Chapter 3
.
Are you gonna give up
Are you gonna give out
Ain't that a shame
You've got no one to blame
But your conscience
If it doesn't make sense
I know that only too well
So tell me, did it happen one day
When the day that you faced
Wasn't happening
It just didn't bring anything more
Anything more than despair
--Duncan Sheik, "Serena"
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(Calm. Stay that way. Eyes out window. Hands folded in lap. I'm a good little girl.) Rinoa gazed out the window, perched delicately on the cushioned seat of the SeeD compartment. (And you promised yourself, dear Rinny girl, that you would never do this. Never give in to him again.) Her eyelids slowly slid down into a fuzzy haze where dream and memory intermingled.
* * * * * *
"...and I'll know that I'm not dreaming... That was the hit romantic ballad from a few years back, 'Eyes on–'"
Daddy switched off the radio with a grunt. I sat there, picking at the green beans on my plate. "The song was over anyway," I dared to protest.
He half-glared at me from underneath thick brows. "You should wash that shit off your eyes before you pretend you can tell me to do anything. Supposedly a 'young lady,' and can't even dress herself..."
Eyes instantly flew to my lap. (Hello, stupid skirt that Daddy bought. You match the shirt that Daddy bought. It's perfect for a grandma.) Unfortunately for me, it was a fifteenth birthday present.
"Rinoa? Rinoa! You're not even listening to me, are you?"
"I am, sir." A meek reply. I have no fantasies of being more than that, even.
He set his jaw. "Today, I took a little field trip. To a tiny little house."
I count down to the time I can safely tune him back out again.
"You were born in that house.." An awkward pause. "It is about to be sold and I found an old trunk that used to be your mother's. In the attic." He slid an envelope across the mahogany table. Humble white paper, yellowed by age, slinking quietly across vanity lacquered with pretension. "When she wrote this to you, I thought it a bit loony, to say the least. She wanted you to have something tangible showing how she saw you as a baby–to give to you once you were older."
I picked it up, cautiously.
"You've obviously reached 'older' at this point, chronologically at least, and circumstances being what they are, I believe her actions are fortunate for us. You may be excused now. I know that your stupid little brain will refuse any more good nutrients from those vegetables."
He had taught me well how to hide my emotions. I could barely make it back to my room, though, before I tore into what was, essentially, the last conversation I had with my mother.
.
To my little Rinoa–
If you are reading this, then you are finally a beautiful young woman. I'm sure that we've had some wonderful times together...both the good and the bad fade, eventually, into pleasant memories when given enough time. Right here, though, I'm watching a darling little baby sleeping underneath my bedroom window. I'm in the house in Timber, wonderful Timber, where, no doubt, I've watched you grow up as you played in the gorgeous green fields. Far away from the cold, hard, ugliness of a place like Deling City...
* * * * * *
"He what?!"
Xu shrugged. "I don't see what the problem is. He did exactly what I would have done in his situation."
Quistis shook her head. "I don't care if you're my superior, ma'am, but that degree of compliance is sheer idiocy."
"Having fun with the ten dollar words that you don't understand again?" She snorted.
The blonde instructor continued, half-talking to herself. "He gets out-and-out threats, and he not only complies with said threats demands, but also puts himself in the line of fire?"
"Stop with the italics, Quis. He's got a thing for the girl. Of course he's gonna be the bodyguard."
The next was barely above a whisper. "Fuckin' Y chromosome."
"Excuse me?"
She shook her head. "Never mind." Blue eyes shot a piercing look. "So when does this disgustingly inept plan say to inform the rest of Garden of Leonhart's little field trip?"
"It's need-to-know."
"You are not the only one who needs to know, Xu. If Galbadia took advantage of our delightfully vulnerable situation right this minute and blew up this office...you'd be dead and we'd be blind. The Garden is a body only as strong as its brain, the higher-ups, and we're flat-lining on the activity chart at the moment."
The other girl cocked her head to the side. "I've never seen you like this, Quistis, have you finally lost it?"
"It should be perfectly clear when Squall returns. The severity of his condition after I'm through with him should help you in your deduction."
"Who do you think needs to know, anyway?"
"Those of us who'd actually be sent for if things get hairy out in Galbadia. Us war-buddies tend to get attached to one another and, besides, you'd be forced to become responsible for Garden functions. That's why important conditions need to kinda travel through the chain of command and not just to it."
Xu crossed her arms and sighed. "We shouldn't be here screaming at each other. We're both civilized leaders of this establishment and, for all practical purposes, the same rank. We both answer to Squall, so I'm sorry I did not inform you of his impending absence after he rushed out yesterday evening. What, if anything, do you have to suggest to amend the way we're handling it here?"
Nodding her assent, Quistis pursed her lips, deep in thought. "Yellow alert. Low-level impact."
"Who would we need to inform?"
"Dr. Kadowaki, Selphie Tilmett, Zell Dincht, Irvine Kinneas, and Nida Aslowe."
"Isn't that pretty much your little 'I survived Ultimecia' club?"
She smiled benignly. "Plus anyone else that matters."
* * * * * *
"Rinoa? Rin?" Squall gently shook her back to consciousness.
She blinked a bit, trying to situate herself to her surroundings. "What is it? Are we there?"
"We still have another hour or so, I'd guess." A small sheepish smile crept to his face. "But I have a few questions I'd like to ask before we're in the city. I've got a feeling we won't have much time to ourselves once we've arrived."
Attempting a smile to match his, Rinoa shook the last bit of her nap from her system. "What sort of questions?"
"It's about your relationship with your father. I know that, at least from here, it looks broken. To understand his request and what this whole situation entails, I'll probably need to know why. The more information I'm armed with, the easier it will be to keep us both as safe as possible."
"Safe?" She shot him a puzzled look. "My father and I trade animosity back and forth the way most fathers and daughters trade hugs, but I doubt he'd try to kill me."
"That's not the risk. It's more about how detached he is from you. How far he'd go and feel about using you as more of a bargaining chip than he already has." Squall took her hand. "You don't have to say anything you don't want to, but I honestly hope that you want to help me help us both."
"I feel like we've switched personalities. Aren't I supposed to be the one convincing you to divulge your innermost thoughts?"
"Don't change the subject, Heartilly."
She rolled her eyes. "Ask away."
"Was it always this bad? How were things at home when you were, say, seven?"
Rinoa stared into her lap for a moment. "It was always bad, nearly as far back as I remember. Ever since my mother died. It's like she's the only person in the world that he ever cared enough about to try and change himself for. He actually had feelings sometimes when my mother was around. Unfortunately for me, she wasn't around long enough for me to get to know him like that."
"So you always hated–"
She shook her head. "I don't hate him now, even. I despise him. But no, I didn't always feel that way. I was just like any other little kid, Squall. No matter how much he hurt me, I still wanted to find some way to please him. I obeyed him as well as I could. I shot for his expectations as well as I could. But he was authoritarian and militant. Great for a general, terrible for a single parent." A pause. "My best was never good enough for him. Once I was a teenager, I stopped aiming for the things he wanted. Instead, I aimed for the opposite. Anything he liked inside me had to die."
Squall scrutinized her body language, trying to fully comprehend her words. "So that's when everything..."
"No." A small titter escaped from her lips. "Of course not. I'm not strong enough for that. The breaking point for us came from beyond the grave. He found this letter that my mother had written to a 'grown-up Rinoa' when I was still a baby. He gave it to me without reading it. It would figure, the one time he doesn't invade my privacy is the only time there was something damaging.
My mother...she wrote volumes about the little house where I was born, how it was such a simple place, and how it was in such a beautiful countryside. I was born in Timber, Squall. My parents must have honeymooned there and my mother's sentimental side must have managed to convince him to live out in the country. He found the letter I was reading in that same little house. He sold it without ever showing it to me. That place had to have been filled with imprints of...of my mother. In the vague, vague parts of my mind I see just a few flashes, of sunlight and flowered fields. Always, there is light.
The man still had some sort of heart, if it took him over ten years to sell that house even though it wasn't being used, but he could never show it to me, oh no. It cut me so deep–there was obviously this hope and wish of my mother's that I grow up out in a place like that, and not the disgusting city–and he ignored it. He never even gave me a glimpse of that life." A tear rolled down her cheek. "A few weeks later, I heard my father being praised on the news, for the new campaign of toughness that he was putting upon Timber. Soldiers quartered in people's homes, assassinating resistance leadership, utterly destroying any amount of press they had. That's when the t.v. station was shut down originally, you know. At low frequencies, radio waves are perfect for local transmissions."
.
Silence hung in the car for several minutes as Rinoa struggled to maintain composure and Squall regarded her with a surprising amount of empathy, for him at least.
"It took me about a month to acquire both the cash and the figurative balls, but as soon as I had, I split. I couldn't take a mansion any more, not when held against my mother's love for a place that not only was alien to me, but was also a place my father seemed hell-bent on destroying. I chickened out on the confrontation thing, though. I just left him a note. I met Zone as soon as I stepped off the train. With the frilly clothes my father dressed me in and my obvious prissy attitude from years of being upper crust, my princess nickname seemed fitting."
"I'd wondered about that." Squall smiled.
"Well..."She raised her eyebrows a bit. "The title became a bit tongue-in-cheek after I disposed of the first guy my dad hired to bring me back to Deling City."
The look on his face became that of pure shock.
"Hon...just let that spin around your mind for awhile. Add in the fact that I led a resistance group, no matter how inept, and dated Seifer. After him, I reverted to my prissy ways and that's why you know that side of me as Rinoa."
The clear skies that had accompanied them outside the window throughout the entire trip were starting to become marred by wisps of smog here and there.
"We're almost there. Was that enough information, Squall?" She looked at him inquisitively.
"I hope so. I have a feeling it has to be."
