~Queen of the Faeries~'s notes: I created this story because I hated how everyone portrayed Rinoa as a stupid little ditz who didn't know what was going on. Besides, being a Sorceress must have some traumatic effect on her psychological condition, not to mention the prejudice that she would face, seeing as how SeeD was created to destroy her. Anyway, enjoy.
Pacing the Edge
"Just show her around, okay? I have some things that need to be taken care of. Take her to the training center, show her what we've done to it. I'll be back in an hour or so."
No one could have ever predicted what those words started.
Rinoa glared at his back as he disappeared into the elevator, which would of course take him up to his office on the third floor, where, undoubtedly, a massive pile of paperwork would be waiting for him. That was what was wrong with being Commander of an enormous operation like SeeD. All the paperwork that had to be done took up half of his time. Even if she had just returned from being in Deling City for a month, he barely had time to give her a welcome-back kiss.
And he didn't have to send one of his SeeDs to show her around Garden. It wasn't like she had never been here before. Besides, she was more than capable of walking around the Garden by herself. After all, she did have the power of two powerful Sorceresses inside her. But it was just Squall's way of protecting her. Sometimes he babied her too much and it annoyed her.
She looked around. Damn, she never thought she would miss Garden so much. It had only been a month since she went back to Deling City to take care of the life she left behind, but the entire lobby had changed. She knew that Selphie had managed to convince Squall to let her redecorate the lobby, which had been scarred by the multiple battles Garden had been through. The ceiling, high above, was no longer the same shade of pale peach it had been before, but a velvety black color, dotted with diamonds. It looked like -no it was- a model of the nighttime sky.
"Weren't you here before? I know I've seen you around." The SeeD said to her. He was tall, with long blonde hair.
"Yeah. My name is Rinoa." She told him.
He held out his hand. "Justin. Hi."
"Are you a SeeD?"
"Yeah. Rank 14. You?"
"Not a SeeD yet." She answered him truthfully. She had changed drastically since the second Sorceress War, both in physical power and her worldly wisdom. "I've been here for a while, before. In fact, I think the dorm I was assigned is still open. Did you guys redecorate?"
"Yeah, the ceiling's new. Isn't it nice?"
"Very."
The boy named Justin led her around the Garden, showing her the eight different sections until she held up a hand and stopped him. "Not to be rude or anything," She said mildly. "But I've seen this all before. I live here. But Squall said something about a new part of the Training Center?"
"Sure. We added on a whole new extension, and the monsters are much harder."
The Training Center was larger and denser than before, the trees so tightly woven, it would be hard to jump from tree to tree without hitting your head on an outstretched branch. Rinoa could see a Marlboro in the distance. "They've improved the monsters too." She started off in one particular direction.
"Wait, not that way!" Justin yelled.
The yelling was what probably attracted the T-rexaur's attention.
At first she was startled; she had forgotten what its roar sounded like. Justin probably thought, from the frightened look that took over her face, that she didn't know what was going on, so he gestured for her to stay in the tree while he pulled out a double-barreled shotgun, aiming.
The dinosaur lunged, and the marksman's aim went wide, nearly taking her head off.
"I've got it!" She screamed, running forward and splaying her fingers. "Break!"
The pillar of rock thrust upward out of the ground and knocked the T-rexaur to its side. It wasn't as powerful as it could have been if she hadn't been wearing the Odine ring, but it did the job. She watched as it spread over its body until it became nothing but a statue and it toppled over with a heavy thud that reverberated around the Center.
Justin climbed to his feet, eyes narrowed. "Powerful spell." He commented. "Usually those blasted Breaks miss."
She shrugged nervously. "I've got some pretty high stats on my magic." She told him honestly. "Are you okay? The T-rexaur knocked you pretty hard."
"Fine. Pride got wounded, that's all." Now it was his turn to shrug. "You still want to see the other part of the Training Center?"
The other part of the Training Center reminded Rinoa of a room she had seen in Galbadia Garden at one time. It was a room like a gym at the very end of the Training Center, where there was equipment of all kinds, complete with gymnastics mats and parallel bars.
She looked around at all the cadets training and felt a strange sense to fight. I wonder if any of them could stand up to my magic? But Justin shook his head and headed to the back of the room, to yet another new section. She followed, twirling the ring on her finger. To a normal person, it was just a ring with a strange spider design, but to those who knew, it was an Odine product, designed specifically for her, to repress her powers.
This one was a room specifically designed for sparring. Two walls are entirely covered with weapons to choose from, from the common pistol to the more exotic Katal blades. The center was undecorated. The floor was laid with a thick blue mat, where several pairs of people could spar. Right now it was a class for about fifteen cadets. The instructor was barely a few years older than Quistis was.
He was teaching them something about tripping the opponent. Rinoa smiled. She had learned more than politics on her visit back home. General Caraway had also insisted that she learned more about empty-handed fighting. The Sorceress blood running through her veins had heightened some parts of her mind, and she had learned more than a few things.
She twirled the ring again once more, watching.
Discreetly, maybe to humble the innocent-looking girl for defeating the T-rexaur while it nearly sent him into KO, Justin moved his foot to trip her, the way the Instructor was teaching the cadets.
But she had learned the counter from one of her father's friends. She leapt into the air, using his shoulder as a boost and flipped behind him, pushing the small of his back with her palm, sending him sprawling forward. The class stopped their lesson to stare. Justin got up, eyes blazing with humiliation.
"I'm sorry." Rinoa told him sincerely. "I didn't mean to embarrass you."
He didn't reply, but his gaze was answer enough.
"That's pretty impressive." The Instructor called, eyebrows raised. "Care to show the class?"
Feeling rather embarrassed now, she moved to the front of the class, where the man tried the tripping method. She repeated what she did to Justin, and the teacher fell to the mat.
"Not bad." He admitted, accepting her hand up. "You a SeeD?"
"Trying." Rinoa answered, in half-truth.
The instructor and Justin exchanged a long glance, and the teacher nodded, obviously agreeing on something. The older one moved forward, aiming to hit her with his shoulder.
She had seen this before, when she sparred with her father. She spun to the side, a dancing move intertwined with fighting, ending up behind him. She grabbed his shoulders and dug her knee into his back. Twisting again, she tossed him over her shoulder so that he landed with a heavy thud on the mat.
Rinoa stumbled at the weight and fell to her hands and knees. The ring, which had always been too loose, slipped off her finger and onto the floor. When she recovered, the black dots fading from her vision, there were weapons pointed at her throat.
She backed away uneasily, to find the tip of a sword jabbing into her back, not enough to break skin, but enough to be menacing.
"H-hey," She called nervously, staring at the array of weapons all aimed at her. The cadets' eyes were blazing with hate. "What…what's going on?"
"I knew it." Justin spat. "The way your spell worked. And this," he held up the ring that had fallen off her hand. "Is an Odine ring."
Rinoa flinched.
The instructor had drawn his own sword to dig into her sternum. This is bad. Quistis had once told her that the instructors never draw their own weapons -especially against a younger person- unless it was serious. "You're a Sorceress." He said with equal hate. "A demon bitch, daughter of the devil."
She swallowed, knowing what would happen next
By the time Squall found her, she was sure her neck would be lacerated for a month.
They had each grabbed some loose cords or other, whips or even belts, stringing them around her neck like nooses. Each of them had hold of one, yanking on it. The cords tightened around her neck and she gagged.
She stumbled as she was jostled every which way and she tried to resist. The cords only tightened, and the cadets were laughing, leering. She was lurched around, and would have toppled over if the cadets on the opposite side of her hadn't pulled back, maliciously.
Even the instructor was there. He had two of the cords, and he was pulling the hardest. Something flickered in her mind, a memory of something…
"You're unholy. You shouldn't even exist."
"You're a Sorceress, bitch. You kill people." Insults were flung at her face and she refused to let the tears well up in her eyes.
"What the hell is going on here?"
Squall's demanding voice made all the students stop, and the instructor paused, all of them looking up.
"What are you doing that that young woman?"
The instructor let go of the cord he had been holding, stepping in front of Rinoa like a wildcat protecting its kill from rivals. "She's not a young woman, sir. She's a Sorceress."
"Let her go!" Squall snarled.
Rinoa had never heard his voice like that before, commanding and forceful and absolutely fierce.
"No sir. With all due respect, this bitch deserves to die. She's a Sorceress and we're SeeDs. We're supposed to kill her."
When the instructor didn't step aside, Squall shoved past him, pushing him to the floor.
"Move!" He thundered at the students, and they scattered quickly.
With the weapon that he was never seen without, he cut the cords off her neck, his hands tender but full of repressed anger at the same time. Rinoa could see the red bruises and the raised blisters there without even looking.
"She's a Sorceress, sir!" Justin protested fiercely. "She deserves to die! We're SeeDs! We were meant to assassinate Sorceresses!"
"No we weren't. Those times are over. We are meant to be mercenaries, not some sort of witch hunters." Squall loosened the cords and helped the Sorceress to her feet. "Rinoa, are you all right?"
"Fine." There were tears in her eyes. "Please let me get out of here."
The students scattered as Squall took her wrist and nearly dragged her out of the horrid room. "Justin Koa and Instructor Levay. Both your ranks shall be dropped for this exhibit of irresponsibility. No excuses."
He led her out of the Training Center, ignoring the looks of the students in the hallway. One of the girls, a petite redhead, was nice enough to ask Rinoa if she was all right, and she tried to smile in response.
Once in the empty hallway into the Infirmary, Squall apologized.
"I'm sorry, Rinoa. That shouldn't have happened."
"Hey, how were you supposed to know that there would be some vigilante SeeDs that didn't agree with your way of thinking?" She said, even though talking hurt. The pain was like a sore throat, only on the outside.
"I shouldn't have let you go off with Justin by yourself. He's always been a little high strung about this entire SeeDs killing Sorceresses thing." Squall put his right hand on the control panel on the outside of the door, and it automatically slid open. His face was set like marble. "Damn it. And right after I told you that times have changed and no one gets hurt for being different."
"Squall, aren't SeeDs supposed to kill Sorceresses?"
"That's what it originally started out to be, as a line of defense against Sorceresses. But not anymore. We went against Ultimecia and Adel because they were a threat to us. We wouldn't specifically target innocents."
Rinoa considered his words. During the first mission, in Timber, he had said that he would do anything to get on the train out of there. That one statement had made clear to her just how serious he was in his work, and how callous he could be. But after the Second Sorceress War, SeeD had changed. They were still mercenaries for hire, but often with qualms, rejecting missions that were immoral. "So you're sure that they won't hate me just because I'm a Sorceress?"
"I'm sure. The Burning Times were over thousands of years ago. We're past the times when people were persecuted just for being different."
"It's fine. Really." She followed him inside. The office was empty, and Dr. Kadowaki had warned the students never to go into the back room unless it was an emergency, so she simply sat down in one of those comfortable plastic chairs that always seemed to lean away from you. "Being a Sorceress is being different. Many of the humans are just like that. I understood this when I first received my power. I…expected something like this would happen at one point or another. They think that I deserved it."
"Deserved what?" A feminine voice came from the back room, but it was far too young to be Dr. Kadowaki. In a few seconds, a tall slender young woman stepped into the room, a large box blocking her view. Quistis. "What's going on? Ow!"
Squall automatically caught the box before it fell and helped her put it onto the desk. "Where's Dr. Kadowaki?"
"She's been working too hard lately. So I told her that she needed a break, to go visit her family, and I volunteered to take over the Infirmary for a while. If it was an emergency, I would call her, but what's going on? Why do you need to see her?"
Squall simply inclined his head toward the waiting room. Quistis frowned, walking over to where Rinoa was sitting. Didn't she just return from trying to reconcile things with her father? Is she in trouble already?
The raven-haired young woman lifted her head and in the whiteness of the infirmary, the thin rivulets of blood seemed particularly frightening.
"What happened?" Quistis demanded. "This wasn't an accident."
"I…One of the SeeDs was showing me around Garden, because I wanted to see what was redecorated. My Odine product fell off and they realized I was a Sorceress."
"Enough said." The instructor's eyes were suddenly cold. "I can't believe they would do something like that."
Rinoa shrugged, and her cold dismissal of the event shocked both Quistis and Squall. "I'm a Sorceress now. I'm going to have to get used to it."
"Ow!" Rinoa brought in her breath in a sharp hiss.
Quistis frowned, dabbing at her neck with some vile liquid. "Stop fidgeting. This'll prevent infections."
They had brought the other three members of their team into the infirmary to discuss this, and while Rinoa found it unnecessary, they seemed enraged, with Irvine muttering things and Zell shadowboxing "Wow, they're super-mega-creeps!" Selphie exclaimed. "Who were they?"
"I don't know. I don't know a lot of the students here." Rinoa answered, but she knew she was lying. She knew the name of almost every old student here, and given an hour or so, she could have figured out who were the ones that nearly strangled her. "Ow!"
The door slid open again, and a cool presence walked in, volatile as the air. "Aw, the whole team is having a meeting, and I wasn't invited?" he put a gloved hand against his chest, feigning hurt. "I'm devastated."
"Go away, Seifer." Squall said through his teeth. "We don't have time to deal with you."
"Squall." Rinoa muttered.
Seifer had been readmitted into Garden about two months ago, as Fujin and Raijin had convinced him to try and make up for the things he did in the past. Though those two were his loyal "followers", they also wanted to do what was best for him, and SeeD was probably what was best. Rinoa had managed to persuade Squall to let Seifer back into Garden. Actually, Seifer was different now. He wasn't quite so vain or arrogant anymore, and he was starting to take his studies seriously. He had changed drastically.
Yes, well, Ultimecia did that to a person. That bitch had the capability to turn your personality inside out.
Seifer had formed something of an alliance with the team. If they didn't hold his past against him, he didn't bother them. He had also developed a sort of strong brotherly instinct for Rinoa and it wasn't rare to see most of the entire team and the posse laughing at something together.
"Calm down, puber-ermm, Squall," Seifer quickly corrected himself. "I was just in here to pick up some healing salve. Fuu cut her hand."
"Unnecessary." She said quietly from behind him.
He ignored her. Her hand was going to get infected. Why did she have to be so damn cold most of the time? "Where's the salve? And what the hell are you all doing in here anyway?" His eyes narrowed. "Rinoa, what happened to you?"
"Hi. Slight welcome-back problems." She answered.
His face darkened, but his eyes were questioning. Irvine, who had not held a grudge against Seifer, walked over and spoke rapidly.
"I'll kill them!" He roared, all but flying toward the door before both Squall and Raijin pushed him back.
"Sheung." Rinoa spoke quietly, using the affectionate Chinese term for older brother. "It's all right."
Seifer started to say something again, until she glared at him, and he became silent.
"All right. All of you get back to what you were doing." Squall took charge again. "Seifer, the healing salve is on that shelf over there. The rest of you, get back to your classes. Rinoa, I think you should probably stay out of sight until we manage to settle this. Those students…might not be the only ones who feel that way." He chose his words carefully. "I'm going to assign you to a different dorm, okay? A single dormitory."
"Cool. Only the SeeDs get those." Rinoa smiled, but it was a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"No! Why are you doing this! I've never hurt you!"
The voice echoed in her mind. She twisted in the bed. The voice sounded almost like hers, but that was impossible; this had never happened to her. She would have remembered it, GF or not.
"Leave me alone! Go away!" A scream, followed by a sickening thud.
Rinoa's eyes snapped open and she muffled a reflexive scream. Not only because the scars on her neck had opened up again in her restless tossing and turning but because the emotions of the person was still lingering in her mind.
Fear. Terror. Betrayal. Hurt. Anger. Horror. An unknown fear like a claustrophobic person would feel if she were stuffed into a pickle jar. It kept in her mind, so that she continued to feel unease, looking over her shoulder.
Whoever it was that was trying to call out to her, that person did not deserve whatever had happened to her. No one was meant to feel fear like that. Rinoa shuddered in fear and grabbed her cloak. She needed to talk to someone.
"Quisty?"
The infirmary seemed dark and haunting at this time of the night. Rinoa clutched the hood of her cloak tighter around her face. Did any of the students see me? "Quistis?" She called again.
A silhouette appeared against the moonlight in the window, and the light switched on. Rinoa shut her eyes until her pupils shrank to the size where it wouldn't hurt in bright light. She looked up through the edge of her hood and saw the blonde hair framing Instructor's face.
"Are you all right?" Quistis asked immediately, and the warmth and concern in her voice was touching.
"I...The scars opened up again. Do you have any more of that healing liquid?"
"Yeah, sure. Just sit down. I'll go get it."
She returned with a small bottle in her hands. "Hold still. Does it still hurt?"
Rinoa shook her head slightly. "No. Not that much anymore."
"Physically?"
She stared at the instructor for a moment before nodding sadly. "Even Garden's modern medicine can only help physical wounds. The emotional ones are the ones that I have to heal by myself…" She watched as Quistis screwed the bottle cap back on and replaced it on the desk. "Quistis? How come humans hate me so much?"
Quistis shook her head. "I don't know. Someone once said that whatever humans didn't understand, they feared and whatever they feared, they destroyed. It seems that this is true."
"But I've never done anything to hurt them…as a Sorceress anyway. Maybe as a member of the Timber Owls, some people might have gotten hurt because of me, but that was when I was mortal."
"I don't understand either. There are a lot of evil things in the world. Maybe humans just want a scapegoat."
"But I don't want to hurt them. I just want to help them." Rinoa said quietly. "My kind is not so different from your kind."
Already she has separated herself from us. Quistis thought sadly. Her kind. Our kind? Humankind? But we are all human, no matter what the level of power or the immortality. If she continues to think that way, how long will it be before she becomes cold and frightened?
"I know, Rin. And I understand that. But…I'm just one of many."
"I don't want to be hated like this." Rinoa whispered. "Why do they hate me?"
"I'm not the entire human race, Rinoa. I can't answer your question. I don't know."
She nodded pathetically.
"Acceptance is the first step toward healing." Quistis quoted. "You can't change what you are. You can only accept it. Good luck."
Rinoa blinked slowly, thanked Quistis, and left, returning to her dorms, staying in the shadows so that the students wouldn't see her. She laid back down in bed, the numbness of the liquid seeping peacefully into her wounds. She forced the same numbness to sink into her mind, so that maybe she could shut away the sorrow for a while.
Rinoa paced the single room Dorm impatiently. Squall had said she would have to remain in her Dorm most of the time now. But he had allowed her to go outside, with one of the others of course. But this, today, was killing her. Raijin and Fujin had imposed it first, Seifer playing his protective act as well as Squall, but then Squall had reinforced it.
"We're real sorry, ya know? But Seifer says you can't go. He's only looking out for you, ya know?"
"Agreement"
"Yeah, we agree with him, ya know? All those Garden students there, ya know?"
Rinoa had nodded, thinking that perhaps, If Squall agreed that she could go, and stay close to him....
But he hadn't.
"Rinoa, you can't. I wouldn't...be able to be with you the whole time, and neither would the others. Selphie and Irvine are in charge, Quistis still has the infirmary, Zell is in Balamb and Seifer isn't going...I couldn't do it. You can't go.
She scowled and flopped down on the bed, frustrated. She heard the music coming from the Quad. The Garden festival… she thought, a bit longingly, remembering the last one. She strained her ears slightly, the tune making itself clear to her. It was her mother's song.
Darling so share with me, your love if you have enough.
Your tears if you're holding back, or pain, if thats what it is.....
"Pain…if that's what it is..." she sang hoarsely along with the music. Tears dripped down her face.
"But Mother!" she screamed "My pain is too much for me to bear!!"
She collapsed sobbing onto the floor.