Author's Notes - Ah, I survived the potential barrage of hate mail induced by last chapter's finale. Don't you guys just hate it when I give you so much to ponder and yet there seems to be no definite answers in sight? Hopefully I update this thing regularly enough to not give you all coronaries. Not like I answer much, but you know; it's always nice to know that I'm not going to leave you guys hanging forever.

-Speaking of which, to anyone who may have followed the long-neglected Breaking Free, I'm going to wait until I finish this fic before I go back to that one. I've come to realize that I need to be able to concentrate on one thing at a time because I had to switch my mindset constantly in regards to the characters and situations and it was quite taxing, especially when I'd finish a chapter of one of the stories. I'd be so eager to just continue that story that it took me awhile before I'd want to do the other one, and then the same thing would happen with that fic, and so on. No word of a lie, that's what always happened to me back then.

Anyways, I hope you guys aren't mad with this particular decision. I just want to be able to write the best to my abilities without short-changing something in the process.

Hope you like this lightning-quick chapter; this one's going to be short and sweet. :)

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Chapter XXV – The Other Side of the Moon

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2 am and I'm still awake writing this song,
If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me threatenin' the life it belongs to,
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd,
Cause these words are my diary screamin' out aloud,
And I know that you'll use them however you want to.

-Anna Nalick, Breathe (2am).

-

Sunday, January 9th –

It's about 2 am right now and I can't sleep even though my body is basically dead tired and my eyes are threatening to droop just about every other second. My mind won't let me. It's basically going into overdrive and I have to write this down or else I'm going to explode. Tonight, in every sense of the word was a disaster. I'm not talking teaching-wise though, that part was fine. It was everything else that turned into a bust-up.

Following what Squall said when I came back down to the dinner table, I couldn't look him in the eyes after we exchanged that one last glance. And the worst part about it is that I'm sure he noticed. He must have, he kept on telling me to stop looking at the random crumbs on the table. Hyne, I feel so bad about this. It's like I'm constantly doing flip-flops with everything and I can't seem to stick to my principles no matter how I try. I'm just as bad as those people who are going to judge that rumour based off of the chemistry Squall and I will have. Is it natural to have these kinds of doubts after piecing something together like that? I'm really wondering that right now because I want to know if I'm normal or a despicable human being here.

Hyne, I really shouldn't bother, I don't know the first thing about normalcy. I let myself give into peer pressure to fit in, got myself knocked up because I needed emotional support, nearly got into the same kind of trouble because I was acting like an airhead and turned to someone to reinvent myself by taking advantage of his failing grade. Yeah, that just screams normal.

Well, at least now I can do what I'm best at – being in denial over something. Mulling it over and over again, I don't think it could be true based on a couple of things. If he supposedly had a kid in August, it wouldn't fit into the winter break timeline. There'd be a big discrepancy in dates no matter when in August it could have been. And if the whole thing Raine was mentioning was referring to finding out he just got someone pregnant in August, that'd make even less sense. Mainly because I haven't seen this girl anywhere and if she kept it, I'd assume I would have heard something about it and they wouldn't be making such a big deal about him sleeping with me. Not to mention the dates would make even less sense.

From knowing a bunch of pregnancy stuff because of Ivy, the morning sickness stage is usually in the first three months so her due date would have to be sometime in the spring. I might be inferring things here, but if he was going to be a father in a few months, no matter how embarrassing it'd be, I'd think Squall would seem like the type of guy to take responsibility here. Then again, that's my impression here, I could be wrong. Oh great. Now I feel awkward about the 'only girl in your bed' comment. I wish I could take that chestnut back.

Anyways...even I don't know about all of this, writing it down is making me feel a whole lot better. And after rereading the last few lines, the more I'm convinced that there's got to be a different explanation for this. Maybe he had a close call in August where they thought the girl had gotten pregnant but it wasn't the case or she was and got rid of it? Okay, I should stop making guesses because I obviously don't know the whole picture here. I'm liable to think up something crazier at some point. Or worse, Squall will accidentally come across this and I'll be as good as dead.

-Hyne, I'm really getting ahead of myself these days. Going back a few hours, when we finished up, it was maybe nine-thirty (my not looking at him kinda slowed things down...a lot) and no word of a lie, I looked out of the window to look outside and I couldn't. It was completely covered in snow. I wasn't sure if it was just the snow sticking to the window or if there was a lot of it in general so I opened the door. It was like a Trabian snowstorm out there so I closed the door and to make a long story short, Squall's sleeping on the couch downstairs.

Neither me nor Mom wanted him to walk back home in that weather and at that time of night. Mom couldn't even drive him home because the roads (the driveway too) were really, really bad. If he wasn't too happy about this, then he's an even better actor than I gave him credit for. He seemed calm about it when Mom told him that he'd have to stay here for the night and when she called his mom to let her

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Haphazardly tossing her journal and pen aside, they both fell through the gap between her bed and the wall as Rinoa hurried out of her room and into the adjacent bathroom. Once inside, she immediately went to the left of the small sink and vanity directly in front of the door to lift the toilet seat and puke. When this continued for a few minutes, Rinoa wanted nothing more than to cry. Although the medicine did a wonderful job at suppressing most of the nausea, there were times where episodes like these would pop up out of the blue. Even when she'd been trying to lose weight in the past, she never resorted to throwing up. It was never an option to become bulimic; she hated the feeling of bile climbing up her throat more than anything else.

There was a soft knock at the door. "...Rinoa?"

When it seemed safe to do so, Rinoa furrowed her eyebrows and took a rightwards glance toward the door. The speaker was male.

"...Squall?" she weakly called out. "Yeah..it's me. Don't come in, I'm-" She interrupted her own sentence to throw up again. "-not good."

After a few moments, she feverishly got up. Now her stomach felt tingly, her head light and her legs weak. To summarize, she felt like a wobbly gelatine dessert. When she stabilized herself on the sink's counter, the door opened before she got the chance to have the honours to open it herself. Rinoa quickly reached over to flush the toilet and turned around with a grimace. She didn't want to see anyone her like this.

"...I told you not to open the door." she whispered hoarsely. "What are you even doing up at this hour?"

Even in the darkness, she could still make out the stern look on his face despite the fact that she couldn't clearly see the rest of his body. "I woke up because I had to use the bathroom. When I went upstairs, I heard some retching and figured it was you."

"I could have been half-naked for all you knew. Did you think about that?" she tried arguing. Her voice was making this task difficult though. It was too weak to sound the least bit convincing.

"You could have needed help. I didn't hear anything after you started throwing up to suggest you were okay."

Rinoa furrowed her eyebrows quizzically. 'Squall? Caring? Am I dreaming here?'

"...You don't have to look stunned. I'm not heartless."

"Sorry." she mumbled. "It's just that I wasn't-" A rough croup-like cough escaped her throat and threw off her overall balance, causing her to stagger a little. "-expecting that from you."

"...You seem to be ignoring the fact that I had this a couple of days ago." he said pointedly.

"You weren't throwing up though." she countered.

He sighed. "Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean I was immune to it. I had it worse."

"That's impossible. You didn't look that bad when I came over."

He shook his head. "By the time you were over, the medicine had kicked in already. It was worse before."

"Oh." When she paused her face turned a bright shade of red. She'd been caught using grade-school 'I didn't see it so it doesn't exist' logic. She quietly thanked Hyne that the lights were off so he wouldn't be able to see her red face. "I'm-" Cough. "-going back to bed. Sorry for worrying y—Oh Hyne-"

Without any spare time to shut the door to shield him from this horrific scene, Rinoa crouched down and threw up some of what little must have been left in her stomach. Putting herself in the trademark kneeling position by the toilet bowl triggered a knee-jerk gag reflex; she started heaving some more. By the fifth heave, when there was nothing left to spew into the bowl except the lingering spit in her mouth, she looked back. Rinoa couldn't believe her eyes; he was still there after all this time.

"Why...are you...still here...?"

"In case if it got worse." he calmly answered.

From the floor, she painfully grimaced as she reflexively swallowed. Her throat was so raw from all the scorching bile that her entire throat felt like a tunnel of fire. Even though she didn't say anything explicit to warrant this, he offered a hand to help her up.

As soon as she flushed the contents of the bowl and closed the toilet lid, Rinoa muttered a feeble 'No, I'm good' and used the closed lid as leverage to lift herself up rather than his hand. Once she was up on her feet, she feverishly wiped her brow with her left hand and placed the other on the sink's counter for support.

Her entire body felt like it was an empty shell, one where the slightest miscalculated movement would result in a one-way trip to the floor. Keeping the one hand on the counter as a precaution, she carefully turned around, took a step and—all of a sudden, the leg gave out and she—was saved from falling face-first by Squall's quick reflexes; he'd looped his arms underneath hers to catch her just in the nick of time. With a soft thud, the side of her head landed near his right shoulder and her arms were limply draped over his own. She quickly tried to stand back up on her own again but he wouldn't allow it. Her face was directly below his now.

"You're not going to be able to walk to your room if you can't even take a step without your knees buckling." he reasoned.

"So...what do you...suggest we do?" she inquired from the confines of his grasp, her torso uncomfortably lodged between his chest and arms. "I don't think...staying in the bathroom is...an option. My mom would...have too many...questions."

He looked down at her. "Obviously it isn't, I'm probably going to have to carry you to your room."

Rinoa gave him a tired look. "I'm...not made out of...glass, I can...take care of myself."

"If I let go, you're going to fall over the moment you take another step."

When her eyelids were threatening to droop again, Rinoa finally conceded. She didn't have the energy to argue anymore. Nor did she feel like doing constant nose dives.

"Okay...you win. If I'm-" A yawn weaved itself into her sentence. "-too heavy to carry...lemme know, kay?"

After a silent nod on his behalf, he gently lifted her off the ground with ease and carefully tried to manoeuvre out of them out of the bathroom without bumping or scraping any part of her body against the narrow doorframe. A minute was wasted trying to figure the logistics of this task before he set her down and admitted defeat. He couldn't do it. Instead, he instructed her to loop her left arm over his shoulders as he would snake his right arm underneath her right. The first step resulted in another knee buckle debacle. He had to stop her from doing a face-plant again. There'd been too much of a gap between them.

"Just stay close to me. This won't work otherwise."

She looked at him wearily as she reluctantly complied. Rinoa didn't like the fact that the only material barrier between their side-by-side upper bodies was her pyjama tank top. He must have discarded his thick sweater to sleep. "By any chance...are you...practicing...being nicer...to me? Um, my room's...the one ...straight across."

He didn't answer her; he merely started helping her walk towards the door. When they were there, Rinoa opened the door with her free hand. Moments later, he carefully led her to the bed where she sat down and immediately turned to leave. He didn't end up leaving though. She'd softly called out to him and he'd stopped and faced her. The moonlight coming from the window illuminated what she couldn't see in the darkness earlier – his expression. By this time, Rinoa realized her mistake.

"The last thing I said...it was insensitive...wasn't it?"

"...No, it wasn't." he answered tersely. "I was practicing."

And with that, he left and softly closed the door. The echo of his last words stung, as did the door's clicking sound. Rinoa laid down.

'Why couldn't I accept his help without questioning it? Hyne, I talk about him not trusting me, it doesn't look like I can quite trust him either.'

'I wonder, are we more similar than I thought? Are we both untrusting and still biased by each of our own reputations despite our best efforts?'

Rinoa never answered her own question. She'd already closed her eyes and lulled into an uneasy sleep.

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End of Chapter Comments – Wow, I updated in a span of two days, it's a new record I tells you! Hope you liked it.

-Emerald-Latias

Random Tidbit - The scene where Rinoa falls in the bathroom is a reference to the Sorceress Memorial scene in terms of her positioning when she's caught by Squall. There's also a line directly pulled from the game, try to guess what it is. :)