DBZ Fanfiction Queen: First of all, thank you so much for the long and detailed review, to all of you, in fact. To clear up a few of your questions, it was not actually Squall that was pushed in front of a train. It was written like that to kind of make the reader wonder, if only for a moment. Whether it was another under cover syndicate member, or if they just mistook an innocent for a syndicate member I'm not sure. The reason our now deceased mobster/bystander was pushed in front of a train was to make it look like an accident, as if the bustling crowd waiting alongside the area had just grown too large and he was pushed too close to the edge. As for your second question, given the answer to the first, Irvine wouldn't have recognized Squall to begin with, but it was probably dark enough that he would have problems picking him out again.
Chapter 5
Both his arm and his head hated him with a blinding passion by the time sunlight burned into his vision the next morning, and he had to say that the feeling was mutual. The throbbing pain that shot beneath his skin like scorching electricity sliding through his veins with every pump of his heart was mocking him and his rather foolish decision not to get the wound looked at right away. The bullet was still there, angry and screaming at him with waves of unrelenting agony, refusing to let him forget its presence there. He should have let Seifer see to it the night before, but in a rather uncharacteristic mood, necessity was shoved aside by the cluttered and exhausted weariness that had trapped his mind. He didn't think he could stand having anyone touch him just then, especially Seifer.
He sat up in bed slowly, muscles aching and protesting vehemently, his head weighted with that unpleasant twinge in his forehead that could only come from a mixture of tension and raging sinuses. It was definitely one of those mornings he hated but was well accustomed to, one of those mornings where it seemed the night had chewed up his rest-deprived body with merciless fangs of steel only to spit it back out in tatters, and the world was all too content to piss on his parade and laugh once the night had finally taken leave.
"I have to go to the hospital," came the weary, dread-filled grumbled in a sandpaper voice.
Looking around, and turning his head slowly to do so, he saw that he had bled on the sheets. Lovely. Another little detail to try and hide before one of the maids came in to tidy up his room. But first thing was first... until the feeling of being run over by an eighteen-wheeler subsided, the rest of the world was damn well going to have to wait.
He half-crawled, half-stumbled from the bed and standing on unsteady legs, yanked some clothes on with his good arm. A process that should have taken a minute or less took more than five minutes, the worst delay coming from trying to ease his bloodied arm into the sleeve of a black button down shirt, and then into the sleeve of his coat. It was going to be a very, very long day.
He left the room, still in something of a haze, but he was coherent enough to put the 'do not disturb' sign on the door in hopes it would keep the maids out before he could dispose of the sheet. On the elevator down, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to call from the recesses of his memory the layout of the city he had studied intensely before he left in order to find his way to the hospital farthest away. He was going to have to pull a fake I.D. from his emergency stash and haul ass as soon as his arm was patched up. He hoped the farther away the hospital was from the hotel the less likely some hospital staff member would be to spot him on the street someday.
Normally Squall would have taken the train there, as he was less likely to be remembered or singled out by anyone in such a large mass of people, but he couldn't risk someone accidentally bumping into him today, so a taxi ride was in order. He had the driver drop him off a few blocks from the hospital and decided to walk the rest of the way there himself. As usual in Deling City, the sky had opened up and was unleashing its tears in a torrent, as if to wash the massive monoliths of glass and stone of waste, and the residents of their daily sins. Was that why it rained everyday? To cleanse a sinful city of its wrongdoings? It was a fanciful thought that he quickly scolded himself for bothering to think. A sinner had no place questioning other sinners, he believed.
The hospital, a towering goddess of mercy in his eyes, despite its bland embodiment of squat, boxy buildings with a blurry and sickeningly mediocre color of off-white was just a few blocks away when a shout of his name reached his ears, and a hand landed heavily upon his shoulder in a friendly slap.
The sound that escaped his throat was one he couldn't define nor describe, and the sensation, something so hauntingly excruciating that his eyesight danced with black dots and the world threatened to fall out from beneath him, as if the feeling itself were a rusted dagger searing white hot through his mind caused him to lose balance and lean heavily against the wall of the nearby building. When his senses returned to him what seemed like a life time later, he found himself beneath an awning at the entrance of a shop he'd been passing, a very confused and worried Rinoa Heartilly standing before him.
"Squall what..."
When her words died away do suddenly, something he found odd in a girl that seemed to like so much the sound of her own voice, he looked up to find her inspecting the fingers on the hand that had slapped him. It was hard to tell beneath the shadow of the awning, and in the gray, colorless light of the sky at that, but it was very obvious that some thick, dark liquid was smeared on her pale, slender fingertips... liquid that had seeped through both his shirt and his coat.
Before he could speak or walk away as he half-intended to do, she had a rigid grip on the sleeve of his coat, dragging him along with her away from the hospital.
"Rinoa, what the hell do you call yourself doing?" he barked out in irritation.
"I could ask you the same question, mister, wandering around in your condition!" she replied in a voice that left no room for argument or disagreement. He sighed in grudging resignation. She seemed to be in Concerned Mother Mode, and if his past experiences with Edea were any indication, there would be no stopping her now. Still, he had to try...
"Rinoa, just let me go on to the hospital. That's where I was headed before you fucking came up and attacked me!"
She stopped for a moment and turned a sharp gaze upon him that, just a few years earlier would have had him hanging his head sheepishly. Oh how he remembered those looks...
"Don't you take that tone with me, Mister!" she hissed, glittering chocolate eyes narrowed dangerously... she was daring him to challenge her one more time.
She abruptly turned back around and yanked him through a nearby set of doors. On the other side was a lobby of some sort but she paid no mind with anything there, yanking him around, none too gently, to the elevator.
"Where are you taking me?"
He wondered for a moment if he should have bothered speaking, for he anticipated another biting look and authoritative command, but she answered quite calmly instead with, "Up to my apartment so I can doctor you up."
"I don't need your help!" he growled, attempting to pull away from her once more.
"The hell you don't! Stop being such a big baby!"
"Stop trying to treat me like one!"
"You're bleeding if you haven't noticed!"
"Didn't I just tell you I was going to the damn hospital!"
The elevator doors slid open with a ding, and luckily it was empty inside. Rather than bothering to answer him, she jerked him inside roughly and as soon as the doors were closed and the button to the fifteenth floor had been pressed, she rounded on him.
The offending coat sleeve was quickly and efficiently pulled from his arm, but she wasn't quite as patient with the shirt beneath. A quick wrench from her hand had his shirt open down the middle, several buttons flying off in the process. Good lord, he was being molested in the elevator!
"R-Rinoa... uh..."
It suddenly wasn't quite as easy to stand up to her, much less speak. Of all the things he'd seen and all the predicaments he'd been in, this was something he had no idea how to handle... hell, he couldn't even fight the progressive reddening of his face. It seemed, however, that she was only interested in getting the shirtsleeve off his arm so that she could inspect his wound. This should have made him feel relieved but the fact that he was exposed in a foreign place with an unpredictable woman wouldn't allow for any peace of mind.
"You call this bandaging?" she murmured, more to herself than him. "It's a wonder you haven't bled to death! How long have you had this wound?"
"That's none of your business."
"I'm making it business, now tell me!"
He took a deep breath and calmly stated his stance on the matter. "No."
"Fine then, you big baby."
Signing and shaking her head in a disapproving fashion, she gently moved the blood-soaked wraps around his arm away from the skin and gingerly allowed her fingers to brush the wound in inspection. He nearly leapt across the elevator from her.
"Ow, don't touch it!"
Her eyes rolled in exasperation. "Yes Squall, because I'm going to heal it with my psychic abilities, right?"
Another high-pitched ding rounded off her sarcastic remark, and suddenly she was pulling him half-shirtless down a long narrow corridor, lit dimly with softly glowing sconce lights. Luckily for him, the hall seemed to be empty of life, much as the lobby itself had. It seemed everyone but Rinoa had a job or some other kid of life to attend to that didn't involve poking their noses into his business.
"Rinoa, don't you have somewhere to be?" he tried.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," she responded, stopping before a door at the end of the hall and carefully digging through her purse for her keys while keeping her arms locked around his to prevent escape. "Right here, tending to this monstrosity you call fixing up a wound."
"I thought I did very nicely, considering how late it was," he grumbled as she pushed the door open and led him in.
"Ah-hah! So it was last night, and you were just now going to get it looked at? No, no, we can't have this. Apparently you don't know how to take care of yourself."
Her apartment was much how he'd expected it to be, open, airy, the walls a calming and tranquil hue of blue that reminded Squall of summer days spent in lethargy when Edea would take him and the rest of the syndicate orphans to the beach. The furniture was a cushiony white made of some soft and fluffy material, like sedentary clouds in the never-changing sky. If her goal was to make her guests feel welcome in the cozy little space she called home, she'd done a good job, the heaven-mimicking décor instantly bringing to the surface of his mind that summer sky long ago forgotten but always sought after once it had faded from his existence. He felt some of his tension slip away, and the heat that seemed to radiate off her body so close to his was no longer such a foreign and unwelcome force, no more than the heat of a clean and pure sun scorching the earth from overhead was. The only thing that struck his mind as odd was that there were no pictures lining the shelves of her small-white painted bookcase, nor were there any family portraits hanging in ordered fashion upon the wall. Before he could stop himself the inquiry slipped away.
"Why are there no pictures?"
Slightly startled by such a question, or moreover, such a question from such a man as he, she hesitated a moment before responding with one of her own. "What do you mean?"
"You struck me as the kind of girl that would have pictures of her family up around her house," he explained.
She let out a soft, "Oh," and pushed him over to sit on a stool at the bar separating her small kitchen from the living room. He found himself so intent on catching her answer that he didn't notice at first when she removed his coat and shirt from the other side of his body and draped them over the counter.
"My family and I have been at odds for some time now," came the quiet answer, one that sounded terribly rehearsed and impersonal as it fell from her lips. "So you can't blame me for not wanting to put pictures up of the faces that anger me so much."
"So you're holding a grudge?"
She disappeared into a door opposite the kitchen without answering, and returned quickly with a first aid kid kit and a few other tools in her hand. As she set up the things she'd need along the counter next to him, she replied, "Let me guess, I didn't strike you as someone who would hold a grudge?"
"Maybe," he answered. "I would think that if you had it in your head to dislike someone you would be just as determined and persistent in holding something against them as you would be in pursuing someone you do like."
The corners of her lips pulled into an upward curve at this, and she quirked a sleek raven brow at him as her hands gently removed the bandages he'd wrapped himself with. "Are you implying that I like you Mr. Leonhart?"
"It would certainly seem that way."
A giggle bubbled up within her throat as she moved to the sink and dampened a cloth to clean away the dried blood. "Like like, you mean? You think I have a crush on you?"
He was silent for a moment, willing his vocal cords still as the cloth came in contact with the hole in his arm. No matter how careful and tender she was, it still hurt, but the last thing he intended to do was lose his cool in front of her and display his pain.
"You gonna answer me?"
As she retracted the now vibrantly red cloth and began dabbing a bit of gauze with alcohol, he said, "I don't know. The way you've been treating me today, it's like you think I'm your little boy or something."
This comment only brought about even more laughter. "The way you've been acting today, it would certainly seem like you are a little boy."
He took a deep breath and held it, body rigid as the nerves screeched around the tightly lodged bullet that was slowly sliding back. When the offending object was finally free he let out his breath in rush. "I'm trying to take care of myself. How is that acting like a little boy?"
"By not taking help you obviously need when it's offered to you," she explained, doctoring the vicious tear in his flesh with alcohol and iodine. "And look at you, so brave! Refusing to speak just so you don't let any of your pain show. Do you think, Mr. Macho, that I'm dumb and I don't realize how much this hurts?"
"It's not that, it's just... my pain is none-"
"Of my business? Didn't I tell you before that I made it my business?" She began wrapping him up again, tight enough to keep the wound closed, but with enough room that it didn't cut off his circulation. "So you want to tell me then, what you were doing that got you shot?" She felt him stiffen at this, but shook her head. "I'm not going to call the cops, Squall, if that is your real name," she offered teasingly. "You had that look about you anyway... I'd say this little bullet here had something to do with business, right?"
Sometimes her perceptiveness was downright frightening, and there was little he could in the way of denial that wasn't flat-out futile, and an insult to her intelligence. "I suppose you'll want me to leave now."
"No, actually, I want you to stay for dinner," she responded in a pleasant voice. "Not often a girl gets a real live mobster in her house."
He turned to face her sharply, a surprised look in his eyes. "But I-"
"I trust you not to kill me Squall. And if you do, I'll haunt you for the rest of your life, anyway. Your secret's safe with me... I owe you my life, remember? It's the least I could do."
He turned away from her as she finished up. "You shouldn't be involved with me."
"You involved yourself with me that day at the train station, so too bad. Someone has to look out for you if you're leading such a dangerous life style."
"There you go with the mother attitude again," he grumbled.
Her laughter rang out in the air, a sound that he secretly knew he'd never tire from but would never in a million years try to purposely coax from her. "I'm not your mother." Her arm slid around his good shoulder from behind and she leaned against his back so her breath burned a silken trail along the side of his neck and near his ear. "The kind of thoughts I have of you aren't in any way fitting of a mother thinking about her son," she murmured quietly, and an unbidden tremor crawled up his spine at what felt like an impossibly soft brush of her lips just below the hair-line at the back of his neck. He couldn't help but wonder, however, if he'd only imagined it.
He felt her head lay itself on her arm upon his shoulder then, and he realized she must have been appreciating the view from the large window in the wall in front of them. Why she had to do it on him, however, he didn't know. He was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with her close proximity, her warmth and scent washing over his senses until he felt dizzy, but almost in a good way. It was just such a strange, unfamiliar feeling...
Rinoa on the other hand was enjoying herself quite a bit. Her eyes aimed at the window, she had all the appearance of taking in the view of the buildings all around, when she was actually indulging in his reflection, the sleek, firm muscles of his chest beautifully defined in the tepid gray light that invaded from beyond. He was certainly a sight to behold, and even better, he felt so warm and alive beneath her... so stable, like he wouldn't disappear without warning. She wasn't sure why or when or how this fear of loss came to her, but she didn't feel it when she was with him. Rinoa took a big, deep breath, filling her senses with everything that was him, the scent of after shave and soap, shampoo and just a hint of gun powder and death... is that what had given his occupation away? It didn't matter... he was quite obviously not very happy with what he did, and that made a world of difference.
"Do you like spaghetti?" she questioned out of the blue.
"I... guess. Why?"
"I told you I wanted you to stay for dinner. Spaghetti is about the only thing I can cook semi-well," she replied, sliding away from him.
"Rinoa, I have things to do."
"If you had gone on to the hospital, Mister Leonhart, you'd still be sitting there now and you know it. You don't have anything planned."
"But I-"
"Sit!" she commanded, pulling some meat from her refrigerator and grabbing the pan from the dish drainer in the sink. "Look, I'm all ready in the process of going to trouble over you, you can't just leave now."
"You think I actually care?"
Once the meat was safely cooking in the pan, she snatched up his shirt and coat and headed back toward the room she'd gotten the first aid kit from. "Well, unless you want to wander back to the hotel shirtless, then I guess you do."
"Hey, where are you going with those!" a slight note of panic edged into his voice against his will.
"To wash them. There's blood all over them, you're not wearing them out like that."
"They're my clothes, I'll wear however the hell I want!" he shouted in response but she shut the door on his comment, leaving him in silence for the moment.
He glanced around the room, the alluring blue steadily darkening as the sun sank languidly behind the towering human-made structures that rose into the sky. Squall slipped off the stool and crossed over the window, peering down into the streets below. Directly across the street was City Hall, and from here, he realized, he could see all of their hidden guards and what looked like a satellite of some sort perched on the roof. From here, he could learn the pattern of the guards' patrols if he watched at different times of the day.
He heard the door give a soft click as it shut behind her, but she didn't move from it. In his peripheral vision he could see her, clad in her azure sweater and leaning against the door she'd just come out of with her eyes trained on him. For a moment he wondered if he had done something she was displeased with, or if she expected him to say something. The woman could be so confusing it was hard to tell just what she wanted. When he chanced a look at her, however, he found that her eyes were not expectantly drilling holes into his face, as he would have thought... in fact, her eyes weren't on his face at all. He felt his cheeks begin to burn once more, as if someone were holding a lighter to his face, and he quickly turned away from her.
"Uh... Rinoa?"
"Yes?" her voice was lower now, a husky velvet that sent the heat in his face rolling through the rest of his body.
"The meat is burning."
The look on her face reflected that of a person that had just had a bucket of cold water thrown in their face. "Oh!"
He couldn't help the smirk that lifted one side of his lips, and allowed himself a very small appreciative glance at her retreating form in compensation. Everything as he knew it seemed to be quickly falling apart... and he was having trouble caring.
A/N: Well what do you know, I'm still alive! A fairly useless chapter as far as plot goes, but a great chapter for fluff and relationship development. Anyway, while I have your attention for a moment, I must confess I haven't simply been hibernating these past few months. I started an account on fictionpress where I have a story I'm working on by the name, 'In Living Color'. I'm under the pen name 'Delusions of Reality' (someone took Dark Raion all ready, or so it said... who's stealing my name? Same thing happened when I made a new AIM account... grr...) and I kindly ask you all to mosey on over and take a look at it. It's quite a bit different than anything I've done so far, being both in first-person narrative and having a heavy emphasis on humor rather than drama (although there's plenty of that, too) so if you have the time, I'd appreciate it. And no, writing that didn't cut into time that would otherwise have been spent on fanfiction, rather, it filled the time that I was brain-dead and drained of inspiration for fanfics with something else to do.