Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

Chapter XII

The seabirds woke her with their distant cries, somewhere far away from the shore. It must be dawn, she supposed. Her skin was cool now. For days—or was it weeks?—her flesh had been burning, stinging, crawling with hot sparks that burrowed under the surface. She ran her fingertips along the length of one arm. There was nothing, no fire, no pain.

The conflict, the raging storm, had been quelled, and all she felt was deep peace. She searched inside for the traces of red, and of blue; the feelings that were the remnants of Adel and Quistis, and found that they were not gone, but somehow separated from her. Their battle could no longer harm her. Something else was there, a warm, safe barrier between the part that was Rinoa and the chaos within, and it felt like... him.

Squall.

He was there, right next to her. She knew before she even opened her eyes. He was sleeping on the same bed, facing away from her, the sheets pulled up around his shoulders.

Rinoa maneuvered her body off the bed, as carefully as she could in order to avoid making the wooden slats creak. She was successful. The beds in Edea's house were old, but strong and sturdy, and the hard mattress had felt better than the finest Dolletian feather bed to Rinoa after her months of sleeping on furs laid across frozen earth in Trabia. The room was simple, with few adornments, and a small handbasin for washing. She went to it and drank, deeply and silently, cupping the running water in her hands. Rinoa thought she had seen the room before, during the glimpses of waking life she had seen under Edea's care. The gray stone walls and the plain calico curtains were somehow imprinted on her mind, though she could not locate a conscious memory of being in this room. Those days were a dim blur now, another soul's suffering. She had been freed.

Her feet were bare against the smooth floor tiles, with the unfamiliar black gown skimming her ankles. Rinoa wondered if there was a mirror to be had somewhere nearby. This dress clung to her flesh in ways that would have made her blush in front of Squall, if they had still been... separate. What they were now, she could not put into words, but she knew that the concept of shame or embarrassment in front of him had lost all meaning. They were joined, fused together in a way that ran deeper than any lovers' promise.

She crossed to the door of the bedroom, and twisted its handle, a heavy brass ring. Outside, on the floor of the hallway, was a wooden tray laid with food. She knelt down to examine a basket filled with quarter-cut pieces of flatbread, drizzled with the oil of olives, and a bowl covered with cotton gauze. Rinoa lifted the gauze to reveal sliced fresh fruit underneath, colorful Southern varieties she did not know by name. Her mouth had begun to water at the sight, and she wondered just how long ago her last meal had been.

She picked up the folded note that had been slipped under the bread basket, and opened it.

The first few days of the Bond are sacred. I will not interfere. Seek me only when you are ready. I will leave food for you each morning. -Edea

Rinoa looked at it for a few moments, then took the tray in both hands, pushed the door open again with her knee and returned to the bedroom.

Squall was sitting upright in the bed, awake and watching her entrance with a strange half-smile on his face. Strange, she realized, only because she had never seen him in a state of relaxation before.

Her eyes traveled across a line of red, the newly-closed scar across his forehead, and she thought to ask him what had happened, but the idea drifted away as she looked at him.

With his long hair untied and brushing the tops of his shoulders, he was dressed in a loose, white shirt and patched hemp breeches, clearly the clothes of a much stouter man. How odd it was, Rinoa thought, to see him—the heir to Esthar—dressed as a Westerner. She glanced down at her own attire, remembering that the gown was one of Edea's. It seemed likely that Squall's clothing was a hand-me-down of whoever had once lived in this house with Edea; a husband, perhaps a fellow Knight.

She gasped as she remembered what she had done, and the reason why Squall was here alone.

"Your troops. I—"

"Edea told me you returned them to the Shalmal Peninsula. They will reach us in three, four days, perhaps."

"Are you not angry?" she asked, wondering at the softness in his voice.

"I should be. Yet I find that I am not. You seem to have vanished all other thoughts from my mind. I understand now why Sorceresses are so feared. I see only you."

He was smiling at her. He had never smiled in Esthar, and here he was, smiling with a perfect tenderness that cradled her heart, and she knew he was hers.

Rinoa set the tray down onto the stone floor and walked to the side of the bed, where she sat at arm's length from him, returning his smile. The mixture of second-hand feelings inside her that came, somehow, from him resonated with shared emotion, and her chest flooded with a warm sweetness.

"Then we are the same," she said. "Because I see only you."

She moved her face closer, and offered him her lips, and when he claimed them with more ardor than she could have hoped for, she learned what it was to become lost in a man's touch. To know pleasure as his hands shed the gown from her body, and to feel his heat pressed hard against her. His kisses and caresses stoked Rinoa's passion, giving her the courage to touch and taste him in return, and when the moment came that the old maids of Galbadia had always taught her to fear and dread, her eagerness and intoxication drowned out the pain, and she welcomed him. She clutched at his shoulders and drove him in deeper, and he gasped ragged breaths into her neck until she could stand it no more, letting her wave come to a crest and surge against him. He followed, and she was filled with him; his warmth, his love, his everything.

"I did not know it could be like that," she whispered afterwards, her sweat-soaked face laid against his chest.

"Nor did I," he murmured, kissing her fingers, and they drifted into a sleep that was shared, each breath taken together.

The day segued into night and morning, and then into another night, and they spent it all entwined. She did not count how many times they made love. How many times she cried out his name, nor how many times he juddered into her in his release, his sweat soaking into her skin. They moved as one, and thought as one, and she wondered how she had lived before knowing how it felt to be in union with her Knight.

On the third day, she lay curled up against him, Squall's touch tracing lazy circles on her shoulder as their breathing slowed from the morning's passion.

"There is something I have wondered," he said.

"What might that be?"

"Why anyone in their right mind would seek a new life in Trabia. Tell me, Rinoa. Why in all the heavens did you ride North?"

She thought about inventing some ridiculous tale, but knew it was meaningless to lie to him.

"Because you told me to ride South."

She felt his stunned silence through their shared connection, even before she saw it on his face. He seemed to be about to speak, then closed his eyes and nestled his head in the curve of her neck. It was a while before Rinoa realized the cause of his shuddering: he was laughing.

"Is it so funny?" she asked, a hesitant hand placed behind the back of his head.

Squall pulled away and unleashed a fierce glare that she would have taken to be genuine, had his shoulders not been shaking with the residue of laughter.

"Not in the slightest. You're a stubborn halfwit, and I'm a damned fool for losing my heart to you."

She touched her fingertips to his bare chest, searching for his heartbeat. There it was: the steady rhythm of his blood and his life.

"But you have not lost it." She tapped lightly against his skin, matching the rhythm. "And I will not take it from you. Let me promise that, at least, Squall."

"You should not make a promise you have already broken."

He pushed her hand away, and then he was kissing her again, with a heat that was unexpected for a man whose passion was so recently spent. Rinoa realized with a dawning delight that his actions now were for her pleasure alone, as his own was depleted. She responded by guiding his fingers to places that were so newly discovered, even to herself, and let him bring her to the peak of another wave, one that rocked her body to the tips of her toes.

"Halfwit, was it?" she murmured, when the power of speech returned to her. "I should smite you with holy light for such insolence."

"No doubt my Lady Sorceress knows best," he said, with a pinch to her flesh that teased as much as it tingled. "I am sure you could make a man say North was South, and South was North, and make him believe it, too. But perhaps you might listen to your Knight next time."

Perhaps, Rinoa thought. But my choices will be my own.

Later, after they had eaten the bread left by Edea that morning, Squall stretched his arms over his shoulders and began to pull on the long white shirt.

"Time has passed enough, I think, for us to emerge from our nest," he said as he fastened the buttons.

"I suppose that we should," she said, with reluctant agreement. She had avoided thinking about how long they could stay cocooned in each other's arms, and what might await them afterwards.

Squall stepped into the hemp breeches, attempting to fit them to his lithe form by tightening the belt as far as it would go.

"I will go to talk with Edea. I wish to make use of her Farsight." He kissed Rinoa on the lips and left the room, his footsteps fading into another part of the house.

She washed at the handbasin and dressed herself in the black gown, and made her own foray into the hallway. There was a door to the outside at the far end, and she slipped through it, eager to feel the sea air on her face again.

This door, however, did not lead to the shore. It opened on the inland side of the house, looking out onto the distant gray hills, with a meadow of colorful wildflowers dancing in the bright sunlight. Rinoa sighed with pleasure and gazed out at the sight, inhaling the delicate fragrances that were carried to her on the midmorning breeze.

She thought of Quistis, in her girlhood. In her mind's eye, Rinoa could see a golden-haired child running through the flowers, touching her hands to the petals, her fingers coated with pollen. A little girl playing in the meadow while her mother tended to the wheatfield, safe from all harm at this far-flung tip of the world.

Could it be a memory? Rinoa wondered. Her sense of Quistis' presence, so strong in the days after the Succession, had been locked away since the Bonding with Squall. But the picture was so vivid, the nostalgia so overpowering, that she thought it might have come from Quistis herself.

Quistis? she asked. She was met with only silence within.

The deep well of magic was there, though. She had known that, felt it keenly since awakening, but blinded to anything but Squall's touch, she had left it alone. Not yet, she had thought. But now... With Squall out of sight, her mind was clear, and she knew exactly what to do. She pushed at that something that could not be named, and a pale blue glow spread painlessly from her hand, soft droplets of light. Quistis' gift. And now it was hers.

Rinoa watched the light play and wind itself into shapes, like some curious sea creature. If she wanted, it could take on the form of fire, ice, lightning. She could heal wounds, she could inflict pain. If she wanted to...

She felt his approach before she heard the door open, and she let the magic die away before Squall's footsteps sounded against the stone walkway. No, she did not want to explore this in his presence. Besides, as soon as he was near, the bewitching change came over her again: she saw only him, desired only him. Her magic, and her own thoughts, were secondary. The Bond was more far powerful than either of them could have imagined, she realized. But that moment of awareness was lost in the moment that his lips brushed against her neck.

Squall slid his arms around her waist, and she leaned back into his warmth. How strange it was, she reflected, that she had never at all yearned for a man's arms around her until now. Kisses, touch, whispers of love; it all fell into place so easily, like a part of her that had been missing and was now found. She ran her fingers along the line of his jaw, rubbing at the growth of stubble that had run rampant over the past few days. It was handsome on him, Rinoa thought, even if it did make him look more like a vagabond than an Esthari warrior.

"Edea says that my troops will reach us soon. When the ship comes into sight, I will go down to the shore to meet them."

"And then?"

The question that had remained unsaid since her awakening, the question they had both cast so far from their minds had slipped through her lips, and she could feel his dismay at her for letting it take shape.

"Will you leave with them?" she asked.

He turned her shoulders around so that they were facing, and took both her hands in his.

"Come back to Esthar with me. As my wife."

"I... No. I will not marry." She let her hands fall from his fingers. "Squall, I have told you that."

He frowned deeply, and his confusion and irritation thudded inside her own chest.

"But you surrendered your maidenhood to me. Why would you do that if—"

"Surrendered? Was it a treasure to be taken?" Rinoa screwed up her features in distaste. "The only ones who would place value on my maidenhood are those who seek to trade me. It was nothing more than... than the absence of a particular experience. 'Maidenhood' should never be used to define a woman. Odd, wouldn't you say, that we have no word for a man's bodily virtue?"

The bewitchment had broken; she felt angry, insulted, her sense of pride returning to her in one fell swoop. The spell seemed to have shattered for Squall, too. His face had closed off to her, his eyes now cold and hard, and she could no longer feel the imprints of his emotions.

"Then this has meant nothing to you."

She stared at him, exasperated. "Come now, Squall. Do you truly believe that?"

He turned away, arms clenched across his chest. Rinoa was dumbstruck. How could his features turn to ice so quickly, if he loved her as she loved him? Unless...

...What had Edea told her? A new Sorceress is an object of desire.

"You... you wanted to claim a Sorceress for Esthar," she said, taking shaking steps backwards. "That's why you came here, isn't it? You and your father knew how powerful your clan would be, with a Sorceress as your bride. How could I be so blind—"

"Is that what you think of me?"

"What else should I think? You never wanted me before, not until the Succession happened. When I was your captive—"

"Don't assume to know what I wanted," he hissed, striding close to her. "I wanted you in that forest, on the night I cut your shackles. You did not want me. You made that clear when we stood before my father. I would never have touched you until you desired me. I am not a man that takes women by force."

"Then it did not cross your mind, when Edea asked you to be my Knight? That a Sorceress would be an asset to your Lord?"

"Sorceresses are hated and feared in Esthar. You lived there; you must know that. If we return together, and your nature is discovered, we will face hardship upon hardship. But I would face them, all of them, to be with you. I do not care what you are. I do not care."

He spat the words fiercely at her, and she faltered.

"Squall... I..."

"Why do I even need to say it? You know how I feel. You feel it in the part of you where the Bond has entangled us. You might pretend that it is not there, or close your mind to it, but I know you can feel it, just as I do."

She looked down at her bare feet on the soil, tiny flowers trampled underneath, and tried to still the thundering in her chest.

"You... Then you closed your mind to me, too," she said, in a plaintive accusation that sounded weak to her own ears. "When you said that this meant nothing. You were simply trying to wound me."

"Yes. I was." Squall's anger seemed to ebb, but his jaw was stubborn.

She lifted her hand slowly, waiting for words of rejection, and when they did not come, she placed it on his chest. It was not his heartbeat she was searching for this time, but his emotions. The Bond was still there. She closed her eyes, and tried to feel what he was feeling. It was all there, mingled with her own shock, anger, and hurt pride. Her emotions were mirrored in him. And underneath the wounded ego, those momentary distractions, was his love. Deeper and steadier than she had imagined. He had spoken the truth: Squall had loved her for a long time. He had loved her when she was a thief, a runaway noble, a prisoner.

"Then you know," he said softly. "And I know what is in your heart, too."

"Yes."

Rinoa leaned her forehead against his chest, afraid of the words she would say next, but compelled to say them all the same.

"Even so, I will not return to Esthar. I cannot do as you ask."

They were at an impasse. He knew it just as she did, she was sure. She raised her face to him, seeing her own resignation reflected in his eyes.

"I will make my own path. And I will not do so as any man's wife."

"Then we will part," he said simply.

"So we will," she replied.

She did not watch him leave the meadow. She knelt there, her head bent to touch the carpet of wildflowers, knowing she would not look on as he waited at the shore, nor would she watch as his ship dwindled to a dot on the horizon.

She would not watch, and she would not weep. She was a Sorceress.

A/N: This update comes with a bundle of apologies to anyone who was hoping the post-Bonding bliss would last for a few chapters. Other considerations are still getting in the way for these two hotheads, at least at the moment. But I hope you'll keep reading.

Anyway. Thanks to everyone who has been reading my fics this year. Wishing you all much, much better times to come in 2021. -colobonema

p.s. The "much stouter man" was, of course, Cid, who has been dead for a couple of decades in this story. (You might... not want to dwell too heavily on the fact that Squinoa embarked on their sex marathon while dressed as Cid and Edea...) I admit it was ever so slightly creepy how Edea kept leaving meals by the door. Let's assume she wasn't pressing a glass against the door to eavesdrop or anything.