Disclaimer: Wretchedly not mine.

A/N: Originally written for the ficlet collection A Riotous Symphony. The idea is that you put your playlist on random/shuffle and then write a ficlet related to or inspired by each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. I went beyond the remit with this one, though, and ended up extending it into a multi-chapter fic of its own.

Stay Close, Don't Go

© Scribbler, July 2010.

1. If You Leave Me Tonight

If you leave me tonight, I'll wake up alone,
Don't tell me I will make it on my own,
Don't leave me tonight,
This heart of stone will sing 'til it dies
If you leave me tonight.

- From Stay Close, Don't Go by Secondhand Serenade.

He drifted in and out of consciousness. The pull of the dark was almost too much to resist. He wanted to sink into it, to let it enfold and take him somewhere he wouldn't feel anything anymore –

"… on't you dar…"

"… leeding a lot, I don't think she'll …"

"… y God, oh my Go…"

"… frigging dare …"

He waved at the midges buzzing around his head; or he tried to. The instruction got lost somewhere between his head and his hand. He felt himself lifted, and then intense pain. His entire midsection was molten with it. He may have cried out, or maybe that was lost in translation too.

"… orry, Squall, but we have to …"

"… ave to get him stabilised …"

"… quick, she's …"

"…ot worth it –"

"Yes it is!"

That last exclamation came through loud and clear. He even recognised the voice.

Speaking was an effort, but he was nothing if not tenacious. "A-Aerith?"

A hand stroked his forehead. His hair was damp. It stuck, welding to his skin as if with glue. Something flaked into the corners of his eyes, making him try to blink even though his lids were closed. Everything hurt.

"You stay with us," Aerith half ordered, half soothed. She was the only person he knew who could get that balance. Her voice made you want to try to wake up when it was less painful to go back to sleep. This is especially impressive since she was still only a novice. She wouldn't get her Healer Licence for a year yet, and even then only after she served her apprenticeship and passed her exams. "Squall, you stay awake and hold onto my voice, all right? Just hold onto my voice. Cloud's here, and Tifa too. We're all with you, so you'd better not go anywhere."

She was lying. Not everyone was there. He knew that for certain.

"Pulse becoming erratic," said a deep voice, probably one of the older healers. Aerith wouldn't be allowed to tend him on her own. "He's getting agitated."

"Shhh." Aerith stroked his forehead again. He was pretty sure it was her, even though she had never touched him before. Girls were exacting about not touching each other's boyfriends unnecessarily. Even though Rinoa was the most carefree person he knew, Tifa and Aerith nonetheless restricted themselves to tousling Cloud's hair, resting their arms on Cloud's shoulders, and jabbing Cloud's ribs when they all hung out together. "Shhh, it's okay. It's all right, Squall. Just relax."

How could he relax? His stomach was an inferno and his mind boiled with terrible images. He was holding onto someone, unable to let go.

"We have to get him down," said the deep voice. "It's impossible to work on him properly from this angle."

"We have to get them both down," another adult voice said sharply. Aerith's mentor, one of the senior healers.

"Uh, yes," the deep voice said apologetically.

"Aerith?" said her mentor.

"This is going to hurt a little, Squall, but we have to, um –" Aerith struggled for the right word. "- unhook you."

"Ready on my mark," said her mentor. "One, two, three –"

Fresh pain blazed through his insides. He definitely screamed this time. He must have blacked out, too. When he next heard voices he also registered his back against moist earth, scents of dirt and fresh blood, and the distinctive burnt ozone smell of healing magic. His eyelids twitched. He opened them with superhuman effort.

"He's awake!" Cloud's blond spikes appeared above him. "Squall? Buddy?"

"Squall?" Tifa was beside him, until a bald man in healer's robes hustled them away.

A gunblade was wedged into the wall, blade outward. He could see it from here. A dark red stain splotched the stonework below and around it, as if someone had splattered a balloon filled with red paint there. The impact made almost a flower pattern. You couldn't tell it had come from two different people. The ruined Rose Garden suggested a great battle, and the gunblade told its own story of how it had ended.

"Where's …?" He turned his head – and there she was.

They were wrapping her in a sheet. She looked almost normal now. No hint remained of the wild magic that had turned her into a monster. She looked like an ordinary girl: dark hair, pale skin, a body made lean by training, wearing the uniform of a Royal Guard Cadet.

Except that now there was a gaping hole in the middle of her tunic, and a mirror of the flower-splatter covered her front. He knew without looking it was also on him too. He had, after all, hung onto her with all his might when the magic threatened to destroy all of Radiant Garden, and he made a last ditch attempt to save everyone by sacrificing the girl he loved – and himself. Not many people would run onto a gunblade at full pelt, but it had seemed the only way when the magic was tearing her apart cell by cell.

"Rin …"

"Don't look." Aerith was there. She blocked his view as the older healers wrapped Rinoa's body in a sheet like a butcher wrapping up a piece of meat in white paper. "You're all right. You're okay. Don't look, Squall. It's better if you don't look."

"What–" He stopped, wracked with pain. "I have to … t-to know … why did she –?"

Aerith bit her lower lip. "They think it was a terrorist thing. A wild magic bomb meant for Lord Ansem. Some dissidents from Wutai don't like their king reopening trade relations with us, and they especially don't like Radiant Garden merchants using trade routes through Wutai. They wanted to make an example of Lord Ansem. Rinoa realised what the package was and tried to get rid of it, but it went off before she could get it outside the castle walls. She saved Lord Ansem's life." Aerith didn't have to finish that thought: At the cost of her own. "She's a hero."

He shut his eyes. It didn't stop the tears leaking down the sides of his temples. He had wanted to be a hero. It was why he had joined the Cadets. He remembered telling Rinoa on their first date, when she told him she'd joined because she admired all the good Lord Ansem had done even though he wasn't royalty. The real royal family were assassinated during the war with Wutai. Lord Ansem came along afterwards and created Radiant Garden from the ashes of Strong Bastion. Rinoa said she wanted to keep him safe so he could continue rebuilding the kingdom and making a better life for people who had lost everything during the conflict.

Well, she got her wish. She would be remembered. Lord Ansem couldn't fail to forget the Cadet who had saved his life. No way.

"Uh-oh, he's going again."

"Will someone get the …"

He didn't hear the rest, as darkness rushed up to meet him. He did, however, hear his friends calling his name, just as he had called Rinoa's as she succumbed to magic too strong for anyone but a qualified magician to disperse. It had overwhelmed her in a heartbeat, and he had been powerless to stop it. He could only watch as it tore her to pieces and then started to spread into the Rose Garden, making everything grow out of control and warping the plants into bloodthirsty creatures. Rinoa had sobbed at him to stop it, and her.

I'm sorry, he thought desperately, parroting the words he had said over and over as everything he had to resort to desperate measures. The magic had eaten away Rinoa's left arm, lower right leg and sanity by the time he ran them both at the gunblade. I'm so, so sorry.

Oblivion claimed him once more, and he fell gratefully into it.

.