They'll say you're like her.
It repeats in her head. Over and over and over and over.
Like all of them.
But Ultimecia has been in her head for years now, kept at bay, because the succession does not work the way they think it does. The succession is a river. Ultimecia thought she could bring herself to a point on the river without paddling the currents. That she could bring all points together, until it was no longer a river, and just space, endless space.
Rinoa just wants to swim to shore.
(Burn the witch.)
Seifer's voice in her ear, after. When she asked, pleaded, begged him to come back, to see that he could be forgiven. Laughing. She's the witch but he is who they'll burn, he says, and Rinoa tells him he is wrong.
A Knightless Sorceress. Because a woman with power unchecked by a man is the thing the world fears the most.
Squall's body, cold under her hands, is what she fears the most.
He is alive, but only just, and she will find him before they do.
.
Ellone will not go back in time.
There is nothing she can do, and Rinoa knows this. Rinoa wants to hear his voice, and Ellone knows that. They both know it will hurt more than it will help.
I brought him back from the dead once. The thought is not a comfort. Then he was dead, but not dead. Then he had only given up, dead in one timeline but not in all, and she just had to find the right one and pull him out.
If he dies in this timeline…
The place between her shoulders stings and her fingers feel the heat of a thousand years of magic. She hates being useless.
Ellone searches, searches. Almost as bonded to him as Rinoa is, her own unique roll in the succession. She is a Sorceress. She is a Guardian. She is a product of Odine's experiments and of innate abilities forgotten by history.
She is all that keeps Rinoa from sending a shockwave over the globe, freezing time and space so she can walk through infinity to find him. Ellone searches, and Rinoa breathes with the pulse of magic in her veins, all of her spent trying to control the uncontrollable.
(Burn the witch.)
She is already burning, from the inside out.
.
The phone doesn't ring, when she calls Quistis. Rinoa interrupts the silence. "You found him."
It was probably Garden blocking her all along, and Rinoa is angry that she never acted on her suspicions. It is a testament to their friendship that Quistis called. It is a testament to Quistis' loyalty to Squall that she called. If he left, she would follow. That loyalty was always the only thing stronger than her ambition.
Her downfall, Xu would say.
Her humanity, Rinoa would retort.
Xu hates magic. The Odine of their generation would research inoculations, not jewelry, if Xu has her way. Not binding, but eradication.
"You have about a ten minute lead," Quistis says, and hangs up before Rinoa can respond. To make her other calls, as quickly as she can. To make the calls she is supposed to make first.
Xu does not have her say. Rinoa dissolves in a cloud of blue smoke.
They'll say you are just like her.
But they have made her very, very desperate.
.
Squall is on IVs, a human pincushion, when she finds him. A hospital that is not a hospital, deep in the cliffs of Centra. Where SeeDs go to die, she thinks, because why else would this land still be uninhabited except for the things Garden pretends never existed? Things Edea never knew about. Things Seifer never knew about.
Things Squall never knew about.
Or where SeeDs go to be born.
To train mercenaries.
To destroy the Sorceress.
To mass an army.
Seifer would tell her later, he thought maybe that was Ultimecia's motivation all along. SeeDs, swarming like lokusts. The old word echoes in Rinoa's head in the tongues of witches. Lokusts. Locusts. Locus.
She flexes her hands.
Not to kill her, he wonders out loud, devotion hard to shake, even when it gives him nightmares. To kill us all. An army that answers to the Sorceress alone.
Rinoa was there, in the future. As inside of Ultimecia's mind as Seifer was, and she never got the chance to leave.
Everyone wants to kill us all.
On the thin, sterile bed, Squall's skin is as white as the paper sheets. Rinoa holds her fingers over him, searching. He is in there, just below the surface, whatever they put in his veins unable to block her when she is so close.
A Knightless Sorceress.
(Burn the witch.)
.
When she dreams she dreams of loss.
She is five years old, standing in the rain and screaming, the rough canvas of a fireman's jacket chafing her tiny arms while she watches her mother wheeled into an ambulance, a sheet covering her face.
She is sixteen and all alone, running, running, running, her pounding heartbeat not enough to block the last words she heard her father say.
She is seventeen, and Seifer stands under the lurid parade lights, her reflection distorted on the steel of his blade.
She is seventeen, and she is abandoned in space, and the thin voice in her ear is counting the seconds until she dies.
She is seventeen, and the power of a thousand worlds threatens to split her open, and the one person who promised to protect her is on the ground, dead, and she doesn't think she can do this alone.
She is all of time and space, a cloud of smoke that runs through the world, and she is feared and loved and used and betrayed and-
She wakes, and she is twenty three, a hero, a savior, and all that stands between her and persecution is the thin tone of a machine as Squall flatlines beside her.
Why do they want to destroy us? The question echoes. Ultimecia is the last of them, and she is all of them. The final word in the final sentence in a book written about fear.
.
Blue smoke curls between her fingers and her shoulders burn, her hairs standing on end and she doesn't know what she has done or why or how or—
Rinoa—
Her breath catches, and she doesn't want to open her eyes. Doesn't want to wake from this dream.
His footsteps echo behind her and she exhales slowly when she feels his hands come to rest against her shoulders. She leans back, and he is warm, and solid, and there.
You died, she whispers.
I did?
She turns and he is not the corpse-like figure in a secret Garden hospital, but he is Squall. Strong and healthy and looking at her with love. They are standing in the garden behind the orphanage. Flower petals dance between them, their light fragrance almost lost to the sea salt in the air. She is in a thin sundress, the one she wore the first time they went away together, and he has on jeans and a plain grey t-shirt, nothing Garden, nothing SeeD to be found.
She wants to ask if this is real. If she dreamt his disappearance, his injury, his death. If she went to sleep by the cliffs on the coast for Centra and woke up here, after, on the other side of almost losing him.
If this is Time. If she has done this, created this world where they can live and she is not a Sorceress and he is not a Knight, or Commander of Garden, where they are young and in love and trying to make a life just like everyone else who is not consumed with war and magic.
And if she has, is it a place they can stay?
"What's wrong?" Squall asks, and Rinoa turns and looks up at him, kissing him lightly on the cheek.
"Nothing," she says with a laugh. "Nothing at all."
Burn the witch.
Nothing until they are found.
Have you watched WandaVision? Because if you want to know what type of writing I aspire towards, you should watch WandaVision. Also you should just watch it no matter what because it's amazing, but it also is the kind of writing that reaches into the deepest part of my psyche and whispers, these are the stories you want to tell. So yeah, watch it, because it's basically my Rinoa headcanon and this fic is my love letter to the show.
Also, hi! We moved to Maine. And rescued a dog. And like a million other life changes since the last time I posted anything. I am horrible at responding to messages because I am almost always distracted by kids or animals or life, but I seriously love every single person reading this and if I owe you a response please don't give up on me because my ADHD brain thinks it has been a few days since I got any messages regardless of the fact that it's been more like a few years.