The Preserve, Sunday Night

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa hadn't been having a good week before she'd gotten the call. Apparently, the universe was making a point about how she shouldn't gripe about petty things, like being a fake-amnesiac or sleeping with her ex.

She was glad she had gone, and she would go again in an instant if Jono called right now to say there had been another attack. They had saved a lot of dying mutants today. But right now ...

The magic itched. It burned. It wanted out. She'd used so much today. It would have been so much better if she could have just ... let it out. Unfurled her wings, flown towards the ceiling, and drink it in deeply.

And once she had done that, she would have stopped being able to heal. It was so hard, finding the focus for white magic when she had her wings out. Once the magic was out, it wanted out. It wanted to destroy. She wanted to destroy. She could never seem to find Curaga, when she had her Sorceress powers in full hand.

So all day, she had filtered more and more magic through herself, curing and curing, while keeping a tight leash on the fine control that kept her from letting the real power come out.

Which had resulted in ... whatever it was she had done to Squall. She had drained him. Drained something from him. Hyne's wrath, she didn't even know what she had done to him.

The fact that he didn't seem to mind didn't make it any less awful.

They had caught a portal back, and she had stayed quiet, trying to meditate some structure back into her frayed shields. And now they were -- wait.

"This isn't the way to the dorms," she frowned.

(Just for her Knight. That the two are heading out there is fine for broadcast, but everything else is NFB, please.)

Comments

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"No, it's not," Squall agreed. He was leading her out into the Preserve, looking for a quiet place where they wouldn't disturb anyone. Or break anything important.

He was half-hoping they'd run into a monster, or a violent wild animal, while they were out here, but if not, he had a plan for where to find some.

[angelo_wings]

"So then why ... are we here?" she asked, frowning. "I don't ..."

She stopped to lean against a tree. At least they weren't in that house any more. That house with mean people who said awful things about Jono, but she couldn't yell at them, because the mutants there needed the mean people, and furthermore, if she started yelling now, she'd just set things on fire.

"I don't know what I did to you," she said, carefully. "I really, honestly don't."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"We'll talk about it later," Squall told her. "Right now, you need to let off some steam."

In Garden, the Training Center was always open, any time of day or night, for cadets to go kill monsters. It was a great way to relieve stress -- but Rinoa hadn't grown up with that, and wouldn't recognize the feeling of needing it.

Squall stepped away from her, put a hand to his forehead, and was surrounded by a green light... but nothing happened, at least not right away.

"BIG BROTHER," boomed a voice from the forest behind Rinoa. "DO YOU THINK SHE WANTS TO PLAY?!"

"i think she needs to, whatever she wants," a softer voice replied. A short man-bull stepped out of the shadows and grinned at Rinoa, cracking his knuckles.

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa blinked at both of them, then at Squall.

"I -- I don't understand," she said. "I don't want to hurt your GFs."

That was the sane part of her talking. Some larger part of her was cracking its own knuckles.

Which was why she fired off a Float spell at each Brother. They were Earth elementals. You needed to keep them from touching the ground, if you wanted to stop them from regenerating health.

Not that she was seriously thinking about fighting them. They were Squall's allies. This was insane.

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"You need to attack something," Squall told her. He pulled a G-Returner -- which would revive them if they were defeated -- out of his pocket to show her he was prepared.

"don't attack us if you don't want to," the smaller Brother told her. "it'll make the fight go faster."

"I DON'T LIKE FLOATING!" the larger one growled. He lifted his heavy iron mace and swung it at her.

[angelo_wings]

She had been glancing at Squall, and so she was nearly caught unawares by Sacred's mace. She spotted it from the corner of her eye, and held up an arm to deflect the blow.

It wasn't her arm that took the brunt of the hit; it was a wing, pushing back hard, as the other struggled to lift her into the air.

The blow still connected, and sent her reeling. She fell, nearly sprawling on the ground until her wings got enough lift to let her hover in the air.

Before she had even wiped the blood out of her eyes, she had cast a Tornado at the larger Brother.

There was something sinful in how good that felt. There had to be.

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

Sacred -- the younger but larger of the two -- growled at the winds buffeted him. He held his arms up to shield his face, but couldn't do much against the onslaught. Wind was the Brothers' greatest weakness.

Minotaur, the smaller, older Brother, got caught by the edge of the whirlwind and thrown through the forest. He snorted and came charging back at Rinoa, horns-first, as soon as he found his feet.

[angelo_wings]

Everyone who had seen the Brothers in action knew that, despite his size, the smaller one was the greater threat.

She needed to be out of the range of those horns. There was no question about that. So she lifted herself up into the air, just high enough that he couldn't reach.

From there, she could send a Holy at him, to see if it would slow him down. In fact, now would be a good time to see what kind of a time lag there was, between her being able to cast spells. How quickly could she queue up the next Holy, after that?

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

She didn't have to fly very high to be out of Minotaur's reach -- he was shorter than she was, after all. He weathered the Holy, but was starting to hurt. Until the Float wore off, they were especially vulnerable.

Sacred, meanwhile, had gotten to his feet after the Tornado and ripped a huge boulder out of the ground to throw at Rinoa.

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa had been too focused on firing off the second Holy, at Minotaur -- the lights sweeping up around him and exploding, oh, so beautiful -- and not paying enough attention to defense. When she was the Sorceress, she never cared about defense. She wanted to make things hurt, and it was so easy.

Which meant that she didn't see the boulder in nearly enough time to dodge very well, and it smashed straight into her torso. The force knocked her out of the sky, and she landed with an unsightly oomph on the hard earth.

She lifted her head and hissed at Sacred, focusing hard on him until a yellow-ish orange light began to coalesce around him. Rays shot out from his midsection. Flare should teach him manners.

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

It looked like fire, but it wasn't. Sacred might not be aflame, but he was hurting pretty badly. The Float wore off, though, so he was starting to gain some strength back from the earth below him.

And speaking of things below other things, the ground beneath Rinoa's feet shuddered and lurched. Minotaur had burrowed underneath her, and was lifting the chunk of dirt and rock she was standing on. He adjusted the weight on his shoulders one more time, and then with a mighty heave threw it, with Rinoa still on top, hundreds of feet into the air.

There was enough hang-time for the two Brothers to rochambeau for the finishing toss. Sacred -- with his "always choose rock" strategy -- lost, of course, so he was the throw-ee and the tiny Minotaur the throw-er in their fastball special of Brotherly Love. The chunk of earth, now falling downward again, met Sacred flying up towards it, and it all exploded in a shower of dirt and pain.

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa landed hard, an unmoving pile of dirt and bruises. For a moment, she was sure that she couldn't move, and even more certain that she didn't want to try. One of her legs didn't look right at all, and so much of her hurt. She could just lie here and --

And what? Let them win?!

Fuck that.

Rinoa pushed herself onto all fours, spitting out a fair amount of blood as she did so. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered, at this moment, but making those bastards pay.

She might not be able to get to her feet, but she was a motherfucking Sorceress, and she didn't need to stand in order to make these Brothers sorry they were ever born.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, hard, letting as much power out as she dared. When she heard the familiar roar of the cosmos, she smiled. She opened her eyes in time to see the gigantic Meteors slam into the two Brothers, over and over again.

It felt wonderful. And when it looked like both of them were teetering over, that was when she let herself slump to the ground again.

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

And teeter they did, and then they began to glow faintly, and fade out of sight.

"...THE BROTHERS, DEFEATED AGAIN?"

"...it... is an honor... to serve you..."

As they disappeared, Squall stepped forward with a bit of a smirk and tossed Rinoa an X-Potion. "Feel better?"

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa caught the potion, but only barely. Tricky potions, being all ... hard to catch like that.

"... think so?" she said, weakly. "That was ..."

Hang on. First, she had to remember how to breathe. Then, she needed to drink the potion. Then, she'd be able to have a conversation.

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

Squall nodded. "You looked like you needed to kill something. Today sucked."

[angelo_wings]

The breathing might be helped by the potion, Rinoa realized foggily. And so she swigged some of the --

Oh, dammit.

"I hate X-Potions," she sulked, spitting some of it back out reflexively. "They taste like something died and then came back to life just long enough to puke them back up."

Just because she was feeling better didn't mean she was in the mood not to be childish about this.

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"Everyone hates them," Squall reminded her. "It's part of the whole experience."

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa decided to be mature enough to choke the rest of it down. Just because you hated the taste didn't mean you didn't need it.

Also, maybe she was being childish because she didn't like the way she felt and didn't want to think about it.

"I never heal," she said. "Not with my wings out. I don't know if I can't, I just ... I never seem to. I just want to smash and smash and smash. I used so much magic today and they wanted out and I couldn't. I had to keep healing. There was so much death."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"I didn't realize they were trying to come out," Squall told her. "Or else I would have stayed closer." He shrugged. "You didn't tell me."

"...And there's nothing wrong with going full-offensive, as long as you've got a partner running defense. Don't worry about healing when your wings come out -- I can handle it."

[angelo_wings]

"I told you I can't heal with them out," Rinoa said, peevishly. It wasn't her fault that he hadn't done the basic math to understand what that meant. "And going full-offensive doesn't help if my partner gets knocked out. It's not just me I don't heal."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"So if I do get knocked out, you'd better kill the enemies quickly. And carry Potions." Squall shrugged. "You can try to cast Curaga with your wings out sometime when we've got downtime for training. Today was as much of a victory as was possible."

[angelo_wings]

"I don't think I'll remember to drink Potions, either," she said, but the anger was leaking out of her. "And I ... Squall, I think we need to talk about ... that other thing."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

Squall shrugged. "It didn't hurt me," he told her. "Whatever it was, I'm fine. And it helped you. I'm not sure why you're upset about it."

[angelo_wings]

"We don't know that it didn't hurt you," she insisted. "I mean, not permanently. We don't know what I did. I didn't have the right to just ... just ... take from you like that. I didn't even ask. That's not fair, Squall. That's not a relationship, when I can just ..."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"I let you," Squall pointed out. "I want you to do it again, if you need to. That's my choice to make." Wasn't it? "I know my limits. Whatever you 'took', I have plenty more to spare. If I ever feel like I have less of it, I'll let you know."

[angelo_wings]

"That's not the point," she said. "I didn't ask, first. What if it had been important? What if I had hurt you? Doesn't that frighten you, at all? To know that I could just -- pull, and -- without any regard at all for you. I wasn't even thinking about what it might do to you, or bothering to see if I had permission. I just needed, and I took."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

Squall shrugged, confused. "You didn't know you were going to do it. You didn't know you could. How were you supposed to ask?"

He understood that she felt bad about it, but... she really shouldn't.

"Besides, that's what I'm THERE for. I'm your Knight."

[angelo_wings]

"You're there to be some kind of ... back-up battery charger for my emotional stability?" Rinoa asked, softly, not meeting his eyes. "That seems like a really crappy deal for you."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"I'm there to protect you, any way I can," Squall countered. "Especially from yourself." It was his guiding Purpose in life, now. That and begrudgingly saving the world from stuff.

[angelo_wings]

Rinoa finally pushed herself off her hands, sitting back on her heels and closing her eyes.

"Even if that means I suck the ... whatever-that-was out of you, like some kind of vampire?" she said. "I didn't mean to. I just ... it itched. So badly. I wanted to hurt something, and I couldn't, and I was keeping it all together, and I was doing so well, but I had barely anything left to do it. And you were this huge, deep well of calm and I just ... I drank you. It scares me."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"It made you feel better. It didn't hurt me. And you were able to stay in control of your magic. I don't think there's anything you should be scared of."

[angelo_wings]

"I do," she said, very softly. "Taking, without asking, it's ... it's a bad sign. You're a person. You're not a tool. You're not something I use for my own needs."

She felt like she was going to be sick, suddenly.

"It's the kind of thing she would do, Squall. She made Seifer into a puppet."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"I'm not your puppet!" Squall protested. "I'm not your tool! I'm your partner. I make my own choices. And I'm telling you that this, what you did earlier, is okay with me!"

He reached out and put a hand on Rinoa's shoulder. "You need to learn to control your magic, not be afraid of it. And you need to trust me."

[angelo_wings]

"You didn't make your own choice, this time," she insisted. "I made it for you. That can't be okay. Don't you see the difference? I can't just assume what's okay with you and what's not."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

Squall facepalmed. "We're talking in circles. Earlier, when you did it, you didn't make a choice for me, because you didn't know you were doing it. And I made the choice not to stop it."

He sighed.

"And right now, you're trying to make a choice for me, because you've decided that I chose wrong."

[angelo_wings]

Dammit. She hated when he made sense like that.

"Okay," she said. "You're right. Except ... I could have stopped it, after I started, and I didn't. I think I could have. And I don't know that you could have. And ... and now it's ..."

Words were hard.

"I'm not saying you chose wrong," she decided. "I'm saying that ... that you don't always ... Squall, you've done insane things to rescue me, before. I can't trust you to be rational. I can't trust you to tell me what your limits are. I don't know if it hurt, or if you felt it, and if you say it didn't, then I don't even know if I can believe you, because you'd say it anyway. I can't trust you. Because you'll do what you think is best for me, without any regard for you, so I have to try to protect you, and everything's sideways."

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

"It didn't hurt me," Squall repeated. "If it had, I would say so, and tell you that I didn't mind. That's not what I'm saying right now. What I'm saying is that I felt it, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't harmed in any way. If it turns out that there's a small harmful effect that accumulates over time -- like there is with the GFs -- then we will reevaluate. You're more important to me than I am, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do anything stupid."