A Heart Filled With Darkness

CHAPTER ONE:

His slow footfalls echoed down the empty hall. After she left, he was set adrift, and this was what he spent much of his time doing: stalking through the halls of Balamb Garden like a caged tiger. He tried to avoid talking to anyone, mumbling a short greeting when addressed, but usually ducking into a quiet place ten minutes before every hour, right before the class rooms let out their students, when he was most vulnerable of being seen. At first, his friends had all tried to talk to him about it. He'd said very little, and they'd all one by one dropped the subject out of frustration. No one liked to see him like this, but there was nothing any of them could do. So he took to wandering the halls, his black boots softly thumping the cold tiles with every step, his mind in a million places and nowhere at the same time, his heart a dull ache thumping slowly in his chest. Rinoa had left him, and there was nothing Squall could do about it.

But today was different. There was another feeling inside of him, to keep the millions of jumbled feelings company. For the first time after she'd left, Squall felt the need for companionship and commiseration. He needed to get through this, and the only way he was going to be able to do that would be to talk to one of his friends, someone who knew him closely and who was wise enough to give him good advice, yet close enough to his own age so that he could relate.

Of course, he didn't think about any of this. He knew he felt different that day, but he couldn't put his finger on why. He had an urge in his heart to see an old friend, but the urge never became a thought, never flashed through his mind. Instead, when he started to wander the halls, his body acted upon this impulse from his heart and, at ten minutes before ten, his feet led him to the door of room 105.

The bell rang loudly overhead and a stream of students flowed through the doorway, laughing and talking, a constant ebb and flow of bodies and voices. A few of them glanced at the tall teenager standing there in the hallway, the zipper on his black jacket jangling as he raised a hand to comb his fingers through his shoulder-length black hair. Some may have wondered about the sad, forlorn look on his face, but many of them knew who he was without actually knowing him. And they knew his girlfriend had recently left, had in fact requested to be transferred to another garden, though none of them knew the reason why. Thankfully, Squall thought, thankfully.

After all of the students had filed out, Squall stepped slowly into the room. The woman he had come to see was seated at a table in front of the classroom, a white markerboard behind her head, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail that cascaded down her neck and past her slender shoulders. Her glasses were pushed up to the top ridger of her pert nose as she peered down at the pile of tests on her desk. She had the next period free and was trying to get some work done before her next class. Quistis was a year older than Squall, had been his instructor when he had attended Balamb Garden. She'd lost her teaching position for awhile, but after she and Squall and their friends had defeated the sorceress' plans to compress time, she'd gotten her old job back. Quistis was still the youngest professor any of the Gardens had ever had.

She heard him enter and looked up to see who it was. An almost started expression crossed her face when she saw him, but it almost immediately dissolved into a smile.

"Hey, Squall, pull up a chair!" She pushed one towards him and he grabbed onto the back of it and turned it around so he could straddle it. "Haven't seen you around. In fact, no one has. You've been avoiding your friends. What's up?"

Squall looked down at his hands. Quistis had put him on the spot, she had a knack for doing that, it was what made her such a good instructor. And Squall hated to talk about his feelings. "I've just... I had so much to sort through after... after Rinoa left. I needed time to be alone."

She tried to peer into his downcast eyes. "Has it helped?"

"... No."

"Look, it was a shock to all of us..."

"Not like it was to me."

"No, but we've all had to adjust. We can relate. Maybe not to the same extent, but..."

"I know."

"We all miss her."

"None of you... can understand the guilt..."

"You shouldn't feel guilty, hon. You didn't know."

"I should have known!"

"Why? You can't read a person's DNA with your eyes."

"I felt something for her... something I'd never felt for anyone... a closeness... I didn't think you could feel that for a girlfriend. It was like what I felt for Ellone, or what you'd felt for me."

"Squall, you're beating yourself up and second-guessing your emotions. There's no way you could have known. She was just an attractive girl that you got along well with and eventually you fell in love."

"Yeah! And she turned out to be my sister!"

Quistis sighed. She wasn't sure if there was anything she could say or do to make him feel any better. The news had been quite a shock to them all. Rinoa had called all of her friends together--Quistis, Zell, Selphie, Ellone, Irvine--and told them that her and Squall had the same father. And then, that evening, she'd asked Squall to meet her in the training facility where they could watch the stars and talk privately.

* * * *

Squall stood waiting for Rinoa, leaning against a short wooden fence, getting the back of his black jeans dirty from it. The fence was along a dirt trail that led into the training room. Behind the fence stood a miniature palm tree, its leaves stirring slightly from the breeze that blew through unseen vents in unseen walls around the room. The training room was a simulation program designed to give teh cadets the benefit of honing their fighting and survival skills without actually being hurt. Simulated beasts roamed the simulated jungle inside the training room, but none ventured past the designated battle areas. They were safe to talk there.

Rinoa's message had worried him. She'd sounded uneasy, even a little distressed. Squall knew it could not be good news. He'd been dating Rinoa for three months now, three months that were tinged with an almost dreamlike shimmer. He had no idea what was troubling Rinoa now, but he felt his anxiety sitting like a leaden ball in the pit of his stomach.

The whisk of the automatic door drawing itself open sliced through his head. The artificial neon lighting from the hallway illuminated him, seeming much too bright. And then it blinked off as the door whisked closed. And there was Rinoa standing before him, her long brown hair cascading down her back. He looked into her deep brown eyes and saw them wavering, shimmering like twin pools of darkness. Her face looked like a wobbling table with one leg shorter then the rest, threatening to fall over at any moment. And then it did, it just crumbled away, the tears slowly streaming down her face as she fell towards him and pressed her face against his chest, an "oh Squall" escaping her lips, barely audible. She had promised herself that she wouldn't break down, not before she'd told him of her discovery, certainly. But all it took was seeing him standing there, the worry clearly visible on his face, for her reserve to erode.

All of Squall's feeble attempts to reassure himself that the news might not be too bad were all washed away in the torrent of her tears. He had even tried to convince himself, unsuccessfully, that Rinoa might be pregnant and simply worried about his reaction. When he found out what the problem really was, he was relieved that she wasn't actually pregnant on top of it.

Slowly, Squall stroked her back, waiting for her great hiccupping sobs to subside. Eventually, they did. She pulled back from him, looking into his face. For a second, he was afraid the sobbing would start again. But instead, she started to haltingly speak.

"I... I found a diary... my mother's diary..." Her voice was low with a trembling, tottering quality to it, as if she were afraid of every word she uttered, as if every word were a card that she were stacking on top of a house of other cards. "I'd bought this lovely vermier print that I wanted to hang in my room, but I had to move an armoire in order to have a proper space to hang it. I started to move it... slide it across the floor... when one of the legs caught on the rug... The rug was tacked down to the floor everywhere but in that one spot! And the armoire had pulled back the rug enough to expose the hardwood floor underneath. I could see... one of the floor boards was raised up a little bit... like it was loose and sitting on top of something." Rinoa gave a short laugh, almost like a bark, devoid of any humor. Squall didn't know where any of this was going but he stood there listening, his hands around her, instinctively knowing that this was the only way that Rinoa would be calm enough to tell him what was wrong.

She continued, "I pushed on the floorboard to get it to go back in place, but it wobbled back and forth. That's when I knew there was something underneath it, obstructing it. I... I pulled the board up and... in the space below I found this." She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a red hardcover book, handing it to Squall without once looking down at it. The book was leatherbound, the kind that might contain a Herman Melville or Charles Dickens novel. Stamped across the front of it in gilded letters were the words "Diary of Julia Heartilly." Squall turned it over in his hands, noting the scuffed up appearance of its outer jacket, then began to leaf through the pages. There must have been about five hundred, and less than a third of the pages were empty.

"Why did she hide it in your room?" he asked.

"It had been her sitting room. She died when I was born so it's not like she could have moved it anywhere else."

"Sounds like she didn't want anyone to read it."

"She didn't want a certain someone to read it. It's very personal. It covers the last four years of her life, starting right around the time that she first got a job singing. I think at first she'd had the idea to sell it as an autobiography when she got famous. But later... it became her place to just... jot down her thoughts and feelings. I think it helped her make sense of things, to see things objectively and understand her feelings better... She wrote a lot about the men in her life... my father... and your father."

"My father? Did they have a... a romance before he went to see the world and report on the war?"

"Not exactly. They spent some time together though. But Laguna was very shy. They were both completely in love. But he left on assignment before anything... happened between them. Then she met my father... The General, she called him. Playfully, I'm sure. They married... She loved him, but it wasn't an all-consuming, passionate romance... not like what she felt for Laguna. She tried to have a child with my dad, I think hoping that it would bring them closer. She writes rather disappointingly at this time, at one point crying over the fact that she's had 'her damned period' again. She never stopped thinking about your father either, even wondering if it was possible to love two men at the same time."

As a tear slid down her cheek Squall had a sudden premonition of where this discussion was leading.

"Laguna... came back... didn't he?"

Rinoa nodded. "General Caraway... my father..." She sighed. "The military called him away. They needed him to help some struggling units on the front lines. He went there to strategize their next move. Laguna... He was supposed to be there too, reporting on the war. But he found he could not be away from my mother any longer. She... she didn't tell him... until after the first night... she didn't tell him that she was married until afterwards." Rinoa started to slowly, silently cry again.

Squall just stood there looking dumbfounded. "She was... was... pregnant?"

Rinoa nodded. "She knew for sure by the time my father got back. She couldn't be sure who the father was, though. She'd made love to my dad before he left. Laguna showed up a few days later."

"Why didn't my dad say anything?!"

"He probably didn't know it was important. It was only a... a one-time thing. After my mom told him that she was married, he left. He probably didn't even think that he could possibly be my dad..."

"Wait. Wait. We still don't know one way or the other, right? Just like your mom didn't know. Right?" He could see the look on her face. It was all the confirmation he needed.

"No... um... I know."

"How?!"

"I... I took a few strands of your hair... from your comb..."

"You did what?!"

"... And I had them analyzed. My friend did it. He compared our DNA. I didn't tell him who the hair was from or why I wanted it analyzed, but... he says there's a ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent chance that... that we're related..."

"YOU'RE MY SISTER?!"

Every organ inside Squall's body sank down into his lower intestines; he could feel it. The world started to swim before his eyes and he had to lean against the wooden fence again to keep from falling over.

"You're half-sister," Rinoa corrected him, "but yes."

Rinoa kept talking but Squall could barely hear her. It sounded to him as though she were talking through a very large rolled-up piece of cardboard into a very cheap cell phone, and he was in another continent on the other line.

"I'm sorry... I had no idea... I mean... this was a horrible shock to me too..." She could see his expression, could practically read the thoughts written there.

Squall's mind, ever the great and terrible torture machine, conjured up images of the first time he and Rinoa had made love. It all came back in startling, vivid clarity: the way her body had looked as he'd slowly undressed her, the touch and taste of her skin as he'd kissed her all over, the look of pain and the short gasp as he'd entered her, the way her hips had risen to meet his... the glow on her cheeks and the smile on her lips as he held her when it was over...

"... So maybe then it won't be so hard on us..."

He jerked his head up, looking dazed. "What?"

"I said, I've put in a transfer. I'll be going to stay at another Garden soon, so maybe this whole thing won't be so hard on us."

Squall nodded his head. It probably would be for the best. If he didn't have to look at her every day then maybe... maybe he'd be able to forget...

* * * *

"I'll never forget the night she told me... the way she looked... her words... they way they echoed through my head..."

"Of course not!" Quistis shook her head. "But you have to get past it, Squall. You can't let it haunt you forever."

"It's too much, the memory of it. It's all I can see when I close my eyes. And... the guilt. I just can't escape it."

"What in the world do you have to feel guilty about?"

Squall sat there staring deeply at the lines in his hands, the curve of his fingers, the jagged edges of the fingernails that he'd taken to biting. "... When she told me... that she was my sister... and I saw the pain written in her face... all I could think of was taking her in my arms... and kissing that pain away. Even knowing that she was my sister... I wanted to lay down with her in that grass and make love to her. And just... erase the things she'd said. Just erase all of it. And then... I was disgusted with myself. And... afraid... What would happen if everyone found out? I... I started to hate her then. I know... I know it sounds irrational but... I hated her. I could picture myself just... picking up a rock and... and hitting her over the face with it. Just beating in that pretty face until... until she was dead. That way... no one would know..."

"But you didn't do either of those things. You didn't make love to her and you didn't kill her."

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"You just need to do other things to take your mind off of it. Once you become absorbed in other things, you won't keep brooding about it. And then it'll just fade into a memory. It won't have this hold over you anymore. You need to start hanging out with your friends again!"

"Tried that already. Feels like they're all looking at me like I'm some kind of freak or something."

"Hon, they're just concerned about you!"

"Well, that doesn't exactly help take my mind off of it, now does it?"

"Hm... yeah..." Quistis tried to think, concentrating hard on coming up with something that would get Squall's mind off of his troubles. But what? Was there anything that would do that? Well, what always worked to get her mind off of things? "Squall! You need to get laid!"

He sputtered. "Wha-what?!"

"Think about it! It would definitely get you to stop obsessing over Rinoa, wouldn't it? You wouldn't be thinking anything bad then!"

Squall looked doubtful. "I dunno about that..."

"It's always helped to clear my mind and make me feel better! Doesn't it do the same thing for you?"

He had to think about that for a second. "Yeah... I guess it does..."

Quistis giggled. "You need a fuck buddy is what you need!"

Squall looked down, shaking his head. "Even IF I were to be in the mood--and that's a big "if"--who would want to have sex with me. I mean, think about the girls I know: Selphie's dating Zell... Ellone's more of a sister to me than Rinoa ever was..." He stopped, seeing a look of hurt cross Quistis' face. "Hey now, I'm not forgetting about you! I just thought..."

"What, that I think of you like a brother? Please! That was just something I told you so you wouldn't feel bad about choosing Rinoa over me."

Squall gaped at Quistis. "I... Well, you sure had me fooled!"

"Like being jealous and hurt would have helped any."

"Okay but... I still don't know if this is gonna help me any."

"Might get your mind off Rinoa for awhile. Might even give you someone else to obsess over!" Quistis giggled again.

But Squall seemed to really consider it. "Yeah... yeah... maybe..."