Authors Note: Sorry for taking so long to update! This chapter may seem a little weird; it takes place on the same night as the last chapter but concentrates more on Rinoa and Squall. You'll be pleased to know, it does contain Squinoa! Yay!
Chapter 10 – Stole
Rinoa studied herself in the mirror, the same question had been lingering inside her for years. She looked no different to any other human, there was no extra ear lurking in some irrelevant place. She didn't see the point of this, it didn't matter how long she stared at her reflection in the mirror, she still wouldn't know if she was a mutant or not. It was a suspicion she had when she was younger, but in time she forgot about these strange powers she had.
Her forgotten memories had only come back since she had found out about Squall. For some reason she wished she were a mutant, it was probably to get an easy explanation of her powers. She wasn't sure what the reason was why she wanted to be a mutant, but sometimes she thought it was to do with Squall.
Rinoa was distracted from her thoughts when she heard her door open and Selphie stepped in.
"How do I look?" she said pretending to be a model walking down a catwalk. She wore a denim skirt that went down to her knees with a short slit on either side, knee high boots, a red V-neck top and a long black jacket over the top that reached just below the knees.
"You look perfect. Who's the lucky guy then?"
Selphie's smile grew wide until she looked like she was going to explode with excitement, she began jumping up and down and let out a little shriek. "He's called Irvine and he's really cute." She looked at the watch on her wrist. "Sorry, I gotta go I'm alright late."
"Have a nice time," Rinoa called as Selphie quickly left the house. She turned back to her mirror and sighed as she watched herself once more. She opened once of her drawers and rummaged around the back of it until she found what she was looking for. Out of the drawer she pulled out a small leather box, and opened it to reveal a silver ring with the engraving of a creature that resembled a lion. She'd had the ring for almost two years now and it wasn't even hers, when she first found it lying on the ground she'd promised herself to give it back to the owner. Unfortunately when she tried to give it back, the owner had left without trace. She decided she should give it back now so she put the ring back into the box and placed it in her pocket, then left for her destination.
~*~*~*~*~
"Squall, hi, I was just passing by and wondered if you was doing anything."
Squall looked at Rinoa for a moment and then said, "I'm not doing anything really. Do you wanna come inside"
Rinoa could feel herself getting nervous, even though she'd known this man that stood in front of her for quite some time now. "I was wondering if you would want to go for a walk with me or something?" she forced herself to say. "If you don't want to you don't have to."
"I'll grab my jacket," Squall said softly before disappearing back into his house and a few minutes later reappearing.
"Where do you want to go?" Squall asked following Rinoa's lead.
"Anywhere quiet I guess, I'm in no rush anyway," she said. "Selphie's on a date with some guy she just met and there's nothing to do."
Squall gave a slight smile as a reply and they both continued following the path that was spread out before them. Although conversation was little, Rinoa enjoyed the time she was spending with Squall. Sometime she'd find herself thinking about him at night, although she'd tell herself she didn't, she knew that she had started to develop strong feelings towards this man. Sometimes she wished that they were more than just friends but she never got her hopes up, in case she got hurt.
They walked up past Balamb hotel and down to an area for fisherman, although there weren't as many here at this time as it was getting dark. Squall sat down on an empty bench looking out towards the sea; Rinoa took the opportunity to sit next to him. Neither of them spoke for a while until Rinoa broke the silence.
"How old were you when you first moved here?"
"Sixteen."
Rinoa turned her head towards Squall. "Why leave Deling City so suddenly?"
Although Rinoa already knew too much about him, he didn't want her to know everything he had done and why. She'd already got herself too involved; he didn't want her to get hurt so he stayed quiet.
Rinoa sighed, she knew she was asking things she thought she knew the answer to, but she wanted to make sure she was right.
"When we went in the morgue the other day and that Commander guy came in, I knew I'd seen him somewhere before but I couldn't remember where," she said hoping Squall would talk to her if she took a different approach around it. "It only hit me today, at the end of our last year of school he started hanging around and asking students questions.
"He was trying to find us," Squall said quietly.
Rinoa smiled slightly but soon put back her serious expression. "You left early on the prom night, I saw you and Seifer running out of the school grounds, I tried to catch up but you had already gone."
Squall turned his attention to Rinoa. "He found us and he was going to kill us. Seifer came to the prom to get me and we left that night."
Rinoa shuffled through her pockets and then held her hand out with a silver ring on the palm of her hand. "You left in such a rush you forgot something."
Squall took the ring from her hand and studied it for a moment. "You kept my ring all this time?" he asked a little surprised.
Rinoa nodded her head with a smile. "It's a nice ring, I made sure I wasn't going to lose it."
"You took better care of it than me," he said grabbing her hand and placed the ring back in her hand. "Keep it."
Rinoa looked at Squall surprised. "I can't have this, it's yours."
"Not anymore," Squall said.
Rinoa looked at the ring then at Squall, she'd only just realised that they were inches apart from each other. Before she realised what she was doing the gap between them closed and their lips met as they embraced in a passionate kiss.
~*~*~*~*~
Zell checked every room in the house one last time but found no trace of Squall. Tired, panicked and annoyed he locked the house door with the key that Seifer had given him. Zell knew what had happened was serious, Seifer never trusted Zell with anything, and now he was giving him his keys to look for Squall?
He'd been searching around Balamb for nearly an hour now and he still hadn't found him. It was as if he had been taken as well. He quickly shook this thought off as he ran in a direction he not yet been.
Finally after searching the small town he saw the person he was looking for with a raven-haired woman.
"Squall, I've been looking for you all over the place," Zell said running towards his friend. "Something bad happened, I've got no time to explain now. Just follow me."
There was a serious tone in his voice, one that was rarely used by Zell. Squall followed his friend around the town of Balamb until they entered a block of apartments. He stopped when he saw Seifer on the floor next to a familiar apartment. Squall doubted Seifer even noticed they'd come because he looked to deep in thought. He looked like he was panicking and worried, two emotions that were hardly shown by Seifer.
"Squall," Rinoa said quietly, when he turned his attention towards her she pointed to the door of an apartment.
Parts of the wooden door were damaged and broken, as if someone had pried the door open. Squall pushed the door open and stepped inside the apartment; there were tables and furniture toppled over, glass smashed over the floor and many other items carelessly thrown about the place. He could hear the radio playing in the kitchen; this wasn't as tampered with as the other room but the window was smashed. Squall looked at the sharp pieces of glass around the frame of the window. Someone had obviously come in from the window, as there was wet blood on the glass.
He walked out of the kitchen and back into the main room, he didn't understand what this had to do with anything. Why had Zell shown him this?
He heard a crunch from under his foot, he looked down to find he'd stood on a broken picture frame. It wasn't until he took his foot away that he realised what this was all about. The woman in the picture was someone familiar, he knew the woman who owned this apartment.
Quistis.
A/n: I know this is gonna sound really cheap but anyway here goes. I recently posted my first ever story, which wasn't final fantasy 8! Shock, horror I know, I even surprised myself on that one. Anyway after taking three hours of deep concentration and serious typing I finally finished it and posted it on Friday. The depressing thing was I've only had one review. Thank you to Cutterin. It's a story on the series 'Taken' please if you have any spare time can you read and review it for me. Even if you've never seen it you can review and say something like 'didn't understand what the hell was going on but I thought the story was written…' and I'll leave it to you to tell me how it is. It really means so much to me if you do review it for me, infact if you do you'll get a special mention in an authors note at the top of my next chapter of this story. ^_^ Thank you!
Big thank you to:
The Angel of The Lion
Starlight
Jenza
Phoenix Blade
CTHKSI
Sandra Leonhart
Sephiroth
Lorelei
