OCEANS APART

Sequel to Broken Wings

I took for granted all the times that I thought would last somehow I hear the laughter, I taste the tears but I can't get near you now . . .

Right Here Waiting, Richard Marx

Chapter One

Murder In Balamb

Sylania Dulene was drunk. Not just a little drunk, but very, very intoxicated. She giggled at everything her date said, even though he wasn't trying to be funny. She'd lost count of how many Gin & Tonics she'd had, and she didn't really care. She'd be expelled from Garden if anyone found out about this, or if she got caught sneaking back into her dorm room after hours, and she didn't care about that either. Her grades were poor, and more than likely she'd be dismissed by the end of the year for lousy marks.

"Let's get out of here," her date told her and jerked his head towards the door.

Hyne, he was handsome. Sy thought she could stare at him for hours, taking in every feature of his face. True, he was a bit unremarkable, handsome in a common, boyish way, but that didn't matter. She'd been thrilled that he'd asked her out. He was a SeeD, and just to be seen with him in this bar would bolster her popularity rating ten points or more. Wouldn't the others be jealous?

Sy, a cadet, was no stranger to dating SeeDs. Just three months ago, she'd been out with the man himself, the legend, Squall Leonhart. It had only been once, but it was enough to make her the talk of the dorm for weeks. But Squall, he was still in love with that other girl, the Sorceress that disappeared. He tried to be tough and pretend it didn't matter, but Sy could see right through him. It was in those pretty blue eyes of his. Sadness written all over his face. She could tell that he was measuring her against the Sorceress, and Sy knew she didn't quite make the grade.

But no matter. Squall was pretty heartless anyway. He never paid her a compliment, not even once, and he acted bored on every date they'd gone out on. Sy was smart enough to know that she was just another conquest to him, and she was okay with that. She wasn't one of those girls that really believed that Squall Leonhart would fall in love and marry her. She hadn't been interested in mending his wounded soul like the others. She'd only been after status, anyway, just like she was now. Her date tonight was a hero, too, in his own way, though not nearly as recognized as the lauded six.

Mindlessly, she followed her date out the door, not paying attention to where he lead her, and she didn't care much. She was oblivious to the dark storefronts they passed or that the section of town he lead her through was mostly business, and absolutely deserted at that hour of the night. She could barely see straight as it was, and had to lean on him to keep from falling down.

When he lead her into a dark alley near the harbor, she paid no mind. His hands groped her, and she couldn't have stopped him if she'd wanted to. Not that she minded at all. Any inhibitions she might have had were washed away by all the alcohol she'd consumed. In the darkness, she could not even make out his face, so she closed her eyes, only to open them again when the world began to swim. Her skin grew cold and clammy, light perspiration beaded on her brow.

She felt as if she were going to be sick.

"I'm gonna throw up," she warned, her words thick.

"You'll be fine," he whispered as he undid the button on her jeans.

Sy's stomach rolled and she violently expelled the poison she'd so recently ingested. She heaved three times and collapsed to the ground, weak and exhausted.

Rough hands seized her and shoved her against the wall. "Disgusting," he whispered. "Now I'm going to have to punish you for being such a bad girl."

Sy couldn't make the words out. She was having a hard time remaining awake. All she wanted to do was sleep.

Again, he slammed her body against the bricks. Stars of pain spiraled behind her eyes and she would have fallen if not for the hands that held her in an iron grip. She could not understand what was happening. Despite her stomach's earlier protest of her drinking binge, she was still terribly, horribly drunk. More than anything she wanted to run away and find somewhere to sleep it off-a bench, a sidewalk, but her body refused to move.

For a few minutes, she did loose consciousness, and when she came to, she was on her back, her pants around her ankles. He'd finished with her before she even knew what he was doing to her. Maybe now that he was satisfied, he'd leave her alone and let her sleep, but he was far from finished.

Her eyes focused a bit and she could see a demonic rage in his eyes. He seized her hair and slammed her head hard against the concrete driveway beneath her. She screamed in pain and clawed at him, digging her nails into the flesh of his arm.

"Help!" she called out to the empty night. "Please, don't do this," she begged him. "I'll do anything you want."

Something above her gleamed in the feeble darkness, a flash of something shiny and metal. A blade of some kind. A big one.

"It's nothing personal," he giggled and brought the blade down upon her. It sliced into her face and she tasted the warm saltiness of blood on her tongue. Then, in horror, she watched him slowly draw it again and with rapid succession, he struck at her again and again. The blade sliced into her breast one final time, and it pierced her heart, a fatal wound.

The last thing she heard as she lay dying was the sound of her own shrill scream as it cut through the dark night beyond. It echoed through the deserted streets of Balamb, a sound of pitiful agony.

It's too bad there was not a soul around to hear her.

At a quarter past midnight, Squall Leonhart stepped off the train in Balamb, weary and mildly depressed. Behind him were five other SeeDs, all equally weary from the mission. They'd just returned from Trabia where a large colony of Red Dragons had begun to invade a small town, and SeeD had been commissioned to stop them. High rent pest control. But that didn't mean it had been easy. Every one of them would have agreed with him when he decided that if he never saw another Red Dragon as long as he lived, it would still be too soon. He'd lost count of how many he personally had slain, and he didn't really care. At least it was over, and Commander Trepe would be pleased.

During the Esthar Sorceress Scare five years ago, he'd resigned his post as commander, much to the Headmaster's chagrin. Squall, though was glad he'd done it. He'd missed the missions and the battles, and now he volunteered for any mission available, just to keep busy, just so he wouldn't think about Rinoa. And Quistis, she was a worthy predecessor to Squall's command. At least now he didn't have to deal with the endless paperwork and pointless meetings about the budget.

Whatever, by returning to his former duties, he had been able to regain a little of his life before Rinoa, which involved training, continuing education classes, and of course, missions. He didn't mind at all. It had been easy to slip back into it, too easy, really, to be called the same old, because it wasn't quite the same. This was namely due to his newly budding social life with the ladies. If it could be called that. Mostly, he just got laid.

At some point, he had faced up to the fact that Rinoa wasn't coming home, and it was no use anymore to hang around the front gate with the hope that she might walk back into his life and accept him with open arms. It was a foolish dream, and he'd only end up hurting himself. So, one day, on a whim, he asked a girl to have dinner with him. It wasn't as hard as he'd thought, and not once since then, had he been turned down.

The problem was, most of them didn't measure up. They were all too eager to please him, too eager to jump into his bed, though they often giggled a weak protest or two, but nonetheless willing.

"Hey Squall! Hurry up!" Kadarius Mache called back to him. "You're gonna miss the car back!"

"Go on ahead," Squall called, "I'm staying here tonight."

"Squall Leonhart, breaking the rules? You got a date tonight or something?"

"Just tell Quistis I'm at the Dinchts for the night. Be back early tomorrow."

"Gotcha," Kadarius said. "Say hi to Zell for me."

"Will do," Squall replied and he hoisted his gunblade case to his shoulder and followed the cobblestone road to the Dincht residence.

Zell was waiting for him on the step, a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. Squall thought he looked like hell. Zell's eyes were sunken, he'd lost a lot of weight and he looked, well, old. Zell had resigned following that mission to Esthar, the one that changed everything, and he'd done nothing but languish at home and drink ever since.

Squall felt bad for him, but didn't say so. He just didn't know how to approach the subject of his friend's health. Knowing Zell, it wouldn't be taken lightly, and might cause a rift between them. Squall knew now how important friends were, and he'd be damned if he lost another one just because he forgot his place. And it wasn't as if Squall was any better. He had his own way of beating himself up for his mistakes. He understood what Zell was going through, so if the boy wanted to drink, Squall was inclined to let him.

"Hey man," Zell said as he flicked ashes onto the ground. "You're back late."

Squall nodded and took a seat beside his friend on the step. "So, what's going on?"

"Same old shit, different day." Zell replied and took a long drag on his cigarette.

This was the same thing he'd said for the last several months, and Squall was beginning to worry that this wasn't just a phase Zell was going through but a real problem.

"Did Quistis come by to see you?"

Zell nodded and took a sip of whiskey. He passed the bottle to Squall, who took a long swig. The liquid burned going down, but Squall didn't mind. It would help him sleep, at least. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, wishing that he hadn't started this terrible habit in the first place. He'd started shortly after Rinoa had left and he'd never been able to completely give them up.

"Did she ask you about the instructor position?" he said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke from his nostrils.

Zell nodded again and crushed the cigarette out with the heel of his shoe and immediately lit another. "I'm thinking about it."

Squall was relieved to hear it. Zell had undergone quite a drastic change in the last five years. He'd always been prone to bouts of depression and self doubt, but they'd always been brief at best. In the last year, though, a depression had settled in, and Squall had seen little of the Zell he used to know. This Zell was quiet and self destructive, smoked and drank too much and was constantly grim. There was none of the cheerful optimist left in him, just bitter sarcasm and self defeating behavior.

And it wasn't just Zell. Every one of them had changed in some fundamental way after Rinoa left, even cheerful Selphie Tilmitt. Maybe it was because Rinoa had been their spiritual glue. Rinoa had been the one that bonded them together in the first place, but she was no longer there to hold them all together. Maybe that's why things started to fall apart, and there was nothing they could do to fix it, which made it all the more difficult to handle.

"So, I was thinking," Zell began.

"That explains the smoke pouring out of your ears," Squall replied with a wry grin.

"Squall making a joke?" Zell said to himself, baffled. "Is the world comin' to an end or somethin'?"

"Go ahead, talk," Squall urged.

"Lightweight," Zell chided. "So anyway, I've been thinking about something, and it's really been bugging me."

"What is it?"

"Well, Selphie was here the other day, tryin' to get me to come back and be a SeeD and all that, and I've been thinkin' about it a lot. The thing is, I'm kinda afraid to come back," Zell said.

"Afraid?"

"Yeah. Afraid. I mean, have you ever gone out on a mission and wondered if you were gonna come back alive? Did you ever sit down and try to count how many times you escaped death by the band of your boxer shorts? Have you ever thought about that, even once?"

"No," Squall replied.

It was a lie, but he didn't want to shake Zell's confidence even more. Zell looked up to him. Squall couldn't let him know that most of the time, he was just as scared as everyone else. He was just better at hiding it.

"Well I have, and I've thought about it so much that I'm scared to go back," Zell admitted. "You know, I tried to sit down and total up the number of times I've cheated death and I wasn't able to count them because there were too many to be counted. Like, there for a while, every day might have been my last. Every single day. Fuckin' scary."

"I never thought about it that way. I try not to think about it at all."

"I tried not to either, but it's hard not to. I can't believe how stupid we were back then, riskin' our lives for someone else's problems. You were right all along, Squall," Zell said. He heaved a sigh and looked out into the night. "I don't want to be a SeeD anymore. I'm gonna tell 'em no."

"You don't have to be a SeeD," Squall said. "Quistis really wants you for the instructor's position. No one more qualified than you."

"Yeah, and what if Garden is attacked again? What then?"

Squall didn't have an answer for that. "I don't know what to tell you, Zell."

"I worry too much, hunh?" Zell asked.

"Yeah, you do." Squall said. "Look, if you want the instructor job, take it. I think you should, but I'm not going to tell you what to do. It's your life, not mine."

They sat in silence for a long time, passing the bottle back and forth until it was empty. Squall hoped Zell made the right decision and came back. It might be the thing he needed to pull him out of the slump he was in, but Squall couldn't tell him that. He didn't want to hurt his feelings or seem callous. Besides, he had no right to judge.

Finally Zell spoke. "Heard from Rinoa?"

"I don't think she's ever coming back."

It stung to say it out loud. As if it made it true. Squall wasn't ready to give up on her, but what choice did he have? Not a word in four years. Obviously, she wasn't interested in keeping the lines of communication open or they would have heard from her more than just once. That burned Squall more than anything, that she'd just walk away from everyone without looking back. After she'd made them all care about her.

"I don't think so either," Zell said. "I hope she's safe and happy, though."

"Me too," Squall replied.

He hesitated for a moment and patted his friend on the shoulder. Again, Squall was struck by how thin Zell was. He could feel the bones beneath his skin, where once there had been muscle. Maybe Zell wasn't just dealing with things in his own way. There was no doubt, Zell had a serious problem.

"Gotta get some sleep, man," Squall finally said.

"Sure thing, good buddy," Zell said. "Go ahead and use my room."

"You sure?" Squall asked, surprised. Zell never let anyone near his room, not even his good friends, unless it was an emergency.

Zell waved him away with his hand and lit himself another cigarette.

Upstairs, Squall didn't bother to undress, he just flopped onto the bed and fell quickly into sleep, and for the first time, he didn't dream of Rinoa.

He was pleased with the work he'd done tonight. He stood over the body of the dead girl and stared down at her ruined face. So beautiful. No one really knew how beautiful a woman could be in the last seconds of her life, when the terror of death gripped her heart. This one had been no different. Even though she was known for her lack of virtue, and in his eyes that made her dirty and ugly, she had still been stunning in that brief, fleeting instant when she looked into the eyes of death and knew what was to come.

He would leave her here. In the morning, someone would find her and gaze upon her, seeing his work of art, the woman awash in red and the pale shades of death. It was a pity that whomever found her would not appreciate his art for what it was.

Notes

That little passage at the end of the chapter is brand spankin' new.

I don't sleep much anymore. Has it ever occured to anyone what a waste of time sleep really is? Do you realize how much could be accomplished in those hours that we sleep? Insomnia sucks, but lord, my house has never been so clean and I've never done so much writing in my life.

I'll post a couple of chapters for this during this week, but next week, there may be some down time. I'm going to have to take a break because I'm in danger of burning myself out again. I go on these writing frenzies that produce massive amounts of poetry and scads of prose and then I find I can't keep the pace up without wacking out. I feel that coming on, so I'm going to force myself not to write or even touch my computer for at least a week. I appologize in advance if I don't update for a bit.

Please review! Let me know you're reading. :)