Squall set a fast pace along the cobblestone sidewalk, Rinoa following a half step behind. Determined to keep up, Rinoa ignored the sting in her knees and quickened her pace.

What was she thinking? Following a stranger to his apartment was a rash and stupid decision. She knew almost nothing about this guy, and she wasn't sure she believed half of what he told her. While she didn't get the ax murder vibe from him, he was most certainly an enigma.

He'd also come to her rescue, no questions asked, even if she hadn't needed it, and seemed to expect no praise for his actions.

Rinoa thought of Seifer and how he would have behaved in the same situation. If he were in Squall's place, he would gloat and posture and declare himself her knight in shining armor. They hadn't known each other that well or dated very long, but she had a very clear picture of the kind of man he was.

Seifer was a lot of fun, and up for anything. The more dangerous and stupid, the better. But he was also proud, cocky, charming, and the brightest star in his own personal universe. He would have expected her to praise him for his bravery and quick thinking and he would have sulked if she didn't fall all over herself for sticking his neck out for her.

Squall, it seemed, was the exact opposite. He was humble and even a little put off by her thanks. As if chasing an attacker into a dark alley wasn't an act of selflessness or courage, but just another day at the office and not worthy of her gratitude.

Even now, he didn't say anything, and it was hard to tell if he'd offered the use of his first-aid supplies because he felt obligated, or because he was secretly kind and didn't want to show it.

"So, where are you from?" she asked, both to fill the silence and satisfy her curiosity. "I know you're not a local."

He didn't say anything but she thought she heard him sigh.

"I'm from Deling City originally," she said when it was clear he wouldn't answer. "I moved here two years ago."

He glanced over his shoulder and slowed until they were side by side.

"The Deling City Princess," he said.

"Correct," she said, pleased that he'd connected the dots. "But I'm not really that much of a princess. It's just a silly nickname the locals gave me when I first moved here."

He gave a non-commital grunt. To Rinoa, it sounded like a challenge, but she refused to take the bait.

"Your friend the cook is the Galbadian Stallion?" he asked without much enthusiasm.

"Zell?" Rinoa snorted. "Oh, no. No way. He'd actually be offended you thought so."

Squall said nothing.

"It's named after this guy I used to know. Typical good-looking jerk," she said. "Vain. Cocky. You know the type. A petty bit of revenge, I guess. For leaving without saying goodbye."

Squall did not acknowledge that he knew what she meant, or that he'd even heard her.

"You're really not going to tell me where you're from, are you?" she said.

"Does it matter?"

"It does when you're trying to get to know someone," she said.

He sighed again and Rinoa gave up. He might say that he wasn't mysterious, but he wasn't doing much to dissuade her of that notion, either. The guy was a vault.

"This is me," he said and gestured at an ugly, two-story brick building that bordered the east side of the train platform.

They did live in the same neighborhood. Rinoa and Zell's apartment was only a block away and a street over, but this particular section had a reputation. The train platforms at night could be dangerous, even for the locals.

"Wait out here," he said. "I'll just be a minute."

Rinoa gaped at him.

"You rescue me from a wannabe purse-snatcher and then choose to leave me outside, alone, in the dark, ten feet from one of the worst spots in town?" she said. "You do know what goes on out here at night, don't you?"

He glanced at the platform, where a group of shady-looking men drank from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags in the shadows beyond the security light. They were being watched, and though Rinoa doubted they would do anything inappropriate due to her status in the resistance, she didn't want to take that chance.

"Fine," he said, "but you'll wait in the lobby."

"You're not going to let me in your apartment?"

"I'm not."

"Are you serious?"

"I don't know you."

"You think I'm going to rob you or something?"

"No," he said. "But if something happens to you later, I don't want your DNA in my trash can."

"My DNA?"

He gestured at her knees. Which were still bleeding.

"Is something going to happen to me?" she asked. "You said you weren't an ax murderer."

"I prefer swords."

Rinoa took a step back, away from the door, unsure in his company for the first time.

"You're not being serious," she said. "Because I'm going to take you seriously unless you tell me otherwise."

He held her gaze for an agonizing moment, then the corner of his mouth quirked upward into something like a smirk.

"Seriously joking."

Rinoa laughed nervously, but relaxed when he held the door open and waved her inside. His joke might have fallen flat, but it told her he did have a sense of humor, even if it was a little dry and far darker than her own.

She was familiar with that sort of humor, though. Both military folk and resistance members seemed to have a dark turn to their jokes. Her father once told her it was a way to cope.

One more sign that Squall was not who he said he was.

She stepped into a small, dusty-smelling lobby with a single naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. To the left of the door was a battered wooden bench and a hallway leading to the ground floor apartments. To the right, a small bank of post boxes, numbered 1-8. A nearly empty vending machine that was at least 30 years old and covered in dust and cobwebs sat in the corner. What was left inside the machine looked antique, the packaging faded and dingy.

Squall pointed to the bench.

"Wait there. I'll just be a minute."

Rinoa stood beside the bench, but did not sit, and watched him ascend a set of battered wooden stairs carpeted in a faded, threadbare runner. The color might have been blue or green at one time but it was hard to tell anymore.

From the hallway came raised voices and a thump. A door slammed and someone started crying. Rinoa wandered toward the hall to the sound of breaking glass and a man's pained grunt, a curse, and a woman's furious shrieking.

She paused at the mouth of the hallway and considered what to do. It wasn't her problem, and it wasn't clear who the victim was in this scenario, but how could she stand by and pretend it wasn't happening?

What if the man was beating his wife? What if pitching dinner plates was the woman's only defense? What if someone got hurt or killed?

Then again, this was Timber. She'd learned a long time ago lovers in this town were as likely to kiss each other as they were to give each other a black eye, and to Rinoa it seemed the women were sometimes worse than the men.

Zone tried to explain it to her once. Something about a belief that it was healthy to express anger in a physical way, but it hadn't made much sense to Rinoa. Where she came from, domestic violence was not an expression of love, it was a felony.

She drifted into the hallway and identified the apartment. Behind the door, the woman called the man a bastard and something heavy hit the floor. She raised her hand to knock, prepared to intervene.

"I told you to stay on the bench."

Rinoa turned toward the sound of Squall's voice. He stood at the mouth of the hallway clutching a handful of first-aid supplies.

More glass broke inside the apartment and the woman laughed meanly.

Squall glanced at the door, expressionless, then shrugged.

"They do that all the time," he said.

"Have you ever tried to help?"

"When I first moved in," he said. "They didn't appreciate it."

"I'm told couples beating each other up is sort of a custom here," she said. She shot one last glance at the door and decided to leave it be. "Like, it's just a... thing here. After two years, I'm still not used to it."

Squall shrugged again.

"Here," he said and dumped the supplies into her arms. "Come on."

Rinoa followed him down the hall and back into the lobby. He gestured at the bench and Rinoa obediently sat.

"Weird isn't it?" she said and picked through the convenient little packs of alcohol swabs and gauze. "The idea that you're supposed to hurt the one you love?"

Maybe that explained why her father was so cold to her. He didn't hurt her with fists but with his absence, with his silence. He hurt her by leaving her, no matter how temporarily, in the care of a nanny so old-school she believed a sound beating was the appropriate punishment for spilling milk. He left her to grieve on her own, and never bothered to share his own with her. And every time he actually was home, he'd looked at her like he was seeing a ghost.

She didn't want to think about that. Not tonight.

"I wouldn't know," Squall said. "Not my place to judge."

"Is mutual domestic battery acceptable where you're from?"

His face went blank and he folded his arms over his chest. Rinoa took that as a sign they were done with this conversation.

Rinoa gathered the first-aid supplies beside her on the bench and opened an alcohol swab. Squall stayed where he was, as stoic and silent as one of her father's body guards.

Rinoa didn't know what she expected. That he would insist on doing it for her, like she was three years old? Zell wouldn't have. Seifer, either, if she was being really honest.

Besides, she wasn't helpless. They were just scraped knees, not a severed artery. She wasn't going to bleed out if he didn't hold the tourniquet.

With a fresh alcohol swab, she mopped up the dried blood on her shins, picked the remaining gravel from the scrapes, then used a second swab to clean them. It burned like acid, and both knees started to bleed again until she smeared a glob of ointment on them and slapped a couple of comically large adhesive bandages over the wounds.

"Better?" he asked.

"Loads," she said. "Too bad you didn't have any cute Kung-Fu Hot Dog bandages. I mean, if I'm going to look like a five year old who fell off her bike, I might as well go all out, right?"

"Those are specifically designed for large scrapes."

Rinoa couldn't help but laugh. Of course he would have special bandages for different wound types. He was practical, no matter how hard he insisted he wasn't.

"So serious," she said, mocking his frown. "Do you have anything for wounded pride?"

"Can't help you with that," he said. He nodded at the pile of discarded swabs and bandage wrappers. "We'll go after you clean up your mess."

Rinoa wadded the refuse in her fist and picked up a bit of paper from the floor.

"You and Zell are going to get along famously. He's a mess-a-phobe too."

"I don't have a problem with messes," he said. "I have a problem cleaning up after other people's messes."

"Is it okay for me to leave my DNA in this trash can?" she asked. "Won't it lead the police to you if something happens to me?"

He frowned darkly and Rinoa held back a giggle. She tossed the handful of wrappers in the overflowing trash bin and ignored the tug of the bandage adhesive against her skin. Satisfied, Squall nodded at the door.

They were halfway back to the bar before either of them spoke, but it wasn't Rinoa who broke the silence.

"I'm from Esthar," he said. "And no, people don't beat the shit out of each other to show affection in Esthar."

Rinoa stopped walking and turned to him. "Esthar? Really?"

"Something wrong?"

"You don't have an accent."

"So?"

"I thought Estharian people all talked like university professors."

"Not all of them."

Rinoa pondered that. There wasn't even a trace of the famous Estharian condescension in his voice. If she were to place him by accent alone, she would assume he was from suburban Deling City or maybe even Balamb. She would have to pay closer attention from now on to determine whether he was lying or not.

"And what branch of military were you?" she asked casually.

"What makes you think I served?"

Rinoa smirked and cast him a coy, sideways glance.

"Experience."

Squall remained silent.

"Is it classified or something?"

"Do you always ask this many questions?"

"It's not like you're giving me much to work with," she said. "You don't talk about yourself, so how else am I supposed to get to know you?"

"What makes you think I'm interested in getting to know you?"

Rinoa grimaced. That stung, but she persevered.

"You came out tonight when Zell invited you," she said. "And you're here now, talking to me, so some part of you must be at least a little interested."

He didn't respond to that one way or another.

Man, he was a tough nut to crack, but Rinoa was not ready to give up. She was going to figure him out if it killed her.

Squall pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to relax. Being expected to share things about himself was not something he was used to, and not something he did willingly. Like it or not, he needed information from this girl, and the only way to do that was to get to know her.

That was easier said than done for someone like him. Conversation didn't come easy and he hated small talk. He also hated the usual let's-get-to-know-each-other bullshit, too. Which was why he was terribly unsuited to jobs like this. He was generally a surveillance guy. He preferred to observe from a distance, not get directly involved.

He was going to have to do something if he planned to get through this. Xu was likely to pull him off the job if he didn't come up with something good, and soon. As much as he hated it, he needed to be here. He needed Timber's archives. He needed to find out the truth, one way or another.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm not great with words."

"You're a writer who isn't good with words," she said. "So why do you write?"

"It's a job," he said. "Why do you work at the cafe?"

"It pays the bills," she said. "And I get to work with friends, which makes the day go by faster. I also got to know a lot of the people in town by working there, so that helped when I first moved here."

"Why would you move here?" he asked. "This place is -"

He couldn't think of a word that wouldn't offend, but if he was being honest, a shit-hole was close enough to accurate.

"Rough around the edges?" she suggested. "I know. I just needed to get away. My father and I don't get along and… It's complicated."

Squall didn't know what to say to that. He couldn't exactly say he got along with his father either, but getting along with a man who spent the better part of Squall's childhood behind bars for a crime he may or may not have committed wasn't so easy.

"So, which army did you serve in?" she asked. "Esthar?"

Her casual tone betrayed her. It was a little too casual and Squall went on defense.

"When did I say I was in the army?"

"All you military types give yourselves away. I should know. My father's one of them."

"G-Army?" Squall asked, a little surprised.

"Mmm-hmm," she said, now the evasive one. "You?"

"Twelve years in military school."

"SeeD?"

Squall was now taken aback. He stopped walking and only belatedly realized he'd just answered her question without saying a word.

"What do you know about SeeD?" he wondered out loud. SeeD was not common knowledge, at least not by that name.

"I know a guy who was one," she said. "Maybe you two know each other? Does the name Seifer ring a bell?"

It rang more than a bell. It set off a thousand different alarms inside his head and he struggled not to show it. He could not afford to be compromised. Especially not by the likes of Seifer Almasy.

"Not really," he lied. "But we don't all know each other."

"Really? Seifer told me it's a really small organization," she said. "Pretty much everyone knows everyone else, don't they?"

"Can't really say," Squall said, wishing to change the subject, and fast. "Did you know him well?"

"I thought I did, but," she sighed and shrugged. "He split one day and didn't say goodbye, so I guess not. I liked him, though."

She had to be one of the resistance members Seifer mentioned in his early reports. Until now, Squall was inclined to believe that those reports were a load of fluffed up crap, but the facts were starting to line up. The coffee shop. The Owl insignia. The girl that knew more than she should about an operative who should have known to keep his mouth shut.

Now, if he could just get her to talk about how involved she was in the resistance, he might actually have a way inside.

"Anyway," she said. "It's old news. I doubt he's coming back."

Squall doubted too. To him, it looked as though Rinoa, and this place, were just a layover for Seifer. He did just enough to make it look like he was finally following orders, and then split. Where he was now remained a mystery, and if Seifer had paid attention to their training, he would know how to get gone and stay gone.

Seifer actually following orders should have been a huge red flag for Quistis and Xu to begin with. Considering how intelligent they both were, Squall was surprised neither saw it coming.

They heard the music long before they rounded the bend and Squall thought maybe he should just call it a night. He'd gotten enough info to satisfy Xu for the day. Tomorrow would be a different story, but confirmation of the identity of Seifer's insider was enough for now.

"I'll walk you to the door," Squall said. "I think I'm going to turn in for the night. Been a long day."

"Oh, no sir," Rinoa said. She stopped and wagged a finger in his face. "I owe you a water and you are not going to bail on me before I pay my debt. We had a deal."

He would rather go home to his quiet apartment and avoid standing elbow to elbow with drunk people who would happily kill him if they knew why he was really here. For all he knew, she might kill him if she found out what he was really up to.

But, with a few drinks in her, she might spill more information. Something Seifer hadn't gotten yet.

"You have to stay," she said. "Besides, you have to see the Naked Sharpshooters at least once."

"The what?" Surely, he'd misheard her.

"They're the band," she said. "They're not half bad but they're also kind of a train wreck. Definitely worth the price of admission. You have to see them."

Squall hesitated just a second too long. Rinoa took him by the arm and dragged him inside before he could object.

They'd almost reached the bar when the tiny brunette girl from the cafe intercepted them.

"Where have you been?" she demanded. "Zell said you had to take a call, and then you never came back and you made me worry and Zell's out looking for you and I was sure you'd been kidnapped and sold off to a Estharian drug lord or we'd find you chopped up in a ditch behind the train station -"

"I'm fine," Rinoa cut in. "Really. I just needed to take care of something, but I'm fine."

"You could have called, you know!"

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Next time, you call!" The girl put her hands on her hips and glared at Squall. "Who are you? Some kind of weirdo? Why are you following my friend?"

Squall took a step back, not sure how he was supposed to answer that. Rinoa was the one who had dragged him inside, not the other way around.

"Selphie, it's fine," Rinoa said. "This is Squall."

Selphie cocked her head at Squall, her eyes narrow.

"Don't get any bright ideas, pal," she said. "If you lay another hand on my friend, I will explode you into a million tiny pieces. And, I'm already taken so don't think you can just be all pretty and handsome like that and get away with it."

Again, Squall didn't know what he was supposed to say.

"Squall's one of our customers, Selphie," Rinoa said. "The Mystery Man?"

Selphie huffed, then spun around when a guitar began to wail from inside the bar.

"Oh, they're on!" she cried. "Let's go! We're missing it!"

Rinoa glanced over her shoulder apologetically and nodded at the bar. Squall was now even more reluctant to go through with this, but it was now or never.

He followed, this time without being dragged, even though her hand was clamped around his wrist.

On stage, a tall, skinny man wearing leather chaps, a black cowboy hat and no shirt howled into a microphone, posturing and gesturing at the crowd as he sang a song Squall recognized as something popular a decade ago. The Cowboy gyrated in time with the bass, and the women, plus a few men, cheered.

Someone flung a hot pink bra onto the stage and the Cowboy picked it up rubbed it against his chest, grinning like a wannabe movie star. Selphie shrieked louder than the music, broke away from Rinoa and climbed up on the stage.

"Uh-oh," Rinoa said. "Here we go."

"Irvine Kinneas! What in Hyne's name do you think you are doing?"

Squall couldn't help but gape when Selphie snatched the bra from Irvine's hands and began to beat him with it. Irvine, no longer singing, dodged her attacks and covered his face as Selphie chased him around the stage.

The band continued to play without missing a beat.

"What the hell is wrong with this town?" he wondered aloud.

"I have no idea, but it's pretty entertaining, right?" Rinoa said. She took his arm, more lightly this time, and guided him to the bar. "Would you like your water on the rocks or straight up?"

"Either's fine," he said. He didn't particularly care either way.

"Dealer's choice?" she asked.

"Surprise me."

"Ooh, my kind of answer."

The water he was served was not only full of crushed ice, but also bubbly and flavored with lemon.

"Are you surprised?" she asked.

Squall just nodded, but he was. A little.

"Hey!"

Squall turned around. Zell barreled into him, sweeping him up in a bone-crushing and very unexpected bear hug.

He was not used to being hugged. Or touched. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but he was sure he didn't like it. But, before he could break Zell's neck, he was released and treated to a huge, toothy grin.

"Glad you could make it, man!" Zell shouted. "What are you drinking?"

"Water."

"Hell no," Zell said and pushed his way between Squall and the bar. "Nobody's drinking water tonight. Get him a shot of Mimmet. And a beer."

"I don't-"

Whatever Squall was about to say was lost beneath a rock-star scream from the stage and the machine gun thumping of a snare drum. He glanced at the stage to see Irvine on his knees, braying into the microphone. Selphie danced with abandon behind him, twirling the hot pink bra over her head. The stage around Irvine was littered with a rainbow array of women's underthings and more than a few men's boxer shorts.

Squall was no music scholar, but he was fairly sure in the rest of the world, that trend had died twenty-some years ago, along with feathered hair and velvet pants. Then again, he noted that roughly half the crowd was over 50 and that both velvet pants and feathered hair were more common than not.

"They only do that because Selphie loses her mind," Rinoa informed him when a pair of lime green bikini briefs bounced off Irvine's chest and landed on top of the rest. "The more they do it, the louder she screams. Of course Irvine thinks they do it because they love him."

In some ways, Timber was a little like stepping backward in time. In others, like waking up to find himself in a completely different universe.

A shot glass was forced into Squall's free hand, breaking his attention away from the band and it's adoring fans. The water disappeared from his other hand and was replaced by a beer.

"Bottoms up!" Zell yelled and lifted his own shot glass in the air, tapped it against Squall's and drank it down.

Squall, who definitely did not like liquor, dutifully swallowed his down anyway. It tasted like mouthwash mixed with paint thinner. He almost threw up, but chased it with a few swallows of the beer to wash the taste out of his mouth.

It didn't help. He wanted the water back, but the bartender had already taken and washed the glass and the bar was now too crowded to ask for another.

Another shot appeared in his hand. This one tasted of cinnamon.

Rinoa smiled apologetically. Zell thumped his back hard enough to leave a bruise.

On stage, Selphie frowned at the screaming admirers and aggressively tossed handfuls of panties, boxer shorts and bras back into the crowd.

And Squall, who was not much of a drinker, who had already downed two shots and still held a beer in his hand, already knew this whole thing was a huge mistake.

And it was far too late to back out now.

It was nearly 2 in the morning when Rinoa and company left the bar. She walked with Zell, who guided a very drunk Squall down the sidewalk. Somewhere behind them, Selphie and Irvine bickered.

"We'll walk you home," Zell said. "Which way to your place?"

Squall stopped and turned around in an uneven circle and scratched his chin. He gestured vaguely in the direction of the TV station.

"Over there? Some… where."

Rinoa knew better, but she didn't volunteer that information. She didn't want Zell to know that she knew where he lived. He would never, ever let her live that down. She also sensed that a more sober Squall wouldn't appreciate her giving out his home address, even if he was too drunk to find his own way back.

But would he appreciate sleeping it off on her couch? She wasn't really sure.

"Let's take him to our place," she said. "Get him sobered up."

Zell giggled. "If I'd known he was such a lightweight I would have gotten him one of your girly drinks."

"My girly drinks have three kinds of alcohol in them," Rinoa said, "and you sure seem to like them as much as I do when there's no one but me around."

Squall snorted and tripped over air. Zell caught him before he hit the pavement. Rinoa sighed and shook her head at the pathetic mess he'd become. She thought all soldiers could hold their alcohol, like it was part of the job description, but over the course of the last four hours Squall had gotten torn up on three shots and a couple beers. For anyone else in her crowd, three shots and two beers was just a starter.

She wasn't really much of a drinker, either, but she'd learned the art of pacing herself. Which meant that she was generally more clear headed than the rest, and less likely to wind up needing to be peeled up out of a gutter. Plus, someone had to look after Zell and Selphie, who were both prone to bad decisions when alcohol was involved.

Squall tripped over a curb and Zell came to his rescue again.

"Easy there, man," Zell said. "The ground's a lot closer than you think."

"What's wrong with this place?" Squall grumbled. "There's something wrong with the gravity here."

Zell laughed and guided him back onto the sidewalk. Rinoa took point beside Squall, just incase he decided to take a header into the wall.

"Poor guy," Rinoa said. "He's gonna hate himself in the morning."

"Bet he normally goes to bed at like, 9pm," Zell said. "Gets up before dawn."

"I'm right here," Squall said. "I can hear you."

"Sorry," Rinoa said. "I feel bad for letting Zell take your water away."

"Hey!" Zell cried. "I didn't pour alcohol down his throat. He coulda said no."

Rinoa shot him a look and he shut his mouth.

"Didn't even want to go out," Squall said mournfully. "Don't even like to drink. Hate bars."

"So… why did you come out, then?" Rinoa asked.

"Quistis says I need to be more sociable," he said. "I was tryin' to be sociable."

Quistis? That sounded like a girl's name.

"Is Quistis your girlfriend?"

"Psssh. No. She's my boss."

Rinoa stopped walking for a second to let that sink in. She knew everybody at the Tim and there was no one named Quistis on staff. And certainly no female editors or bosses. In fact, the only employee that wasn't a man that she could think of was the archivist, Angie.

"Quistis is your boss at the magazine?" Rinoa asked. "I thought Glenn was your boss."

"Glenn's an idiot."

"What about Quistis?"

"Pain in the ass."

The alcohol certainly made him chatty. Rinoa didn't have any idea who this Quistis person was, but she doubted he would have said a word about her sober. She decided to take a gamble.

"Does… Quistis know Seifer?" she asked, taking care to keep her tone casual.

"Course she does," Squall said. "Why wouldn't she?"

"Hold up, you know Seifer?" Zell said. His face twisted into a scowl. "How the hell do you know him? You just got here and he's been gone like two months."

"Seifer's a moron."

"You got that right," Zell said. "Hate his stupid, tall, smug face. And that stupid coat! Like, ooh, look at me! I'm a massive edge-lord with an ego the size of Esthar for no good reason and people only like me because I'm tall and good lookin'. Pshh. Hate his stupid guts."

"He's not that bad," Rinoa said testily.

"Yeah, he is," Squall said, then stopped walking. "I dunno where we're going. Where are you taking me? My apartment's over there."

He pointed in the direction of the square, eyes round like a lost child.

"I just wanted water," he complained.

"We'll get you some water when we get to my place," Rinoa promised. "Maybe something to eat, okay?"

Squall looked at her with those sad, drunken puppy dog eyes and swayed.

"You're really pretty."

Zell made a choking noise and his fingers dug into her arm.

"Thank you," she said, not sure what to do with such an earnest compliment coming from such a guarded, stoic, and drunk man. "You're pretty too?"

"My mom was pretty," Squall slurred wistfully. "People say I look like her. I hate it."

Was. Past tense.

Well, that was something they had in common, wasn't it? Rinoa felt an unexpected empathy and kinship. He knew the same kind of loss she did. He probably lost her at a young age, too, judging by the way he seemed uncertain about whether or not they really looked alike.

Rinoa took him by the arm and guided him carefully down the sidewalk.

"My mom was pretty, too," she said, "but I don't really remember her. She died in a car accident when I was five."

"Mine was..." he began, then shook his head. "Where are we going?"

"Our place," Zell said and puffed out his chest. "I'm gonna make some breakfast, baby! Bacon, eggs, waffles, the works!"

Squall nodded agreeably.

Their apartment was only a block from Squall's, but the neighborhood was night and day. Here, no one loitered on the corners, up to no good. The street was cleaner and the buildings in better repair.

She wondered if he was underpaid, or if he just failed to do some research when he chose his apartment. Or, maybe, whoever he worked for chose it for him. SeeD, maybe?

Squall Leonhart was definitely not a journalist. There was no doubt, that was just a cover. He and Seifer worked for the same people, and presumably, they were here for the same reason. If those reasons had anything to do with the Owls, she was already up a creek. Seifer already knew a great deal about the organization. Enough to take them down if he wanted to.

Was that why he disappeared? Was that why Squall was here?

Something about all this didn't make sense. If Galbadia was looking to round up the resistance, they would have started making arrests already. Which meant, what? SeeD, or whoever, was after something else?

Whatever was going on, she would have to be very, very careful with him. It would be wise to avoid him altogether, but her curiosity was already piqued. She knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn't back down until she was sure the other Owls were safe.

And if they weren't, she wanted to be able to warn them of danger ahead of time. Timber's fate depended on it.