edenbound | FFVIII: Changed

Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Pairing: Squall/Rinoa
Warnings: Violence
Rating: PG
Summary: A door closes to him. For fated_children.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Squall!"

The Estharian soldier none-too-subtlely stepped into Squall's path. Without even thinking he brought Lionheart up, tipped the angle, and smashed the hilt into the underside of the guy's chin. He fell down, unconscious and probably badly hurt. Squall couldn't bring himself to care, even if it didn't bode well for the father-son relationship. The alarm bells were ringing and adrenaline threaded through him.

Save the sorceress.

Laguna put a hand out. "Now, Squall, you've got to listen -- "

His voice is low, the tone vicious. He can see Laguna visibly flinch and, somewhere inside himself, curls his lip in derision. "What are you doing to her?"

"Squall!"

Savemehelpmeyou'vegotto --

"I'm trying," he says to the voice in his head, blinking his vision clear of the bright light. And then, to Laguna, "Let her go. Now. You have no idea what I will do to you -- all of you -- if you don't release her and stop this ridiculous... sealing. She's a stable sorceress, she has a knight. Me. And I won't allow you to do this to her."

But even while he's speaking, the bubble is closing. The father-son relationship is the only thing stopping him now, and that is soon going to be set aside in favour of the sorceress bond, the part of him that never sleeps, always whispering to him, facts and figures. Status reports. The sanity of his sorceress.

She puts her hands up against the glass --

" -- let her go now," he growls, feeling her panic. He can sense something else, too, an isolation, cutting them apart. Never since the fight against Ultimecia has he felt this --

Idon'twanttobealone!

"Now!"

It bursts into him, her power, racing through his veins like the adrenaline. He can see the path he has to take, dodging Laguna's outstretched hand and taking down one guard. He takes a deep breath and moves into action -- and now for the first time, as Laguna pulls a gun from somewhere, another voice speaks, as if given strength.

She's changed you.

"Only as I wanted to be changed," he says to it, disregarding the confusion on the others' faces. They don't matter.

But even as he moves forward, swinging Lionheart -- not for a deadly blow, not for Laguna -- he feels a door slamming in his face. Something lost, irrevocable. Something that says that this is not the way it should be. That she has changed, that she is not -- in some part of her only, perhaps -- the woman he knew, the woman he loved.

There is only serving, now.

FFVIII: Changed

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