Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII and all characters within are the property of Squaresoft, and not, I repeat not, mine.

Sheets of water pounded against the window. Nearly simultaneous with the thunder that shook the house down to its very foundations was a flash of lightning.

Another flash then illuminated the room for the briefest of moments, capturing the imageof two women. One older, gray hair tending toward white, the other young, long, dark hair sweat-slick and tangled. The shriek of the wind through the rafters harmonized with the agonized shrieks of the brunette.

The older woman was torn. She knew that this sudden storm was dangerous, that they needed to be safely tucked in the cellar—but moving her charge might hurt her badly.

Another crack of thunder, followed by a different sort of crack; looking out and seeing a tree split by lightning, burning furiously in the driving rain, decided her.

"We need to move!" she exclaimed over the storm to the woman in the bed.

Panting heavily between pains, the terrified young woman nodded and, using the arm of her attendant for leverage, struggled to her feet.

Carefully, as gently as possible, the two moved downstairs. They made it to the main floor without incident and began the slow walk to the back of the inn, where more stairs led to a secure storage cellar. "Easy now," encouraged the old woman. "Be careful, there's a girl." They descended one step.

Two.

Thunder crashed and the labor pains started anew just as Raine was stepping down. Convulsing with the agony of a hard birth, she lost her footing and toppled down the stairs.

The midwife's grip on Raine's arm had loosened with the jolt of thunder and she stared, horror-struck and helpless, for the briefest instant at Raine's sprawled form on the hard cement floor, before rushing to her side.

"My baby," Raine gasped, blood flecking her lips. "Help—" her plea escalated into a scream of agony as her child fought to escape her body.

Raine, already taxed from nearly two days of labor, had been brutally, grievously injured by the fall. In attempting to shield her unborn child from the worst she had broken an arm and, if the blood that spattered her face when she breathed out was any indication, at least one rib, which had damaged a lung.

Observing this the midwife buried her emotions, knowing she would pay for it later, and did what was needful.

Not long after she held a bloody, naked infant in her hands, whom breathed his first as his mother breathed her last.

His sudden squall alerted the woman to the absence of the squall outside. She looked at the baby in her arms, looked at Raine's crumpled form, and looked up, heedless of the wood and rock blocking her view of the sky.

"Killed by a sudden squall," she quavered.

She gazed again at the wailing infant in her arms. She made a decision.

"Killed by a sudden Squall."

A/N: Some minor changes to correct typos and a couple of word choices. Mostly I'm updating to make it clear that this is a one-shot.