FicWad

She came round, conveniently, right about the time he found the gravity generator and turned it on. It didn't surprise him; Rinoa was a master par excellence at the opportune fainting spell. He considered it a less-than-intelligent maneuver at the best of times; now it was annoying enough to set his teeth on edge.

"Where am I?" she asked, putting her hand to her suit helmet as if she had no idea why she had it on. Which, he reflected, might actually be honest.

"Short answer or full answer?" he asked brusquely, punching the buttons that declared themselves involved with the ship's internal air supply. Probably shut the oxygen off for a reason/, he thought with a frown. /Quick death for them, or for something else? Both options warned of trouble; this ship, whether he liked it or not, was their only possible way to get back to the planet in one piece, now that a Lunar Cry had destroyed the space station. If the first option, the ship was likely nonfunctional, unsafe to take back into the atmosphere. If the latter...

"Um." Decisive as ever, he noted absently, scanning the room for signs of attack - past or present. "...Full, I think." Realizing he was not going to be gallant and help her to her feet, Rinoa made a wounded little noise and stood up.

"You launched yourself into space from the station in Esthar," said Squall, loading his gunblade. "You were definitely not yourself. By the time I managed to catch up with you, you'd already done something to the stasis locks around Adel and the space station had to be evacuated. Then you went on a suicide walk into space, and believe me I was damn tempted to leave you to it. I went after you anyway, which was probably a good thing because we just missed a Lunar Cry that shredded that space station. I saw a ship in stationary orbit and used what was left in the suits' jets to get us to it. You're on it. If this thing's a dead hulk, so are we."

Rinoa actually managed to look meek. "Um. Thank you?"

Squall gave her a very level look. "The only reason I saved you is there's got to be a reason you were controlled and then sent to suicide instead of being let go. Whoever's playing these games - why you? And why the hell bother to kill you?"

The questions were not rhetorical, and Rinoa knew it. The way Squall threw them at her, it was quite clear he expected her to have a solid answer for them. She wished she didn't.

"I'm...a sorceress," she admitted, staring at her hands. "Since we beat Edea."

Squall just stared at her for a little while, quite still before blurring into motion again. "Good," he said bluntly. "That's probably worth risking my neck over. This ship may have monsters on it. Zap them if you can, because if I've got to fight everything on my own and defend you, only one of us is getting back home at best." He was in no mood to give her a shoulder to cry on. The oxygen had been switched off deliberately, the gravity the same. To kill monsters? Had it worked? He couldn't imagine it would - anything that could've gotten onto the ship would have come through vacuum in the first place. Gunblade loaded and ready, he opened the door.

"You're not upset?" She sounded pleased about that. He could practically hear her thinking up angst.

"Right now?" he asked, poking his head out of the doorway and peering down the dark corridors. The ship did not smell dead. It smelled like a den. "No. Whoever's behind this controls Sorceresses like you'd control a marionette. I'm stuck in outer space on a ship that may or may not fly, and may or may not be full of monsters. If you're a Sorceress I might just make it back down to solid ground, and you're not going to go wandering off shopping if people are likely to shoot you on sight, which means it's just possible we might actually get some work done afterward. Nope. Not the least bit upset. Now get your ass in gear and be ready to blast anything moving besides me."

"You jerk," Rinoa sniffed. "This is a big deal, you know! I'm a sorceress!"

"And because of that you just got shot into space," Squall pointed out quietly, "and when we get home, the tickertape's going to look a lot like a straitjacket. Shut up. I'm trying to listen."

"Hmph!" she sniffed, but she did obey. Not, he noted, by the simple means of walking quietly. She was already playing with her powers, now that she knew he knew, and was floating steadily along a few inches above the floor. /Whatever/, he thought to himself. /As long as she's quiet/.

...Was that a scrabbling of claws?...

Rinoa did have reasonable fighting instincts, owing to exhaustive training by the entire team whenever they'd had a few moments, and with the added power of a Sorceress she proved a capable partner. Still, it was several hours of hard fighting to get to the control room, and several more after Squall figured out how to keep the monsters dead that the ship was cleared. Exhausted - but clean, owing to Rinoa's somewhat creative use of water spells - they slumped in chairs in the command room and tried to remember how to breathe.

"I didn't know you could launch grenades," Rinoa mentioned.

"Newer model," Squall replied, sprawled on a bench. "Split blade to make room for a bigger charge...those spells are handy."

"Here, I'll restock you." She moved over to sit next to him, touched his glove. "If you'll take that off."

Squall shot her a tired, annoyed look - knowing very well why she'd offered, but in serious need of the spells - before complying. Rinoa was quite happy to make holding hands a caress, and power flowed through him - carrying with it the rush of energy and sensation. Irvine had made no secret of the fact that the rush of a full set of spells had its own allure, and quite a strong one.

So he took a personal, perverse joy in keeping his expression totally neutral, bottling the energy for when he'd need it. When she bent over, as if to give him a kiss, he easily slid out of the way and sat up. "Thanks," he said. "I'll work on getting us down, now."

"Squall!" she all but squawked, put out. "It's just you and me, now, on the ship. I'm sure of that. And it'll be a long trip down -"

"Only if it's done right," Squall interrupted.

"And don't you have a romantic bone in your body?"

"Since you ask, no." He moved over to the console, and carefully tried to work out which controls would turn the radio on. With the space station gone - not that radio technology had been used in forever, of course, but it was a /chance/...

Rinoa flumped down noisily in a chair. "Don't you like me?" she asked plaintively. "I'm going to need to choose a Knight..."

Squall decided to squash that little notion in the bud. "Well, if you leave me alone to get this thing working, if it can be made to work, you'll have a planet full of men to choose from."

"/Squall/," Rinoa insisted, getting annoyed. "I want /you/."

He glared at her. "I am a SeeD," he snapped. "My job is not to be your babysitter. My job is to cut your head off if said head goes round the twist. It's a conflict of interest I am not going to take on."

"Well, maybe Zell will be my Knight, then," Rinoa shot back, and Squall stiffened momentarily but said nothing. For all intents and purposes, he was completely and utterly absorbed in getting the console to work, running his fingers over the dials and switches. The silence was thunderous, ionized, and eventually even Rinoa got the hint.

"I'm sorry," she offered. "I know you -"

"I don't get involved," said Squall, slotting each word into place like bricks in a wall. "Proposition whoever you want, but if you upset my team it stops." He tested a switch, and the radio crackled to life.

"Ragnarok, this is Esthar Station. Ragnarok, this is Esthar Station. Come in." The crisp Esthari words were loud and clear, and Squall nearly heaved a sigh of pure relief. Though how they'd known...

He tested switches until he found the send. "This is Ragnarok," he said, fervently adding I hope to Hyne that's what this heap is called. "How'd you know anyone was left?"

"A distress signal was activated with the power-up," said the voice over the radio. "The President said you'd been in space during the Cry; we've been checking the frequencies of every junk heap up there since then."

Squall blinked. Evidently he owed Laguna a get-out-of-a-punch-in-the-teeth-free card. He'd think about it later. "I hope someone down there can tell me how to fly this thing," he said, "Because this tech is severely out of date."

"That's what we're here for," said the voice. "Just follow instructions and we'll see that heap flying right and down to earth in no time."