Disclaimer: Memorably not mine.
A/N: Originally written for Challenge #266 'going back' over at KH Drabble on LiveJournal.
Ephemeral
© Scribbler, July 2011.
Leon wondered how he'd been roped into this. He hated dressing-up. He hated tying back his hair. He hated waiting. More than anything, he hated dancing.
"It'll be fun," Aerith had wheedled. "It's just one night."
"Why me?" he'd demanded, not bothering to deny the fun comment. Diving into a vat of warm moogle vomit would be more fun. "Plenty of guys would jump at the chance."
Aerith squirmed, because of course she wasn't asking for herself. Half their class had asked her. That irked him for some reason. Not that he could understand why.
Wait. Rewind. More than anything, he hated not understanding himself. He hated that pool of nothingness where his memories should've been. He hated groping for personal details and coming up empty. This 'new life' in Traverse Town mocked him because he couldn't remember the old one.
Aerith fidgeted. "The guys at school… they're… intimidated by Tifa."
Leon had also started at the local school when Cid decided it was time they began building normal lives here and packed them off with badly made lunches and awkward goodbyes. Cloud had responded by going AWOL. Leon wasn't sure how much he was allowed to hold that against him, since Aerith seemed fine in Cloud's absence. In contrast, 'square peg in a round hole' barely covered Tifa's situation. Of course ordinary guys were intimidated by someone who crumbled boulders by flicking them with her pinkie.
"It'd mean a lot to her, Leon. She doesn't say it out loud, but she wants to fit in."
"Yeah, right. That's why she pounds the shit out of rocks outside town." The thwack surprised him. "Ow!"
"Don't cuss," Aerith admonished. "You'll set a bad example for Yuffie." Aerith was the kind of girl who could say that and not sound like somebody's grandmother.
"Yuffie knows more cuss-words than I do." Leon muttered, "I'll think about it."
Apparently that, in Aerith-speak, meant yes. Consequently, Leon found himself trussed in this monkey suit, holding some bracelet, wondering whether it was his destiny to end up here, or whether things would've be different if nobody had pulled him from the debris of the Heartless battle, with nothing but a gunblade and a torn insignia reading simply: leon.
Was that even his name? The lower case suggested it was part of something bigger, but nobody could help him fill in the blanks when he woke up on the gummi ship. None of the survivors had known each other before Cid rescued them. They, however, had retained their identities. Cid hypothesised about the wound between his eyes and amnesia. Leon didn't care how his past had been taken. He just wanted it back.
"Prom," he muttered. "What a load of baloney."
"She's ready!" Yuffie yelled from upstairs. "Prepare to be dazzled!"
Leon looked up – and the bottom fell out of his world.
Her dark hair sweeps as she turns, smiles and raises an index finger. 'One dance?' she seems to ask, or is it 'one moment?' or 'hold on a second so I can get across this dance-floor to talk to you?' Whatever she means, his stomach flip-flops as she weaves between the dancers, her cream dress clinging in ways that make the teenage-boy-heart beneath his stoic-cadet-exterior beat wildly.
"Leon?"
Tifa's voice drove away the image like smoke after someone opens a window. Leon wanted to yell angrily at her. He had almost remembered!
Tifa toyed with her cream-coloured dress. She looked embarrassed, but furtively pleased. "Thanks, although I'm still mad at Aerith for bullying you."
Leon wanted to stay mad. Instead, he realised something important: not only he had lost things they desperately wanted back, and had little chance of getting.
He held out the corsage. "Uh, for you." Because he couldn't think what else to say, he added, "Aerith chose it."
Tifa smiled almost shyly. "Thanks."
Leon blushed, and once more didn't understand why.
Fin.
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