fall

[llyse]

            He loved his son dearly, but sometimes he wanted to strangle the boy.

            He supposed that every parent wanted the best for his son. Whether that 'best' meant that the child would be like him or not like him, depended on the parent's own upbringing. Squall did not want his son to grow up like he grew up, friendless and alone and ignored because he wanted to be ignored. He supposed that he need not have worried about that.

            The celebrated son of Squall Leonhart, Delyn had the upbringing Squall had wanted him to have. Cadets flocked around him, cooing over the little boy, and later the proud youngster who had inherited his father's dark-brown hair, his mother's slender physique, a pair of hazel eyes closer to startling gold than brown that came from neither parent, and a boundless charm that was probably a gift from Hyne. Gunblade classes, leadership classes, high scores in all classes—that was Delyn. The boy was intelligent, talented and quick on the uptake. A fine SeeD-to-be. And if his parents had to go out and run the risk of death once in a while, well, so did the parents of many people.

            Squall wondered when he started to go wrong, idyllic life rotting inside-out. Squall didn't know. The boy seemed fine.

            And then he failed his SeeD test. Not just failed, mind you. Killed a man, and ran like hell was on his heels. Scared of blood. Monsters were not human beings. Squall had been understanding, and Delyn had exploded.

            (Stop telling me that there's another test, dammit! I know that there's another test. I'm not taking it. I don't want to be a goddamned mercenary. Go away, father, take your platitudes somewhere else. I never wanted any of this. I—never—wanted—this! Everything! I don't even like the bloody gunblade!)

            Delyn had moved in with Ceresia Kinneas, and taken up the handgun with a ferocity that beggared description. He went after everything that was the opposite of what he had been doing. Piloting lessons from Nida, lessons from the Garden mechanics (gardeners, one could say), lessons from actual gardeners… he seemed to take an unholy joy in getting his hands grubby, whether in soil or in oil. Squall kept his peace. Rinoa went mad.

            It was a gradual thing. She would be fine and Squall would catch her singing quietly to herself—in the shower, in the office, while cooking, some song that he couldn't catch. Over time, these periods developed into full-fledged trances, where Rinoa would simply drift off, seemingly unaware of anything happening around her, and she'd sing or hum under her breath, softly and in a language that Squall had never heard before. Later on, she started snapping at whoever interrupted her, first verbally then with magic. It got to the point where Squall had to forbid her from going anywhere. In her lucid moments, Rinoa got quieter, withdrawing into herself bit by bit and refusing to explain the curious trances.

            Squall tried to make peace with Delyn, slowly and with Zell's help. Rinoa's trances got more frequent.

            Thus stood the state of affairs.

            "…And he says he doesn't hate you, not really, he just doesn't like to be pushed around any more. 'Seems he's had quiet enough of that already, mind you. Don't you worry, Squall—" flashfire grin, impish "—he's just in that rebellious adolescent stage. Just don't try to make him into Squall-the-Second, and you're on the right track."

            They made an odd pair, the tall Commander and the stocky Second-in-Command. Odd, that the boy that most irritated Squall when he was young had developed into his best friend. The years had had many surprises. Quistis, former instructor, confessing that she had felt close to breaking, training and sending students to fight and perhaps die. She was retired now, a Garden noncom, happily serving advisory duty. Irvine, ever the flirt, the first to marry. By all accounts they'd rushed into it, Ceresia born not even a year, post-Ultimecia. Zell, shy around girls, engaging in a succession of affairs, and still staying boyish in manner and in looks.

            "Whatever."

            And that was why they made a good pair. Squall was the (still) darkly handsome (but married) Commander, distant and, well, commanding. Zell was the down-to-earth one, the one you could come and tell your problems to, having ditched the vertical hairstyle for something more dignified, but still retaining the boyish, laid-back humor that was something of a trademark of his now-a-days.

            "Come on," Zell exclaimed, punching his Commander in the arm. "Liven up a little, won't you? You've been as dark as a lowering storm since that son of your got a burr up his arse about SeeD-ship."

            "It's not that," Squall relented, running one hand through thick brown hair. Here was a man at his prime, old enough to be experienced, but young enough to retain speed and strength. "It's Rinoa," he admitted, brow creasing into a frown. "You know how she's been lately—"

            Zell sobered at that, and they walked in companionable silence for a while before he offered, "She'll get better. Have faith."

            Squall nodded, then added softly, "I just wish Matron were here; she'd know…"

            Edea was lost to them, and to all other mortals, and Zell sighed, laying one hand on Squall's shoulder.

            They reached the elevator soon enough, Squall parting ways from Zell to go to his office. The martial artist had an appointment elsewhere—the job of Garden Second-in-Command involved more hands-on work than that of the Commander, which was generally spent mired in paperwork. It made Squall long for his SeeD days sometimes, hard clean fighting and nothing else, but he did find fulfillment in his work, in being head of this enormous family. He'd be happier if he wasn't in the limelight quite so often, though.

            He'd meant to look for Rinoa; she wasn't in the office. He headed back down to the dormitories, where Nida and assorted other people said she had been heading. He found her easily enough—the tangible vibration of her singing (almost a spell—he did not want to think) resounded down the hallways. The closer he got to her location, the more the sound ceased becoming sound and metamorphosed into force, like standing too close to a boom box except that there was no tangible increase in volume. The vibrations shivered up his body from the floor, partnering his heartbeat, a melody that was as unsettling as it was strange.

            When he reached out to punch the access code, the keys slipped from under his fingers, reality warping like taffy. Squall had to take a moment to calm himself down. When he next reached out, the keys were solid.

            Rinoa was sitting in the center of what had been his dorm room, seventeen years and a lifetime ago. This close, the song seemed to meld with his flesh, making his ears tingle. Her lips seemed barely to move at all, eyes wide and gone from hazel to gold, staring into the distance. She would have looked normal, seated on the floor, hands folded in her lap, if not for the incessant singing.

            "Rinoa?" Squall called tentatively, stepping over. She watched him mildly as he edged closer, not daring to touch her for fear of being slapped away with a spell like so many times before. When he reached Rinoa, Squall stepped gingerly to her left and junctioned Shiva, casting a quick shell in case Rinoa chose to lash out, before he reached out and tapped her shoulder gently, calling her name again.

            It was the wrong thing to do.

            The young sorceress rose with a fluid grace, inhumanely fast. One hand thrust towards his chest (Squall tasted ice, memories unreeling in a flare of mage-gold eyes) and he was airborne quite suddenly, shell spell cascading magic in sparks around him as Rinoa's blast of magic chewed through the wall separating his dorm from the Training Center (four-foot thick magic-resistant insulated reinforced titanium-and-duranel, to withstand T-Rexaurs banging from the other side), bearing him along with it. The shell collapsed as he picked himself up gingerly among debris and rubble amid near-tropical heat, peripheral vision noting two stunned-looking figures crumpled near each other. A flare of cool blue light lit the area as the Lion rose to face his Sorceress.

            Rinoa looked incongruously pretty, magic-sparks flaring at her fingertips, eyes a lambent gold. The streaks of gold in her hair flared equally bright, dark brown hair cascading to her waist and flying free. On close inspection, her eyes seemed pools of gold rimmed by black and white, eyelashes and skin, and all the more startling for it. She had lost none of her beauty as she grew older, merely tempered innocent prettiness with experienced maturity. Sorceresses aged slow and lived long, then they went up in fire, as the magic that roiled in their blood became too much for mortal, aging flesh.

            Squall remembered Edea, Matron; dread sorceress, mother like no one else.

            He lifted the blade blessed—or cursed—with his name.

            Rinoa's bolt caught him right in the heart, lodged in his chest. It burned cold, sorceress ice. Clarity came to him, memories: clean frigid taste of ice, coppery-iron taste of blood, crunch of gravel; Edea's face, Rinoa's—startled as she was now, gold fading from her eyes as she reached out, as if to reclaim the missile. "It's all right if you're the one who kills me…" Who had said it? Her? No matter; it was meant for him, like ice. He felt the pull of magic, dragging him back; but the ice slid him on, and in the end he laid a ghost-kiss on Rinoa—her magic?—and let the ice take him.