Your climates in crisis

Authored by : Jen

Summery : In a post witch world Squall Leonheart dreams of a girl called Aerith

Warnings : Minor curse words

Disclaimer : All game content and characters belong to Square Enix / Disney.

My fate it lies with someone, each stranger I'm apart of and them of I

Squall found his blanket on the floor when he woke, army standard blue and forest green, reaching out with fingers to graze a soft quilted corner still clawing for purchase, an edge pinned beneath his knee when he tugged on the white sheet and pulled it close against his chin.

Furrowing his brow, squinting past the delirium of sleep and into the creamy white pearlescent candor of the moon, a glimmer of pre winter in the waning black outside his window, and the handful of stars that glittered like morning grey frost cradled in the cusp of the horizon.

Roused with a sigh as he rolled onto his stomach and moved to bury his face in the warmth of his pillow with a quiet groan, pausing to peer out from under dark lashes when his pendent catches on a pillow corner and stops him on the exhale, wetting his lips with a scowl as he thinks that this time it should have been the bed to blame.

Blame for the restlessness, for the dip in the mattress and the ghost curve of her hip, all snug and safe, and warm against his own. As content as he would ever feel when he watched her sleep, stretched out on warm nights that were never for them to share, when responsibilities weighed heavy in the blue phosphorescent gloom of his bedside clock.

Funny how dreams carried a similar weight.

Unsure if he was awake, or asleep and dreaming he was awake. Running his tongue over sand salted teeth, as if the gritty recollections of the cottage where he spent the summer of his youth resided there still, and it shook him more then Rinoa did the day he understood he knew she wasn't coming back.

Dreaming of ash grey cobble stone stretches of road that gave way under an electric blue sky, stumbling over bits of broken shells and discarded popsicle sticks, licking not so sweet ice cream from the tips of his fingers under milky white lamp light that spilt against the shore of white sandy beaches, pooling in crevices like salt water pools when the tide has swept out to sea.

This wasn't his home.

It was feasible they had all thought, to lay blame to stress alone.

Cid said once that premature age lines came as a perk of the position, smiling as if that particular brand of knowledge was a consolation prize for being ordained the youngest Commander in Gardens history. Ducked away from the formality of the occasion in the same off hand corner of the room as he had been, thoughts a million miles away as he held tight to a glass of something silky gold and sickly sweet in his hands.

Some things would never change.

Like feeling older then his twenty years, older then the surprise birthday cake with twenty white candles and the yellow lion piped on with icing that Selphie had made, grinning like a cheshier cat as he inhaled that waxy perfume of melted candle wax and soft spongy chocolate cake.

Squall snorted softly, closed his eyes and tried to drift back into sleep.

Leon was bewildered, opening his eyes to the curve of a night sky as it arched out and over him, racing towards an effusive red dawn, letting his mouth hang open, because it wasn't the plain white ceiling of his dorm, or the window he had left open before bed, the hard mattress with the dip because Rinoa had jumped and broken the springs when a spider had crawled across the floor.

His heart, his realized dizzily, hurt.

Pressing a palm against his chest as a chill not born of the night air sent a shiver down his spine, reaching out with his other hand, the pads of his fingers feeling across hard stone for the handle of his gun blade.

"Oh..." She said in surprise. "Oh my."

Leon swore he could hear his neck crick when he turned his head sharply, startled by the sound of other human voices.

"Aw hell darlin, more like 'oh shit' if ya ask me."

He had the same sort of twang that Irvine had, a drawling lisp to the cockeyed grin that clips just past the preheprial of his vision, and Leon thought he could remember knowing that short cropped blond hair and pale face, the red glow between lips that curve bemused in the askance dark outside his little pool of street light.

"Second one this week." The girl said to her companion with a sigh, moving into the light and throwing an oblong shadow across the starkness of his white sleep shirt, and for a second Leon was distracted from that sense of welling disquiet, because just for that second he believed it could have been Rinoa.

It wasn't, but he realized he knew this girl all the same, looking into a face that spoke of memory and something fonder.

Fonder like the better part of a years worth of worry, comprised of fairy like dreams of the brunette that now crouched before him, staring up into eyes that were a different shade of blue then he rightly remembered.

Leon could only stare warily as she smiled carefully and said, "welcome to Radiant Garden."

"Shit..." More like a snarl then a gasp that jolts him awake, his stomach clenching over that missed step sensation as his breath caught, and hitched, and Squall let his forehead sink back into the pillow, blinking out sideways at the dark blanketing his window.

"You're not crazy." She said, a lilting half smile pulling her lips taunt, and Leon could feel her eyes settle on the curve of his hunched shoulders when he ducked his head to avoid her gaze. "It just feels that way for awhile."

Leon snorted, he felt displaced next to the gabled roof tops and chimney stacks, a white duck in a royal blue waist coat and matching top hat, discussing the weather with a little brown rodent in a red knit sweater.

"I uh..." Leon cleared his throat and shook his head, looking down at Grievers pendent around his neck and faltered, feeling his hand tremble when he pushed it through his lank brown hair.

"Your name, it's Aerith?"

She stiffened but nodded, leaning forward with a breathy sort of exhale on her lips. "You've had visions?"

"Dreams." Leon muttered, uneasy with himself. "I think I'm dead."

"You haven't died." Aerith said gently, like she had explained this all before. "You still haven't told me your name?"

"Oh...it's Leon."

Squall opened his eyes and stared at the hand fisted in the sheet near his nose, at the spot where he knew that the faint pink vein of a scar twisted around his thumb and down onto his palm. He had always favored his sur name, Leonheart, had felt that Leon in itself, in some sense suited him better then the fly apart chaos that his own name, his real name, that Squall, had always represented to him.

His feet were asleep with pins and needles when he wiggled his toes and stretched, rolling onto his side as he frowned at the clock, at the uneasy weight nestled in next to the apathetic mood he'd had since dinner, and tried to will his thoughts somewhere else, somewhere safe.

Rinoa was never far from his mind, remembering the hours they would last spend in each others company, unbeknownst to them both. The strained embittered quiet they had only begun to share, awkward lulls in conversation when his breath seemed to run out, and she would sit back and stare at the far wall, lips pressed white because she couldn't understand his inclination of guilt, of muttered apologies after dark when he felt like a cheat, stirring from another nighttime rendevous with that other girl.

I loved her, he thought.

"I won't do it again..." He muttered blearily, glancing over at the blue cardigan she had left in his room, draped over the back of his desk chair as if she had only stepped out for a minute, robins egg blue and soft, a sleeve trailing against the floor as white brocade flowers twisted through holes left empty for buttons.

Aerith in his dreams seemed to understand, head inclined over a sympathetic smile as her hands folded in her pink summer dress, and Squall would wrinkle his nose and try not to feel that sense of sated comfort that came from a shared sense of loss. Drifting along in the wake of whatever dream he'd had that night, swearing fealty to his desk with a disgruntled frown, peering through a paper built city as Quistis and Xu argued between precarious white sky scraper stacks, and he would suddenly ache for the years he had spent unencumbered as a student here.

"I'm not a dream." Aerith looked faintly concerned, passing him a small wooden bowl of steaming hot stew, ignoring Cids bemused grin, as if the tilt of his head suggested that he understood.

Sometimes it felt like a dream to him too.

"Damn best stew you'll ever have." Cid smirked and tossed him a spoon.

"What's in it?" Leon asked, eyeing the red slop dubiously, and Aerith as she ladled some for Yuffie from a big gleaming silver pot that exuded a strange, earthy smell.

"Hell, left overs from the fridge, stuff of warriors that is."

Leon rolled his eyes, poking his stew with his spoon and watched as small brown chunk bobbed back to the surface with squelch.

"I miss hot dogs." He muttered.

"Hot what?" Cid had looked up, his spoon halfway to his lips. "Dogs?"

"Yeah...hot dogs?" He wasn't sure who looked more confused or more horrified.

"What the hell are they?"

Yuffie had looked around sharply for Pluto, leaning over to scratch behind his ears with a satisfied smile as she slipped a carrot beneath the table cloth.

"How can you not have heard of hot dogs, when you have cheese cake...?"

Pluto wagged his tail, knocking against the table leg and rattling the little cacti shaped salt and pepper shakers as both Cid and Aerith glanced at each other.

"It's just..." Leon faltered, scowling slightly. "Just processed meat you stick in a bun, kind of long and narrow like a...uh, well a banana or something..." He trailed off uncomfortably, it wasn't like had ever really liked hot dogs all that much, it had always been Zell who was so -

Leon's face darkened and he looked down at his stew.

"That's just..." Cid waved his spoon, nose wrinkled in disgust. "Damn disturbing."

"And what, this isn't?" He spat back, arms folded across his chest.

"You bet your ass it is!"

"Well I don't know..." Yuffie interrupted airily, slurping loudly in the suddenly strained quiet as Aerith pointedly ignored them all.

"It would have been so much grosser if they were real dogs or something." She shuddered lightly and fixed Leon with a stern glare. "I'd have to kick you and those stupid leather pants all the way to the moon if they really were...and you had...well, eaten them!"

Squall shifted, closing his eyes tight and pushed his face into his bunched up pillow, holding his breath.

Aerith passed Cid a cup of tea, handing a small tin of cookies to Yuffie who was crouched next to Pluto below the arm of the chair where the wizard sat, lightly dozing in his hand.

"We've really only just scratched the surface, because of the sheer wealth of information that Ansem has in his study...it's taken us a long time to just understand and decipher his notes." She shrugged, stirring two lumps of sugar into her cup. "His research into the light and the dark, his development of the heartless, perhaps it's not strange to think that he discovered that each world contains it's own heart, in a sense, and more then just a pulse, a life stream..."

Aerith faltered and glanced over at Cid.

"We know..." Cid carried on, slumping back into his chair as he kicked out his feet before him with a sigh. "That he developed ways to get to the Heart of worlds, we're just not sure how he did it, or why the hell the crazy bastard would want too..."

Squall panicked and pushed up onto his elbows, panting, this wasn't okay, seeing them with his eyes half open, closed, awake or not, and he knew this couldn't just be stress, or fear, or even a question of mental stability. Trying not to laugh till the sound bubbles up garbled and inhuman, as anxieties snake between his ribs and press a gentle weight over his own heart.

"Hell, we all pay for our sins don't we." Cid smirked, head ducked over his cup of tea. "You're damaged goods kid, like the rest of us the way I got it figured. You'd have to be, the more fucked up you are the better chance you'll get of ending up here."

Squall ran his hands over his face, digging the heals of his palms into his eyes.

"You look pale Leon, here..." Aerith smiled, softer this time as she passed him a second cup of tea across the red checkered table cloth, past the wizards empty mug and Cid, running his hand over the back of his neck like he had a headache.

"What Cid means," Aerith continued, instinctively looking back at Yuffie again, now curled up in the only bed, her arms around a small burlap bag of shiny silver orbs, and Pluto, his head resting on the edge of the mattress near her curled hand. "Is that, there are aspects of our hearts Leon, that are darker then others, then the people we knew. It was the kind of truth that Ansem seemed to be searching to understand, the parts of us that are still whole and unbroken, or more susceptible to that very darkness."

Squall had wanted to believe with as much conviction as Rinoa had once had, the way should used to sympathize, agreeing this his dreams, or hers, as constant as they had become, were only that, dreams.

"Don't be silly Squall, Xu told me that the doctor told her it's something like 'post traumatic stress disorder.' You obviously haven't gone to see her yet have you?"

Remembering how Rinoa would smile when she told him he wasn't crazy, her fingers soft against his lips. "You're only human silly." She had remarked, tapping his nose much to his irritation. "Don't think so hard all the time."

Squall rolled his eyes and glanced at the clock again.

Whatever.

Minutes stretched past midnight like light years, slip sliding into the bleakness of dawn, a restlessness that twitched in his fingers, tired of sleep and laying still with nothing but his thoughts as company, and in the benign quiet he started to crave movement, a sensation of normalcy, anything to get away from the clutter messing up his head.

He needed routine.

The sheets slipped away easily, crumpling against the edge of the bed when he stood up suddenly, pooling over his abandoned quilt as he drew in a long steady breath, limbs numb with lethargy.

Reaching for the jacket he had tossed over his desk, tugging it on over the white of his rumpled sleep shirt, to impatient to root around for a clean shirt, or his pants, his favorite pair now mud worn and exasperated as he unsheathed his gun blade, because nothing these days felt more like home in his hands.

Moonlight faded, softened against the far wall and over his headboard, and Squall seemed oblivious, ignorant of the incursive weight of the dark now sheltered by his room, shaking his head to clear away the cobwebs, the tricks of the mind that played in the corners of his room, a sheen of white in eyes as creamy as the moon before they slid away, slipping under the bed on a dark belly of soft mated fur.

Squall could only feel his breath hitch angry, this insistent anxiety clinging on like the strain of a winter cold, flexing sweaty fingers over the hilt of his sword, desperate for release.

I need to clear my mind, he thought and felt around for his boots.

Sand had caught between the buckles, and he could feel it on his fingers, startled, staring bent over with his blade resting close to his foot, and thought suddenly, unexpectedly of the Edea he had known growing up.

How she used to sit at his bedside, tucking the quilt up against his chin, and he would watch the light curve along her neck, spilling into the corners of her lips when she smiled, telling stories in the near perfect hush of bedtime routine.

Squall hesitated, rubbing the back of his hand quickly across his eyes, thrown by a sudden sense of loss when he realized that nobody else had ever told stories half as well as she had, or ever would.

I loved her too.

It was almost to easy to accept the illogicality of any of this, when much of his world seemed to rest on the strange and nonsensical, fingers slipping over tarnished boot buckles as he frowned, head resting on his knee when he thought of Irvine, and the strained conversation they had shared that morning, remembering clearly how drawn the cowboys face was, and wondered if he looked much the same these days.

Trying to ignore the looming space that been Selphie between them.

Funny when things really started to snow ball into something they couldn't ignore, how easy it was to let the nutrition of anxiety feed on the news, reports of natural disasters like earth quakes, a nation in a state of emergency as rumors of dark things, of wicked things that hid under beds and in closets, despatching various SeeD to abate fears of spooks and shadows.

The sky had never looked so empty, and nothing seemed to amount to the kind of fear that came when the head of Esthars deep space research department had announced that stars were disappearing, simple really, and there was no explanation.

They had no answers.

How was that possible?

They were all scared, and he wondered at the use of trying to pretend that everything was going to be alright, that he had some measure of control and that this was just another monster they could conquer with a little team work and elbow grease.

Only, there was no they anymore was there.

Unable to shake the look on Rajins face from his mind when he had caught him in the corridor, a hand grasping onto his arm when he said, "he's gone." Looking at Squall, like Squall was the kind of guy that could fix things.

He couldn't fix Rinoa, haunted as he was by her absence among others, disturbed by his own anxieties when nothing turned up. Just a dream he would later recall, one she had confessed over coffee at a quarter past two in the morning, and nether of them had been able to sleep. Staring at her hands as she pulled her legs up to her chest and squinted under the lurid florescent lights, and told him she dreamt of black holes.

Easily forgotten in the confusion, in the panic preceding dawn a week later when he found her bed empty, trailing a hand over the things she had collected, objects on her desk as Angelo keened softly, both of them disquieted by the stillness of her room, as if she had never existed at all.

"Do ya believe me now Leon?" Yuffie asked, pointing at a small constellation that wasn't really a constellation any longer, left of a moon that wasn't his, a crescent shape in the east as the last vestiges of dusk receded under the black, an inky darkness he felt he could suck up through his lungs and swallow.

"There used to be a cluster of three stars Leon, I think Cid called em Ifrit or something...anyways, they're gone now, and that means what ever world was there is gone too."

Squall wanted to scoff, standing unsteadily on his feet, ill at ease and bad tempered, clinging to his sword in his uniform white sleep shirt and cotton pants, his worn leather jacket, loose in unbuckled boots as he tried to entertain the notion that perhaps, maybe this is what crazy honestly felt like.

Like he was going out of his mind.

Like Laguna.

"Hey kid...Squall, how ya doing?"

"Fine. What do you want?"

"I well, I just wanted...I mean, I had this urge ya know, this feeling and all and well..." Laguna laughed nervously, his voice scratchy and distant over the connection.

"..." Squall rolled his eyes, but pressed his lips together.

Laguna sounded odd.

"I just well...ah hell kid, I love ya."

It wasn't so much that he had said I love you, just that the words seemed to sound an awful lot like saying goodbye.

"Do you really believe me now? That your world is gone too?"

Leon shrugged, turning away from Yuffies face. "Perhaps." He didn't want to think about it.

"This is kind of our turf now yeah, we were here first, sorta." She grinned and thumped her chest, "we've been around for a while now, long enough to know that for all those worlds that are gone, there were, are other people Leon that survived as we have. We never really know how many are just lost, but I think we can kinda feel it ya know, right here." Yuffie thumped her hand against his own chest, jumping back with a grin before he could swat her across the back of her head.

Eyes half shut and Squall leaned forward almost instinctively into a faint ocean breeze, listening as the tide as it washed in and out, distant like the hollow of a shell pressed against his ear.

It was that sense of finality, of endings that tasted like all the things he knew in that moment, and nothing else seemed to matter much anymore. Just those lost summers at the orphanage, before Ellone had left, baking under a hot sun, elbows bent over skinned knees as he watched the other kids crash into the surf, all aqua marine and white and frothy, the ferocity of their laughter unfurling with the tenor of bed linens that Matron had hung out to dry.

Like dusk in that strange world, spilling out like smoke in a blue sky, and Edea would pass him on the wooden porch, bare feet under the hem of her black dress.

He had never realized until then, how much Aerith took after her in his mind, in her mannerisms, the softness of her hands when she would reach out to brush hair back from his eyes, smiling as if she knew all the world and it's secrets.

There was a fondness to the edge of his memories, a softness in the fireworks, and silliness, gooey marshmallow and chocolate sticky fingers as the air grew tender and cool, Edea laughing as he dragged his feet through wet sand.

It was easy to imagine her telling him that there was no evil here, breathing in clean ocean air from the confines of his dorm, the taste of sea salt on his tongue as he wiggled his toes in his boots and felt warm sand.

Unaware of the soft shapes peeling away from the black, and eyes that blinked curious and dull, tiny groping fingers reaching hesitant to graze the backs of his legs, and the toes of his boots.

Squall could imagine opening his eyes, and Edea would be there, standing next to him on this precipice of black, a hand on the arm he clutched his sword in.

He watched, eyelashes fluttering, glassy eyed as Edea reached out, a faint iridescent stain of white light following the motion of her fingers, brushing the pad of her thumb across his lips as she smiled.

Have faith Squall.

A/N : I wanted to write Leon as if he were having dreams of foresight, and in connection with Aerith because she was such a pivotal and spiritual character in both FF7 and Kingdom Hearts. Rinoa was just another casualty, I'm not a big fan of hers, but I liked to think that the impact she had made on his character wasn't something to ignore, and that the evolution of their relationship couldn't have been easy in the wake of the witch, and in the face of his preoccupation with Aerith, and his responsibilities as Commander of Garden in the face of his changing world.