Spring seemed years away. Rinoa blew into her hands and watched as the snowflakes dissolved and coating her hands in a thin film of dew. She cursed as she wiped herself down and felt rather than saw the smile. She had been doing it a lot lately, the bond between the two of them deepening as they spent the days together. "Quiet you."

"I didn't say a word," Squall said, but she could hear the laughter in his voice.

The man had left them alone for a moment and almost immediately Rinoa had turned to her husband and said he's creepy. He had agreed. There was something about the man - about the whole institution really - that did not inspire confidence. Rinoa remembered teachers mainly as nurses and tutors when she had still been Caraway's daughter, and then as serious men and women only a little older than herself when she had come to Balamb Garden and SeeD. This severe and uptight gentleman of the University of Deling was nothing like any of them.

He strode back into the room with a sheaf of papers under his arm and shot them a glance that seemed to say I don't have time for this and I'm here against my better judgement all at the same time. He had told them his name when finally they had threaded their way through the narrow and old wooden corridors to his office, but Rinoa had decided she wasn't going to bother remembering it. Or what he was saying. When the man had seen her walk in and the tiny gleam had appeared in his eye she had taken in instant dislike. They had shouted I want that in the voice of a child used to getting what he wants.

"-almost certainly sure what he was working on you had any relation to his death you understand. The poor man was something of a scatterbrain, even among the faculty, ah-ha, and he didn't really make any sort of system for-"

She suspected Squall was just as bored and infuriated as she was, but his SeeD training hid it much better. "Of course doctor-" He had accidentally called the man 'mister' at the start of the conversation, which hadn't endeared them to him. "-we'd just like to know more about him."

The professor flicked through the sheets and talked as they cascaded through his hands. "Not much to say really. He kept to himself and we didn't, ah-ha, exactly mind. We're more of the hard sciences in this department and unfortunately Sorcery isn't really compatible with anything hard." The way his eyes flicked across to Rinoa, however, told her he'd very much like to make it so. She'd seen it in the years after the Second War. She was a curiosity to be studied, categorised, written about, awards won for the study thereof. The fact that she was a living breathing person was aside the point. "I believe he was studying the effects of Time Compression. The release of all points back to their respective origin points, rather than the Compression itself. He thought that the poor victims of the event must have somehow had their minds taken away when it ended, to some other point of history." The man laughed, an unpleasant braying. "He wondered whether more, ah-ha, physical things could make the journey also, and if some things were taken from the present away, could not other things have been brought to us here, and left behind so to speak."

It was taking all of Rinoa's concentration to stop herself from falling asleep, but the bite in Squall's voice brought her awake. "You mean things from Ultimecia's era could have stayed here in the present after Time Compression ended?"

"Just a theory my boy, just a theory."

Squall stood, and the professor didn't seem unhappy the ad-hoc interview. She knew the type. "Thank you for your time."

"Squall you're thinking far too hard about this."

The tall man idly kicked a stone into the street as they walked to the car. "It sounds plausible."

Rinoa sighed. That was the problem of course. It was possible. Anything became possible when any sort of magic was thrown into the mix. Forces of the beyond called down to do the bidding of mere mortals didn't like small things like the laws of physics or causality get in their way. "You think when Time Compression ended one of Ultimecia's….things…stayed behind."

"Or Ultimecia herself."

"You don't think…"

"The dead researcher was looking at Sorceresses and time-travel. He was killed for something Rin. We don't know what happens in the future. One day Ultimecia is born and is going to become a Sorceress, and between that moment and us killing her there's a whole life she's going to live. Who's to say she one day she's going to notice a giant compressed history and think 'let's go take a look'?"

My God he's really thinking it. He really thinks she might be here. "I'd know if there was another sorceress out there."

"You don't-"

"Squall. I'd know." Like an electric current running through my brain, I'd know.

He rubbed his face as if trying to wipe the thoughts away. "Sorry, I just…sorry."

She knew what was bothering him, what he didn't want to say. We're nowhere. Since that day in the mansion's room they had all went their separate ways. Fujin and Raijin had gone away to Dollet, a speck disappearing on the horizon. Irvine and Selphie toured the walls and armoires to find out exactly what they could do if Dollet's fury descended on Deling City. They slept in barracks and went through the mansion like ghosts. Seifer and Xu were doing something, didn't show their faces except to eat and would conspicuously not talk about their plans in the few times that their paths would cross. Somehow a week had passed and they had gotten nowhere, as if the tracks the killer had left across Deling had been wiped away like chalk on a blackboard. The best they could say was that there hadn't been any further trouble. The cultists in the city had gone to ground, and any protests against SeeD had stayed in the villages and outskirts of the empire, far away from Deling itself.

Which meant her own plan had become just a little more difficult.

She was planning something, he knew it.

Whether he wanted to bring it up though was something else. He knew that Rinoa was feeling Quistis' imprisonment much worse than he was. Bizarrely, imprisonment meant much more to Rinoa, a woman who had grown up with every need taken care of, than to Squall, who had actually been in prison. His short tenure in Galbadia's desert facility had been just one more empty box to be put in by people who didn't like him. To her to be locked away from others and the world was slow torture. Even though she hadn't grown up in the orphanage they had always been family, and Quistis had been the big sister Rinoa had never had. For all Squall knew Rinoa was feeling it much worse than Quistis herself. He wished he could do something more concrete than simple reassurances, but there was nothing, just chasing through the dark city after an angry ghost. "What now?"

She tried to sound as nonchalant as she could. "It's pretty late already, let's just get some sleep. I think talking to that guy drained away all my energy." Squall was more correct than he knew. She hated the thought of Quisty trapped in that place, surrounded by people like that. At first when the war had ended and they had all been basking in success she hadn't minded the attention so much. When the world had returned to a more normal state of business however she'd looked again and hadn't liked any of what she'd seen of the young, intense faction of the Church of Hyne, before they had earned the name of cult.

They still drew looks as they walked through the street. They were a well-known couple but after the news from Dollet not all of the looks were as friendly or awe-inspired as they used to be. The only consolation were the few, one out of a hundred maybe, who approached the pair to thank them. It didn't happen often, but it was enough to raise Rinoa's spirits back up, and to give her the strength she knew she'd need if she was going to pull this off. The lights of the mansion shone down on them from on top of the hill, and as they approached the doors she turned to Squall and, asking herself one more time if it would really be worth it, and getting the same answer, she made her decision.

"Squall?"

He took a step ahead of her and stopped, was almost pulled backwards in fact, as he realised she had froze on the doorstep. "What?"

"Trust me."

"Alwa-"

He didn't finish the word. Power surged through her hand and into Squall's body and he didn't even have time to wonder what the massive light was before he was unconscious. Rinoa stepped forward and caught him as he collapsed, his weight almost bringing her down with him. As gently and quietly as she could she shifted him into a sitting position next to the door and surveyed her handiwork. She knew that whoever was on patrol would be making their rounds tonight would be in for a shock, and she had to stifle a giggle at the thought of them finding a sleeping snow-covered Squall on the doorstep. The urge quickly faded as the knowledge of what she was about to do pushed itself back into the forefront of her mind. Squall and the others would hate it, but for some strange reason she thought that maybe Xu would approve. She knelt down next to him and kissed him lightly on the forehead, her hand slipping the note into his jacket.

I'm sorry.

Rinoa walked off into the night, as the snow continued to fall over the mansion. She felt the urge to look back become stronger and stronger as the hill took the mansion out of her view, and almost resisted it.

She sat in front of the frozen lake, just watching as the children skated over it. She had drawn some odd glances as she had arrived and sat there on the bench, but the children had went on with their games oblivious and the parents were too busy watching over the children to wonder who the well-dressed young woman was. She idly wondered how long the lake would remain frozen, even though the other lakes and ponds of the Deling park had turned back to liquid. She knew she had gone too far, used for power just for some dumb magic trick, and she didn't even know how long it would last. Edea would have been furious with her. After the war she had spent some time at the orphanage, with the ex-sorceress and Quisty, just to try and get some hold on her powers, and both of them would have been disappointed in her. She could have kicked herself. Even after all they had been through – everything Squall had been through because of her – she still didn't respect it. Just one more toy to be pulled out of the box and used for her own entertainment. Once when she had drunk a little more than she should have, Quistis' walls had slipped away, just a little bit, and the bitterness in her voice had been shocking coming from that beautiful mouth.

It's like a mad dog Rinoa. Sure it looks cute and useful from a distance, but you get close enough and it notices you, it's going to tear into you before you realise you've opened the gate. I got lucky Rin, this blue crap's got a priority list and I'm pretty low down on it. But in the end, when everything else is ashes, it'll go for me last rather than go away. I know it.

She'd opened that gate just a little, just for a joke, and now for all she knew Deling City had a permanent ice-rink. She didn't know what she was doing. Still just a child.

"Miss Heartilly."

She didn't turn, but her heart sunk all the same at the voice came from beside her. It had gotten so close without a sound. "It's mrs." She sighed in a way that didn't reveal her misery at discovery. Damnit damnit damnit! I should have had more time!

"Certainly it's not cadet, at least not right now." Xu Tyynes sat down on the bench next to Rinoa. Even wrapped up against the winter night she still looked preternaturally thin and poised. The poise and grace that the young SeeD officer carried around with her had been twisted and warped into an almost predatory thinness. Rinoa knew why and any other day she would have sympathised, but she wasn't going to let that sympathy deter her this time. "Have you totally lost your senses?"

She resisted the urge to say I know what I'm doing. She barely knew what she was doing. "How's Squall?"

"Your husband is out like a light and nothing we can is waking him up. What did you do to him Rinoa?"

Oh nothing much. Just a trickle of power through his brain. Just enough to overload his senses and shut him down, the man who loves and trusts me. "Not much. He'll be fine."

"I'm so glad to hear that." She sat down next to Rinoa on the bench. "Rinoa you've clearly got some sort of plan that would make you do this, but you don't understand what you're really getting yourself into."

She couldn't take her eyes from the children on the lake. Even as the parents tried to get them to leave they always wanted to stay, trying to drag themselves backwards as they were dragged away even though some had quite obvious colds. Like they couldn't help themselves."You don't like me much, do you Xu." It wasn't a question.

Xu sighed, her breath misting out in the air. She was looking over at the kids too, but whatever she was thinking was a mystery, possibly to them both. "I think you're a wonderful person Rinoa. But you're not a SeeD."

Rinoa laughed. "Yeah. You're right." She knew it. Aways knew somehow, whenever Quistis would look at her with that half-smile of mixed exasperation and tolerance, whenever Squall hadn't bothered to tell her something about the jobs he had been on or the close calls he had had. God damn you for saying it though.

"You're kind and thoughtful and it would never occur to you to do something that would hurt others, not unless you really, really thought it was necessary. So what are you doing that's so bad, that your own beau can't help out?"

"What gives you that right?" She knew Xu would see through her dodge, but she needed time to think. "To decide whether I can be a SeeD or not." Anger flushed through her at the thought. "SeeDs look after their own. Come with me instead of just sitting here and plotting…plotting whatever it is you do. What gives you the right?"

For a moment she thought she had gone too far, as Xu just stared at her and the two women sat there in silence. Finally when Rinoa couldn't stand it anymore and opened her mouth Xu began to speak.

"I wasn't born in Balamb. That's where I – where we - ended up, but it's not where I'm from, not really. I was born in Esthar."

"In Esthar?" Rinoa did the maths in her head. The hologram barrier had been up for as long as she could remember, only their own incursion and the Second War finally bringing it down. "That-"

Xu nodded, not looking at Rinoa. Instead she stared out over the lake, elbows resting on her knees and her hands propping up her chin. The words came slowly, as if dredged up from some pit. "My parents were soldiers under Adel. They were…there's a reason that you don't find many Estharians in the rest of the world.I mean you have to understand we could see the holo-wall fine. We could look out over the salt plains and see this whole other world out there, but back then it wasn't exactly politic to talk about it. You wondered what was on the other side sure but you never wondered out loud."

"Adel."

Xu nodded. "Adel. My parents were part of a unit that hunted down people who tried to escape from Esthar. I mean the way out was all around us, we could damn well see it was there, like a cage over the entire continent, but it wasn't perfect. Maintenance holes, broken pieces where an monster had just ran into it and punched a hole through. If you wanted away from that crazy old tyrant you ran to the wall. That's how they met, even. Both chasing the same person, both caught him at the same time. Love over a pair of iron-sights." She laughed, but there was no humour in it. Only bitterness. "So when they ran they knew the best way to do it."

"I never knew your parents were alive."

Xu turned to Rinoa and for a second, no more, there could have been something resembling grief there. "After I was born they just couldn't stand it anymore. I have no idea how they found out but when Laguna started making his resistance they packed up and went home."

"Are they…"

"No, they're dead. They died freeing their country. You know I…I always wondered whether it as patriotism or just guilt that made them go back. Whether it was love that made them leave me behind or they just didn't give a damn. I'll never know. I even asked Laguna after the Second War ended and he didn't even remember them. Just two more faces in his army that gave their lives for the dream. I'll never know." The traces of tears had gone and the eyes were hard flint. "I won't let a person like Adel happen again. Not if it's in Galbadia or Dollet or even Balamb. I won't permit it. If I have to sit here and hold the fort and…and do nothing while she's locked up down there then so be it!" She almost hissed the last words.

Rinoa stared at the other woman in shock. She tried to grope for something to say but found only useless platitudes. "Does Quistis know all that?"

Almost a sneer. "Of course she does." She would never tell Rinoa though, never. Not how she had cried and cried when she had finally let it all out. Not how Quistis had just held her and whispered into her ear of course they loved you, they didn't want you to go back into that hellhole. For that night she had been a frightened crying child again and Quistis had just held her. She wouldn't tell that. Not to anyone. "I.." T words wouldn't come, just faltered as they hit the air. The woman stood up. "Goddamnit Rinoa just don't do anything to get her killed or I swear I'll drag Adel's coffin out of Esthar and put you in it myself."

"I promise."

Xu stood and stalked away into the night, leaving Rinoa alone on the bench. She sat staring out into the darkness after the woman, mind whirring over everything she had been told and everything she had known. Some of it was a surprise and some of it had been totally shocking, but underneath that the words came back.

You're not a SeeD, Rinoa.

She had tried, tried so hard, but maybe hearing it from Xu had finally been what it had taken to make it sink in. She looked at Squall and Quistis and the others and saw that righteousness and justice that they seemed to carry around like armour, and hadn't noticed that the armour had been scrubbed raw where blood sometimes coated it. She had wanted to see SeeD only as the warriors of light, and forgotten that there can't be light without shadows. Xu was a part of those shadows, and the rest all lived with it to some degree, but she knew that she never could.

I'll find my own way. The first step stood before her now, she just had to wait for it to arrive. She wasn't waiting long.

"Your friend seems to have left you. Want some company? It's a dangerous city for a woman on her own."

She turned so that both her hands would be visible, the golden band on her ring-finger flashing in the air, and saw the man standing there. "No." There was nothing remarkable about the man, just one more young, rich layabout in a city still full of them and looking for company on a weekend night. "I'm waiting for someone."

"A tall, dark and handsome knight perhaps?"

Ah, finally.

Her blood could have been the water in the frozen lake as she looked again, really looked, at the man. There was nothing obvious about him, no tell-tale armband or necklace, but she still knew. They must have been waiting for Xu to leave before they approached her. Summoning what reserves of it she had, she called forth the cold confidence she had learned from Squall. "I don't know you."

The man knelt before her. There was nobody else in the park now, just an empty white square and a frozen lake. She stood before the man, the proud Sorceress before her humble servant. "One of the faithful, sent to wait and serve."

Xu was wrong, she hated the. She hated them for the wild slavery they tried to pass off to others as real faith even as they held her friend captive hundreds of miles away, even as they cut the throats of children for their own convenience. "Then serve. Where's your leader?" So simple. Why go through all the rigmarole of searching for a killer, why bother chasing down paper-trails or thin pieces of evidence when she could simply walk up and ask them.

Because you're dealing with the devil, and you don't know what cards he's holding, or even what game he's playing, a voice in her head replied.

Go away, Xu.

"It would be my honour to take you to him."

"No." He looked up at her shocked, and she held his gaze. She reached back in her memory, the services she had gone to as a child. She remembered the minister, a genial old man who had patted her on the head and given her sweets when her father wasn't looking. For all that he was a terror in the pulpit. Now, how did it go? Ah yes. "If I am to be your archangel I would know my flock. Take me to them."

The shock turned first to annoyance and slid through the emotions into awe as he realised what he was saying. The man got up, his clothes stained from the dirt-covered snow. He turned and gestured, walking ahead of her and sometimes glancing back, either checking whether she was still following him or whether she was truly there, had deigned to speak with him. A part of her was disgusted not at the man but at the others who had made him this way, that had taken faith and twisted it into this servile shell. A small part of her looked at the way he obviously worshipped her, his hands unconsciously reaching up to his neck to touch the cultist's symbol hanging there, and wondered what possible comfort he could be getting from a faith that so obviously used him like a tame dog. A smaller part of her looked at that worshipping servant and liked what it saw. The sorceress inside her.

Like others before her Rinoa Heartilly vanished into the night, with only her own soul to light the way. She only prayed that it would be bright enough to keep her true.

Turned out it didn't take as long as I thought. Welcome back.

-Cobray