations made their way down to the lower levels. "WLA Protocol Sixty-Five. Anyone who is injured in combat is left behind. You needlessly put yourselves in danger. Even a slight injury, and…your blood would have been on my hands."
"Sir," Zell wheezed from the ground, staring up at him. "Sir, we didn't have much of a choice. Rinoa would have gone either way, and—"
Squall's blood froze in his veins.
"Heartilly?"
Zell nodded and struggled to his feet. "Yeah. She came across this girl who was looking for her dad, and things just sort of got out of control, and so—"
Squall's attempt to wet his lips failed; his mouth was already too dry. "And where is she now?"
"Still inside," Zell responded. "She—whoa!"
Squall pushed past him, no longer listening to anything he was saying. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
The inside of the column was boiling. Ladder, ash, even the air itself—everything seared Rinoa's skin as she protectively tried to shelter Lucy under her coat, her right hand on a rung and her left hand on Lucy's wrist, encircling the girl's thin silver bracelet. Above her, she saw periodic flares of light: the explosions.
Worse, she could now actually feel each detonation, the rush of wind, the burst of unbearable heat, and the raw power that seemed strong enough to rip the world in two. She could smell the charcoal scent made as the flames incinerated paint and paper and paper and plastic, reminding her, for an absurd moment, of a cold winter morning over twelve years ago when the fire in her family's hearth had begun to smolder out and her mother had rekindled it by throwing in a stack of newspapers. She seized happily onto this memory, for no matter how painful thinking of her mother could be since her death, nothing was worse than having to focus on the the blistering heat. Rung by rung, she made her way down, doing everything she could to protect the little girl from something that no child should have to face.
As she descended, the air grew ever more clogged with ash that, in such a tiny space, had nowhere to go but down. Its weight fell on her neck and shoulders and lungs, and suddenly she couldn't move or blink or even breathe. I'm going to die in this place, she thought. I've just killed a man and I'm being punished for it, I've just killed a man and God or Hyne or whatever controls the world knows what I've done and I'm a killer and killers get suffocated under a burning pillow of ash that blots out everything from light to sound to life itself… Her limbs were too heavy to move. Almost unconscious, she felt each of her arms rid themselves of their burdens, her fingers slipping from the rung and sending her tumbling downward in a free-fall that, in her dreamlike state of pain-induced stupor, seemed to last an eternity.
So this is it, she thought numbly, gazing up through the infinitely thick darkness as the hot air rushed past her. This is how I meet my end. Alone. Left in the dark.
And then, in the last moments before her vision faded to black, she felt her body come to a sudden stop as a pair of strong arms plucked her from the air.
"Heartilly!" Squall yelled as he peered into the column, raising a gloved hand to shield his face from the torrent of ash that rushed like water down a pipe. He couldn't see anything beyond the black cloud. "Goddamn it, Heartilly, if you can hear me, answer me!"
He reached out, groping blindly for the ladder, and suddenly she was there. He caught her effortlessly and pulled her out, lifting her in front of him and turning to sprint across the room and out of the building.
Squall pushed past a shocked-looking Zell and a calmer Quistis a second time on the way out. "Fucking run!" he barked, not bothering to look back as his legs carried him and the unconscious girl away from the tower. The boulders were just ahead and the bombs were just behind; he didn't stop until the former was securely between him and the ladder. He ducked behind them just after the nearest explosion yet sent a red-hot shard of metal across his left arm. He ignored the pain and threw himself down beside a wide-eyed Selphie. Moments later, Zell and Quistis joined them, panting lightly.
They all huddled together behind the massive rocks and waited as one, two, three explosions tore apart the remaining fragments of the tower. The last one sent a wave of flames past the rocks, licking Squall's boot before running out of fuel and shivering away into nothingness.
At least half a minute passed in near-total silence apart from the rebels' ragged breathing before Irvine stood and peered over the rocks' edge. "Lieutenant," he whispered. "Check it out."
Squall realized he was still clutching Rinoa's comatose body tightly and gently laid her on the ground, checking her pulse. He was relieved to find it still going strong. He took a moment to look her face over. It was covered in ash and looked slightly red, as though it had been sunburned, but otherwise she seemed uninjured. His eyes traveled down the length of her body and paused over her left hand, which was curled tightly over something. As gently as he could, he worked his fingers into her hand, opening it up to reveal the object she clutched in something near a death grip.
It was a tiny, silver bracelet.
"Lieutenant?" Irvine's voice called questioningly. Squall hurriedly dropped the girl's hand and stood, peering over the top of the shortest boulder just as Irvine had to see a scene of pure devastation.
The tower had been obliterated. Apart from a few twisted pieces of metal sticking up from the ground and some random debris that was surely scattered all over Dollet, there was nothing left of it but a blacked piece of earth where it had once stood.
That, and the sound of footsteps, still in the distance but approaching rapidly.
The Galbadians, Squall thought. "They're coming," he said shortly. "Time to go."
Zell, Quistis, and Selphie quickly stood, taking their places next to Squall and Irvine, ready to depart. Zell glanced at Rinoa's prostrate form. "What about her?"
Squall bent down and lifted the girl with ease. "I've got her," he said by way of a reply, and with that, the rebels took off past the ruins of the destroyed communications tower and across the rich Dollet countryside. By the time the Galbadian troops arrived at the site, they were long gone.
Rinoa awoke to the sound of crickets chirping and the feeling of a cold wind on her face; a wonderful feeling after having been stuck inside a column of hot ash. She breathed in deeply and immediately burst into a fit of coughing as her lungs purged themselves of that same ash.
As the last black cloud from her lips faded away, she started to take in her surroundings. She was disoriented at first, but the world gradually began to take shape around her. First, she noticed the springy grass beneath her back; she was lying on the ground somewhere outdoors. The dark sky, along with the moon that was slowly sinking toward the horizon, all but confirmed this belief. As she came to this realization, something else struck her; the sound of wood cracking under heat. A fire?
"You're awake," a voice said, shortly but not unkindly. She would have jumped in her surprise, but she didn't have the energy just yet. Instead, she turned her head and found herself staring into a pair of deep, blue-gray eyes that she would have known anywhere.
"Squall," she gasped, sitting up. He was facing her, his back to the fire she had heard before. As she came to her senses, she saw the tents pitched in a rough circle around the fire and realized she was sitting in the middle of a campsite.
"What…happened?" she asked, rubbing her head and trying to remember. All she could recall was suffocating, falling down that column, sure that death was only seconds away…
No, she thought firmly. I don't want to remember.
After a moment, she realized he was answering and forced her mind to focus on the present.
"—the tower," he was saying. "You fell. I caught you and got you out. We fled the city on foot and escaped the Galbadians. That's all."
She blinked. The information was coming too fast. "So…" she said slowly, allowing it all to sink in. "So where are we now?"
"Sixteen miles southwest of Dollet," he responded easily. "Far enough away for the Galbadians to have no idea where to look for us."
"The others?"
"Asleep."
"So you saved me and Lucy, and stayed out to wait for me to wake up?" She felt something stir inside her. Was it gratitude? "Where is Lucy, by the way?"
Squall frowned. "Who is Lucy?"
A chill ran down Rinoa's spine. "You know, the little girl that was with me when you pulled me out of that building. Where is she?"
In the long pause that followed, Rinoa felt the dread slowly build up in her heart. Finally, he responded, confirming all her fears.
"There was no little girl."
Squall watched as a series of emotions crossed the young woman's face in rapid succession. Some, he knew; others, he wasn't particularly sure about.
Fear. Something he didn't recognize. Confusion. Anger. Betrayal. Something else he didn't recognize.
But, above all else, grief. That emotion, he knew all too well.
What am I supposed to do? he wondered as tears rose in her eyes. If I were her, I'd want to be left alone. Of course, that's it. He stood to leave.
"Wait, Squall," Rinoa gasped, seizing his hand. He stopped. What is she doing?
"Squall…" she sniffed. "How…how did it happen?"
Squall sighed. "I don't know. After we detonated the charges, we saw Quistis and Zell come out of the tower, and—Heartilly?"
The cornucopia of emotions he had seen on her face before had vanished, replaced by a blank, stunned look, her mouth hanging slightly open. He frowned. "Heartilly? What is it?"
Rinoa's ears failed her as she heard his words. She couldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe it. How could they have done something so terrible? A true revolutionary was supposed to have ideals, to have the high moral ground. But the WLA was…it was…
It was as bad as the government.
She was sure of it now.
"After you detonated the charges?" she said slowly, making eye contact with Squall.
"Yes," he responded immediately.
"And did it ever occur to you," she began, standing up, "Did it ever occur to you that there might be people in there? That blowing up that tower might hurt innocent people like Lucy or her father or me?"
"Heartilly—"
"Shut the fuck up, Squall!" she screamed. "Just shut the fuck up." The tears were coming fast and hard now, and she couldn't stop them. "They told me the WLA wasn't as ethical as we were. You know, that's why I was sent to you all in the first place. The Owls wanted to find out just what the people they were allying themselves with were like. Huh." She smiled bitterly. "I guess we found out, didn't we?"
She spotted her luggage on the ground next to one of the tents and strode over to pick it up. As she did so, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Rinoa," Squall said softly, using her given name for the first time. "Wait." Rinoa shook his hand off angrily.
"Send anyone after me," she said coolly, "and I'll kill them." The bitter smile returned to her tear-stained face. "I can do that now."
She pushed him away and ran off into the darkness of the Galbadian countryside.
Squall watched her go, making no move to stop her. She has the right to leave us if she wants, he thought. He understood why she wanted to go; his reaction might have been as drastic had he ever met this Lucy girl. Still, he knew that he wouldn't be able to talk Rinoa out of leaving even if he tried.
With a heavy sigh, he sat back down and resumed what he had been doing before the black-haired girl had awoken: painstakingly punching a message in Morse code into a strip of paper tape. It took him a long while to do this; he had never had much skill at the telegraph.
"Commander Melbourne STOP. Lieutenant Leonhart reporting STOP. Mission accomplished STOP." He paused. Should he tell him about Rinoa? He would have to, sooner or later. "Heartilly AWOL STOP. She says Forest Owls ordered her to investigate the WLA STOP. The bombing convinced her that they should not associate with us STOP. Requesting new orders STOP. Leonhart out STOP."
He stood, holding the paper tape, and reached down into one of his belts to remove a small device with a slot to feed the tape through: a portable telegraph machine. Then, he strode away from the bright circle cast by the fire, reaching the railroad they had camped near for exactly this purpose. He listened carefully to the air and heard nothing; no trains would be passing anytime soon. Bending over, he reached under the tracks and yanked out a bit of the copper telegraph wire that ran under every single government-sanctioned railroad line in Galbadia. He attached the telegraph machine to it using a pair of copper leads and sent the message.
The signal traveled hundreds of miles within the course of a few minutes; down the railroad to Timber, it took a left, following another railroad into the Galbadian homeland. From there, it went south, traversing the vast desert of southern Galbadia and eventually leaping over a bridge into Winhill. From there, it left the railroads, following a private telegraph line underground and emerging in the cold stone office of the WLA leader.
Melbourne dropped the book he was reading—A Revolutionary Manifesto by Vinzer Deling—as the telegraph machine in his office suddenly purred to life, printing out a bit of paper tape. He stretched it out on his desk and perused it, quickly translating the dots and dashes in his head.
Of course, he thought. This explains everything; why that fool in Timber would send one of his operatives to help me, why he agreed to an alliance between us so quickly, why the Owls all treated me with such suspicion even after we had come to an agreement. He never really trusted me.
And now, I could lose the advantage that this alliance gives me.
I can't let that happen.
Luckily, he had a contingency plan for a situation just like this one.
He pulled out a strip of paper tape and started to write.
A/N: Well, my readers, I hope that satisfied you. Feedback is appreciated, as always, and I'm going to start trying to reply to each review I receive. I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can; I've started work on it already, and it looks like it will be a very LONG one. It will feature something of a turning point for Squall and the story itself. Stay tuned! Peace,
--Against Everything