A sweet, distant dream.

The raven-haired girl clenched her fists tightly at her slender sides, her pale lithe arms clad in a deep sensual blue. Her deep brown eyes swept across the beautiful scene with a distant longing, and a sighing soul.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" Her vainly melodic voice called out to no one, a sorrow than gripped the very air around her.

Her mind seemed to answer, as she stood there alone amidst the flowers, "How does loneliness leave one alone?"

"Then I have to leave you! I have to leave!" She didn't think of the question of whom she was speaking to.

"It was always the fate of a sorceress to go mad, sweet Rinoa. You are a sorceress, isn't it so? How can you run from what you are and the one who sustains you?"

"I wan't to be left alone!" The words weren't true, but she called them anyway. Her loneliness seemed to echo, but it couldn't. How could loneliness echo? "No one sustains me." Her voice spoke quietly.

"He sustains you... He's the only reason you're still alive! It is only when you are with him that you live!"

"Then I must leave him." That all to familiar pain of tears before they begin to spill was forging its way through her mind, now. "I don't know if I want to live anymore..."

Rinoa turned away from the field, the wind still blowing gently against her angel wing-clad back.

"Rinoa!" the voice rang out through the silent landscape.

"Rinoa!" It called out again.

Her hands shook, and she stood still in the loose silence that surrounded her. She was unable to move, unable to answer, unable to show any sign of life at all. It took all of a minute until she had gathered the strength needed and turned around to face the voice that called. She prepared herself for who would stand in the field. Her eyes closed tight; she faced the field.

"Rinoa!" the voice shook, growing ever more faint.

She snapped her eyes open, "Squall!"

Her brown eyes darted to the middle of the field.

Indeed, someone did stand in the middle of the field. She narrowed her eyes, focusing on... it wasn't someone, it was something! Without through of her actions, she began to take her steps closer, her vision seeming unnaturally blurry compared to what she saw as normal. It was an object that shone in the bright light from the sun. It seemed to reflect the blinding luminence of the high sun above, a spectacle to high for human eyes.

Despite the blinding white light, she continued to run.

She stumbled clumbsily in her hurry to reach the object, and landed on the ground beside it. Her eyes widened in shock. The Greiver stood before her, jabbed deeply into the ground. It's polished blade shone like a new mirror. The symbol of the lion ingraved on the blade, and the small chain hung from it's hilt. She stood up and pulled it from the soil with little ease. She trembled as the gunblade's smooth surface rubbed against her slender fingers.

Brown eyes scanned to the tip of the broad silvery blade, and her eyes were caught by something she hadn't seen. A coat of fresh, deep crimson blood coated the tip, and it dripped onto her hands, cascading along her smooth skin to stain the blue frock she wore.

The weapon fell from her grasp to land upon the ground with an audible clatter, and in the stillness, she backed away. "Where are you, Squall...?"

"Are you so sure you want to leave, now?" the voice came from behind her. It's sharp cocky quality stuck and stung fiercly in her mind.

Taking a deep breath and turning from the gunblade, she faced him. The sorceress's knight himself. He smiled at her, his wicked grin, with malice flooding his low grey eyes.

Rinoa reached for her necklace, with her mother's ring, and the forged remake of Squall's own; just something to hold onto, as long as she held on she would be comforted. It wasn't there. She stared up into his narrowed eyes, fear flooding her mind. She was alone, without help, without even a weapon and she was without the comfort of her mother's memory. She was alone with Seifer, the sorceress's knight. Vulnerable.

Was this where the story ended?

"Are you so sure you want to leave now... Rinoa?"

Rinoa snapped awake. She tryed to sit up, but her head hurt so fiercly, and her legs felt lodged in place by heavy stones. She remained lying down as pain flooded her head. She then looked around the small inclosed room, to the the doorway a few feet away from the foot of the bed. She knew where she was immeadiatly. The infirmary.

Though she searched her mind she couldn't remember how she got there. Then it hit her. Seifer had brought a fight out and challenged Squall. They fought for a long time before Seifer told them this was his chance to destroy Squall on his own. That was when their party attacked. Zell and Squall managed to keep the fight going but Rinoa had been caught off gaurd by something. A small flickering red light that seemed to follow Seifer around.

As she starred at it, and watched it dance around Seifer's head. It drew her into a trance. She started to loose her balance. She couldn't take her eyes from it. She couldn't think. She realized only to late that this evil magic had done its job. She heard what was going on around her, she heard Zell's voice, "Uh, Squall? What's with her?"

She had heard Squall's interogative exclaimation, "Rinoa!?" and everything went black.

The window over the head of her bed let rays of moonlight shine their way in onto her pale face. It provided her the little light she needed to find her way out.

While staying at Balamb Gardens for a while she had a temporary dorm room. She dragged there as quickly as she could. It hurt her to walk and stand, but she knew what she had to do. She wouldn't let pathetic dreams scare her. She knew where she would go. She had to go back to Timber.

Her reason would sound so weak to the others if she told them why she was leaving. So she decided not to tell them, only Quistis. She chose to tell Quistis because Quistis was serious about things like this, Squall was, also, but she couldn't bring herself to tell Squall. She didn't understand why she thought it so, she just did. She brought out a note pad and looked at the clock, 2:27 AM, she had time to explain why she was leaving.

She wrote more of a short letter than a note. She had hoped maybe a couple of sentences would do the trick. She had decided to make it clear that Quistis wasn't to tell them why she left. She also had to make it clear, that none of them were to worry about her, she'd be back soon.

Rinoa hurried to Quistis's dorm room and slid the note under the door. She was moving a bit faster now that she had given the pain some time to subside. She had checked a calendar to find had only been unconscious for two days.

She hurried to the front gates, careful to get past the garden's security. She was glad she had chosen to leave in the middle of the night. She didn't want anyone to come with her. She headed through the gates onto the lonely fields of Balamb, and headed towards the small town, from there she could get a train back to Timber.