Chapter 6
"Sis, where'd Mom go?"
"She went away, Squall."
"Are you going away too, Sis?"
"No of course not. I would never leave you."
Liar.
"Good. I miss Mom. Did she go away because she doesn't love me anymore?"
"No, of course not. She didn't want to go. Squall, listen to me. She'll always love you and so will I. You'll never be alone."
Liar.
"Liar!" Squall screamed, sitting bolt upright, the sheets that covered him drenched in sweat. It took him a moment to collect himself, remembering where he was. He slept on the floor in Rinoa's room for the night, fully clothed in case any threat was made on her life during the night. She had offered him the couch to sleep on, but he had refused, telling her that the floor was far more comfortable.
"Squall?" Rinoa mumbled sleepily, forcing herself to sit up. "Are you alright? I heard you screaming."
"Fine," he muttered in reply, still shaken from his nightmare and embarrassed from his sudden outburst.
"You know, you don't look alright," she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, trying to make them focus on the figure in front of her. "Have you got a fever or something?"
"Really, I'm fine," he protested as best he could.
"Just let me check." She drew back the covers from over her and leant over to Squall, placing the back of her hand against his brow. "You're sweating but you don't seem to have a fever." She noticed that he remained silent, and that his cheeks had turned a deep shade of crimson, clearly noticeable against his usually pale complexion. It was then that she remembered. She was wearing the rather short, low cut and revealing night-dress that Seifer had bought her for her last birthday. Personally, she hated it, but she couldn't find anything else to wear the night before and it was marginally better than nothing.
"Squall, I'm so sorry…I…," she babbled, rushing back to the bed and wrapping the sheets around her. "I don't normally wear it."
"You don't need to explain."
"But I do," she replied hastily. "Seifer bought it. I don't like it but…" she trailed off. "Sorry," she muttered sheepishly.
An uncomfortable silence followed, each waiting for the other to make the first move and break it. It was Rinoa who surrendered, not being able to stand the tension that was slowly building between them, suffocating her.
"It's early," she pointed out, looking at the clock, which read 4:30am. "If you're sure you're alright, I'll go back to bed."
"I'm fine."
Squall lay awake staring at the ceiling. It was too late for him to get back to sleep. If he was at Garden, it would be time for him to wake up and he just couldn't break from his familiar routine. He knew that Rinoa had managed to get some more rest. He could hear her breathing more softly and slowly than usual, revealing the fact that she was sleeping soundly.
"She probably needs the sleep. I guess it's unusual for her to be involved in fights and have to sneak out of people's rooms in the dead of night. I guess it says something about my life when a day like this is becoming commonplace. I know I should be shocked by it, most people would scared stiff by it, but to me, this was just another day at the office. Well, almost…"
"Sis…"
"Something bad happened to her. Maybe now I have to finally accept that. I guess I just can't go on living with the blind hope that maybe she just needed some time to herself, to get away from everything. It would even be a comfort to know that she just stopped loving me, thought of me as nothing but a whiny little boy and was glad that she finally got rid of me, but no. Not this…I can't take this."
"Something really bad happened to her, and that…that bastard had something to do with it."
"Before, I didn't think anyone would harm Ellone. I mean, everybody liked her, she'd never get involved with anything bad, and I can't remember her getting into trouble even once. Who'd want to hurt her?"
"But, Rinoa. Why would anybody want to hurt her? And yet, here she is, wasting her life with some no good loser that she's too afraid to leave. I guess there are some people in the world who feed off other's pain. How is it that I only just realised that?"
"I'm a SeeD. A SeeD for fucks sake. I just do what I'm told, fight for who I'm told to. I've killed people. And what for? Orders, that's what for. So far, I know that the people I killed deserved it, that's some comfort at least. Even still, I did feel some remorse. Even when I was ordered to kill this man who had brutally murdered his own children. He found out that his wife had an affair and he just went psycho. He had connections high up in the judicial system and was acquitted of any wrongdoing but he'd been heard bragging about after that. His wife employed me as an assassin, and although I thought he deserved to die, I still felt a huge wave of guilt wash over me. I was a murderer. I was no better than he was."
"How could I not have opened my eyes sooner and seen that the world is just this black void, without goodness, without humanity."
"Or at least, my world is."
"And that's the world that Ellone was sucked into. And once you've been taken over by it, there's no return."
"This is a world for scum like me and Seifer. What the hell did Rinoa do to get involved in this? Nothing. She's just an innocent bystander, a casualty of war if you like. She doesn't belong here. It should have had nothing to do with her, but now, she's in this as deep as the rest of us. Just because she fell for a complete bastard."
"Her life is being threatened because of him, and she still feels it's safer to stay. I don't like to think about what he's done to her to make her so afraid. Before, when she was wearing that night dress, I saw the bruises all over her body. I didn't ask her though, she'd probably just have said she'd tripped and fell. Bullshit, he's been hurting her. I don't know whether he's just doing it for kicks or whether he's forcing her to…I don't even want to think about it. I may not be the most humane of people, but even I can't stomach the thought of her being raped. That's the kind of men that most disgust me. Anyone who can do that without any semblance of guilt deserves to be shot. That's another reason I didn't ask her for the truth. If I knew, I wouldn't be able to keep my temper with Seifer, and then I might get taken off this case."
"Listen to yourself, Squall. You were dreading this assignment. It was going to be the most boring ever, right?"
"But now…I don't know. Something makes me want to stay. Maybe it's just because I feel so sorry for her. I want to make sure she's alright. Or maybe there's more…"
"No, I mean, she's very attractive and everything, and what I saw before…wow. But that can't be it. There's a lot of good looking women around and I've never wanted anything to do with them. No, it's not that. I just care about protecting my client."
"Yeah…that's it. There's nothing more."