This is a rewrite of the original first chapter. I sincerely apologize for the lack of quality of the previously uploaded chapter, and I sincerely hope that this one is more enjoyable.
Title: To Live, As Those Who Rule
Disclaimer: I do not own. Kingdom Hearts does not belong to me, but to those who contributed to its creation...
Rating: Strong T, though subject to change.
Warning(s): Language, supernatural themes, dark themes (especially as story progresses). Warnings will be posted at the beginning of the chapter.
Chapter One
Leon hated his job.
He hated having to do menial tasks like the one he was currently invested in. Recovering an object that could fit into the pocket of his pants hardly counted as a suitable mission. Yet here he was, bleeding from head to toe for the data- or whatever it was. He had cuts of various size and depth etched in his flesh, as well as scrapes from various encounters that left his arms stinging and bleeding from his shoulder down to his fingertips. His pants had become wet from the rain, and were now sticking to him like a second skin, his shirt doing the same. The jacket he had grabbed to wear as a disguise, for however long that ruse had lasted, only served to soak up more of the rain and catch in the breeze in ways that helped as much as it hindered. He could cast deceptive shadows along walls and send his pursuers on a wild goose chase, but the added backdraft also slowed his movement to an extent. All in all, the whole ordeal was trying.
There was no reason that such a small amount of data should cause this much of a headache.
Leon groaned and turned on his heel, attempting to shake the persons coming after him. His chest hurt and his vision blurred when warm blood- from a cut above his eyebrow, no doubt- slid down the right side of his face.
He scoffed and slapped a hand to his face to angrily wipe the blood away. He should have been more careful with the extraction. If he had, then this bleeding into his eyesight would have been prevented.
'Idiot', Leon admonished himself as he kept running. He did not have time to stop and evaluate his performance, not with so many persons chasing after him. No, because stopping now was sure to lead to his death, and as accepting as he was of the possibility, allowing himself to die now was not something he was going to let happen.
With a grunt, he leapt from one building to the next, scaling rain soaked walls and dashing up metal fire escapes in pursuit of a safe escape route. He was close to one, he remembered from the blueprints of the compound. The only problem that remained now was actually getting to the escape without being seen. However, there were already footsteps rapidly approaching from behind him.
"There he is!" someone called out. Immediately, Leon turned away and began dodging bullets. His body moved without thought, dodging, weaving and ducking for cover as he made his way along the rooftops.
"Shit!" He could hear the man behind him curse as he vanished from sight, dropping to a low roof and landing with a crouch. He took a second to examine the ledge before deciding that the drop to the ground did not pose a bodily threat. He jumped to the streets and ducked into the shadow of the building behind him (it was once a thriving pharmacy, his mind supplied, but now it stood as an abandoned building). He frowned, forcefully dislodging himself from any further distracting thoughts as he strained his hearing to listen for the man chasing behind him.
Quiet seconds were filled with the sounds of heavy breathing as chest burned and heaved. Lips that he would have preferred closed up remained opened, chapped and dry as hot, ragged, desperate breaths passed their depths.
'Dammit...' He cursed his weakness as his body began trembling.
Sit. Rest. His body threatened to collapse on itself, his knees locking and arms falling to his sides. He bit his bottom lip and reached for the fabric above the crisscross patchwork of flesh above his heart.
We can't stay here, he silently whispered to his body, mentally reminding himself of the dangers of stalling now. 'We need to go on... Just a little longer...' He ran his hands along his aching thighs and half-assed massaged the muscles.
"We're almost there," he estimated the distance mentally as he attempted to placate his exhausted body. "We're close, and there's not much opposition left, so, please..."
He wiped the sweat from his brow and focused on how accurate the statement had to have been.
Pretty accurate, if the current opposition was anything to go by. They were calling the weakest of the bunch to come after him, relying on numbers to take him down. But he was faster and, dare he say, better at this than anyone currently pursuing him. The number tactic was not going to work on him.
"Not tonight," he whispered determinately, and then snapped his mouth shut as nearby noise descended from the rooftop.
"Damn!" the man he'd left behind shouted, "He's so fast!" He could hear the man turn on his heel as another set of footfalls approached the roof.
The newest arrival sounded just as out of breath as the first guy as they scoffed before speaking. "Well, what did you expect?" the second person, a woman, replied, her words dripping with venom. "Consider his position, stupid." She huffed. "He's the-"
He shook his head and purposely lost their words to the brief dizziness that overtook him. He did not want to hear it again. His position only served as two things in his life, as a consistent annoyance that he could not ignore, and as words that would be etched on his grave marker if he did not do something immediately about the two chatterboxes standing on the ledge above his head.
Leon narrowed his eyes and summoned his gunblade to his hand, a plan already in mind. He would take them out. Quietly. Painlessly. Permanently.
All that he had to do was scale the wall, the rest was easy. Just sneak up behind them, raise Revolver, take aim, and then-
He almost gave his position, barely clamping down on the scream threatening to pour from his soul.
'No!' He clenched his eyes shut and rapidly shook his head, attempting to shake the thoughts away.
'No!' He bit the inside of his cheek, stopping just short of drawing blood. 'I won't do it! Not again...' He purposely unsteadied the weapon in his hand, not enough to let the gunblade clatter to the ground, just enough that the tip of the metal graze the ground with a low, barely audible scratching sound.
He breathed against the oppressive darkness threatening to overtake him, clawing again at his chest as if the wounds he had no recollection of obtaining would somehow open and bleed out an explanation as to why he felt this way.
He groaned low in his throat, the sound more of a whimper than anything else, as he raised his right hand and brought the cool handle of the gunblade to his forehead. The dangling metal lion chain attachment clicked in the wind and echoed in his mind as he with fought himself.
'Calm down,' he ordered himself with a deep inhale of cold air. 'Calm down and breathe...' his heartbeat began to slow, the anxious feeling in his bones dying down as he continued to force his emotions down.
'You don't have time for this,' He opened his eyes and stared at the building on the other side of the alleyway. 'There are things that need to be taken care of...' He nodded his head and adjusted his grip on the gunblade, narrowing his eyes in determination before turning to the sound of the two voices.
He had a mission to accomplish.
Rain pelted the uniformed pursuer as he searched around for his escaped target. "He was on top of the- Agh!" he fell on the rooftop, screaming and cursing as blood poured from a leg and both arms.
"Are you alright?!" The woman ran to his side, her eyes searching for danger as she reached for a weapon at her side.
Quicker than her hands could touch the weapon, Leon approached and sent her out of his way. She cried out as she fell to her knees, trembling fingers covering the site where the high speed technique had grazed her side.
"Damn!" The woman gripped the fabric to halt the bleeding. "That little bastard's quicker than I thought!"
The man on the ground next to her angrily snatched a communicator from his belt and swiftly radioed their location.
"The intruder's been spotted on the roof! Dammit, someone get up here and take him out!"
He could hear the wounded man calling for the backup- wanted to go back and silence the call with his own hands- NO!- but forced himself to keep going. The call was an inconvenience, but he wasn't worried about it. He was already on top of the next roof and running, moving on without a spare glance back.
"You're doing good..." He told himself, panting heavily as he dismissed his gunblade and ran. 'You're doing great. Just keep going'.
...
"Great job, Leonhart!" The head of the department, a well-aged bespectacled gentleman with a fancy for outdated watches and button-up vests, handled the papers given to him in a very delicate manner, as though the information on the reports would fall off the pages if they were moved too roughly. "I trust that you fulfilled the objective."
Leon nodded and reached into his back pocket to withdraw a gold, blood sprinkled piece of paper. He unfolded the page, revealing a large, black, elegantly scripted number 7.
"Very good!" There was a smile on the older man's lips that did not quite reach his glasses framed eyes as Leon passed the paper to the older man. Leon thought it odd, but did not question it.
His duty was to obey. Nothing more.
As if sensing the thoughts running through Leon's mind, the older man cleared his throat and called the brunet's full attention on him. "I'll look over these reports," he smiled at the small brunet standing along the opposite side of the highly organized, noticeably polished heavy wooden desk. "You just..." he trailed off, running a hand through his short, brown hair. He took some time to collect himself, and, when he gathered enough of himself to speak again; he held a genuine smile on his face as he addressed the teen.
"Leonhart, keep doing this department proud!"
Leon stared absently at the department's leader, unable to properly respond to the request. What did the leader mean by that? Had he not been doing the department proud before now?
Leon narrowed his eyes and nodded his head. He would get it right. He would do what the department needed of him. And for years he did, doing well enough to be promoted several times until he reached a position that he felt comfortable doing.
Then...
"Leonhart," Hard eyes stared at a folder resting on his desk. "I have a job for you."
Leon nodded and held out his hand, taking the folder and accepting his new assignment.
...
"You're both late?!" A delicate looking hand slammed down on the desk with more force than the hand seemed capable of. The owner of the hand, a forty something year old woman, glared her hardest at the men standing before her.
Leon, now in his twenties, stood tall and nodded his head, acknowledging his fault. Next to him a sound, something like a huff, could be heard. The woman agitatedly drummed her fingers along the desk surface and shook her head.
"I don't believe this..." She muttered, searching the desk for something to ease the headache that was sure to be developing.
Leon ducked his head and closed his eyes, sympathizing with her even as he waged an internal war within himself.
He had been late today. Late.
He could kick his own ass.
(Technically, the lighter, more optimistic side of his thoughts spoke out against his self-depreciation; you weren't the one who was late.)
But that doesn't matter, Leon thought, shaking away the excuses. This was a job and he knew the things that were required of him. Making sure that his boss arrived on time and with him was something that should have come to him as second nature. Especially after being on the job for... what was it? Roughly four years now?
'Yes, Leonhart,' he thought to himself, squinting at the harshness of his internal voice. You should have known better. And he should have.
Leon could feel a sneer pulling at the back of his lips. 'You're such a weakling now', his voice, much younger than his present self, sounded in his ear.
'You're too pathetic. Nothing like this could have ever happened to us back in the day.'
Leon clenched his eyes shut. 'Not now...' He shook his head to clear his thoughts, but paused midway through the action. The sound of catchy, rhyming words slowly echoed in his ear.
The lyrics to a song were whispered in his ear, followed by an airy whisper of a beat. Leon narrowed his eyes and turned to the location of the origin of the sound.
Red hair bounced to an unlabeled beat as green eyes stared at the sunlight on ceiling. Shoes too casual for an office meeting tapped lightly against the carpeted floor as a thin man two years Leon's junior unabashedly ignored the woman's anger.
'...Seriously?' Leon stared at the red head and continued to watch him, even after the younger man had caught him looking.
Puckered lips died down into a smooth grin. Green eyes burrowed into his and eyebrows rose as their owner proudly and casually spoke. "Something on your mind?"
Leon glared, feeling the corners of his mouth drop down into a frown. 'You're an idiot.' Leon thought at the man and returned his gaze forward. He was in no mood to entertain the antics of a man who clearly understood what he was doing.
Low chuckling seemed to bounce off the walls of the expansive office. Leon rolled his eyes and resumed his observation of the woman standing across from him.
Her brown eyes glared at the men on the opposite side of the desk, her cheeks becoming almost as red as the hair that curtained her face.
"What was that?" She pointed from Leon to the red haired male and back again. "Is that some kind of inside joke?"
Leon sighed. A joke? He almost kind of wished that it was. "It's not." Leon finished just in time to catch a muttered "Kiss ass."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, breathed in through his nose and out through his lips. "How old are you?" he furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes on the speaker.
For all of his effort, Leon was rewarded with an extended middle finger in his face.
"Dammit, Axel!" a pen went flying through the air, darting through the air between the two males before hitting against the closed office double doors. The red head lowered his hand and shifted his weight.
Amused green eyes followed the pen from the floor where it had landed to the direction that the pen had been thrown from.
Lips parted into a grin. "Mother," Axel's tone was nothing short of mocking as he addressed his mother for what might have been the first time since he'd walked into the office. "What was that?"
"Apparently, the only way of getting your attention," The woman looked marginally disheartened by the revelation but wiped the expression off of her face almost as quickly as it had come.
"You have an important meeting today," she continued speaking, her tone straightforward and uncompromising. "You cannot be late."
"Then I won't be," Axel shrugged his shoulders and grinned in a way that visibly set his mother on edge. "After all, I know how upsetting it would be to father if I showed a lack of professionalism to any of his partners."
Leon could practically hear the woman's teeth grinding as she stared at her son with equal parts fear and disappointment in her eyes. Her nails dragged along the top of the desk as she pulled her hands into fists, the muscles taunt and her body shaking with barely restrained anger.
Axel was toeing over the line again, Leon assessed without so much as a blink of an eye. Axel was bringing things into the conversation that was better left discussed in a different setting. Preferably at night, in a surprisingly lavish unassuming building, where only those who needed to hear the unspoken conversation would be present. Not in the very public space of Axel's father's office, not with said man standing off to the side of his very angry wife, looking between the mother and the child in search of what could have possibly set the woman off.
Leon kept his hands at his sides and wordlessly watched over the exchange, preparing himself to intervene if and when it became necessary.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, if Axel's put-off expression was anything to go by) an intervention was not needed. Axel's father stepped forth with a smile on his face and placed himself in the middle of the intense stare off between the two red heads.
"It's all right, dear," he placed a hand on his wife's shoulder and eased her to her full height. "Why don't we let it go, just this once?" He rubbed his hands up and down her upper arms as he smiled softly at her, silently comforting her when she turned a confused gaze his way.
"Let it go?" She tasted the words in her mouth with a puzzled frown, as though they were some new cuisine she was trying for the first time and did not approve of the taste. Red eyebrows dug deep and brown eyes narrowed in suspicious contemplation. "As in 'ignore the fact that they were late'?"
Green eyes closed as the brunet haired man smiled down at his wife. "They're here in time for the meeting. That's all that really matters, isn't it?" Slowly, as if just learning the action for the first time, Axel's mother nodded. Axel's father nodded again, as if to congratulate his wife's action.
"Besides, this is the first time Leon's been late for anything since we've known the man. Why punish him for it?" He took a half step away from his wife and waved his hand, presenting the audience of two with a flourish. "We ought to celebrate it." Axel's father laughed. Axel laughed. Leon groaned inwardly and died a little on the inside.
Leon again massaged the bridge of his nose with gloved fingers and sighed. "Please, don't."
Axel's mother straightened in her husband's grasp, the laughter snapping her out of whatever confused haze she might have been in. Leon lowered his hand and stood, prepared for whatever she had to say. Once again, Axel's father intercepted her words before they came to her lips.
"Anyway," Axel's father let his hands drop from his wife's shoulders and pointed at the watch on his wrist, "we have reservations to get to, remember?" He raised an eyebrow and sent a look his wife's way. She stared at her husband for a moment before raising a hand to her lips and letting out a low 'oh!'.
"That's right!" Axel's mother nodded and lowered her hand. She smiled brightly and looked past her husband to her son and his hired protection. "Axel," she said her son's name with unrestrained excitement, "we're off to meet-"
"Ah!" Axel's father covered her lips with a finger. "Not now..." He teased, looking from his wife to Axel and back.
"Right!" Axel's mother nodded her head and laughed, looking more like a child than a forty something year old woman. She quickly gathered her purse and other belongings off of the paper covered desktop and made her way to the door.
Axel's father laughed after her and began his exit, taking a moment to clap a hand on Axel's shoulder before leaving. "Have a good day, son." He squeezed Axel's shoulder. Axel nodded and followed his parents to the door.
"See you both later!" Axel's mother gave her son a hug and a pointed look, signaling between the apprentice CEO and his bodyguard. Leon nodded slowly, mentally charting in the unspoken meeting time. The red haired woman smiled gratefully and turned to her husband, linking their arms as they left the office to meet up with their surprise guest.
Leon caught sight of his current charge and sighed. There it was again, that blank, narrow eyed expression on Axel's face. There were thoughts running back and forth behind that contemplative expression, some of which might have been good but others, Leon has had the misfortune of discovering, were more trouble than they were worth.
Leon shook his head and made his way to the abandoned desk. No, he decided, taking a seat in the empty rolling chair. He was not about to get caught up in another one of Axel's schemes. He did not feel like having to deal with whatever the fallout may have been, and also, there was no time for anything other than work. They were late. Now they had to play 'catch up'.
Leon started up the computer and began entering passwords. "Getting upset isn't going to do anything." He pushed away from the desk and began withdrawing documents, ink pens, stamps, and other necessities out of the various drawers. "Get over it and get to work."
Leon opened a larger drawer and began fingering through the large amount of folders there. He scanned over the names and titles written on labels until he located some files Axel would probably need for the meeting, and withdrew them from their compartment. When Leon sat up again, he was not surprised to see Axel squatting on the other side of the desk, his elbows on the desk and chin resting in the palms of his hands, watching him.
Leon met Axel's stare. "What?"
"Nothing," Axel shook his head. "Geez, Leon. You're always so serious,"
He pushed back on the desk, rising to his feet, and planted his hands on his hips. "No one's pissed off or anything. Just annoyed because he and his bodyguard had to skip breakfast in order to get here on time."
Leon leaned back in the chair and tapped a pen against the desk. "Yet neither of us was."
Axel raised his arms above his head and stretched. "Funny how those things work out."
Leon shook his head and stood from the chair. "Hilarious." He remarked sarcastically and moved aside so Axel could sit and begin his work. Axel gave him a cheesy grin in reply, one Leon chose to ignore as he, being the extra dutiful bodyguard that he was, began the side paperwork that Axel wholeheartedly considered 'Bullshit'.
Leon picked some of the folders from the stacked on the desk and retrieved a sleek laptop from a large cabinet along the wall to the left of Axel. He opened the personal computer and made his way to the sofa in the waiting area of the office.
(Axel and his parents jokingly referred to it as Leon's space, once as Leon's 'unofficial home away from home'. Leon had replied with a blunt "No".)
He organized stacks of paper around him, withdrew several pens from a tin container in the middle of the nearby coffee table, and began his work.
'These papers are only about Axel's father's company.' Leon concluded after working for an hour and a half. He frowned, disappointed, but was unsure of where to place that frustration. At the workload? No. So, then, at himself because, honestly, what did he expect? He was with Axel at Axel's father's company, and there was a drastic difference between Axel's father's work and Axel's mother's...
Leon frowned and set down the clip of papers he'd been holding. Nothing was of importance in them anyway, he concluded as he fingered for another stapled stack. He reached past some of the more obvious papers, as they were page's he'd already seen before, and looked at some of the folders he had not seen before. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the pages rapidly, reading intently for any passages that appeared out of place for Axel's father's company...
"I can assure you that everything you're going to read in those papers is on the side of legal and just."
Leon blinked slowly, craning his head until his eyes met Axel's. Gray storm clouds met with the mischievous grinning eyes of a Cheshire cat.
"What are you talking about, Axel?" He asked, deadpan. Axel smirked a little wider, but otherwise said nothing. Leon shook his head and mentally rolled his eyes. "...Whatever." He gave up on Axel's attempt at...whatever the red head was going for, and steered the conversation onto something more productive and pressing.
"The meeting," Leon casually tossed out on the table, calling Axel's attention to the upcoming gathering. Axel blinked and stared at Leon like he was speaking a language that had yet to be created. The brunet bodyguard raised and lowered his shoulder in a mute, agitated sigh.
"There is a meeting in a few hours that you need to attend." He clarified. "Am I going in with you, or do you want me to wait outside?"
Axel briefly stared at Leon then lowered his eyes to the desk. "I don't know." He picked up the folder his mother had been addressing earlier. "I haven't read the specifics yet."
He smirked, a bare upward tilt of the lips, and held the folder out toward Leon's direction. "I can't tell you what the meeting will be about or who will be there, but you can tell me after reading this."
Leon resumed his work, not rising to the bait. "Not necessary," He filled in some lines on one of the sheets in his hand and lowered it, bringing the laptop closer instead. "Just go over the room's security before it's too late and let me know what I need to do."
Leon could hear Axel lower the folder to the desk, and didn't need to turn around to know that the red head was staring at him, watching him, with a smirk on his lips.
"Leon?" Axel began.
Leon turned his head with a frown. "What?"
Axel raised a hand and pointed in his direction. "I like you this way." he splayed his fingers and waved, as if that would clear up the confusion in the air.
"I like...this, okay? So, do me a favor and don't ever change."
