Smiling At Me (Blue Eyes)

There's a new story being told in Never Never Land, by the ones they call the Lost Boys. This story, unlike the others, isn't about mothers or war games or candy. It tells of a boy, more lost than the rest, who showed up after Sora disappeared from our worlds for good.

Apparently, he resembles the Key-bearer, except that his hair lights with the brightest gold and his eyes glow faintly in the dark. They tell this off as a relic of being in Hades' service, and giggle madly as they theorize on how this glow wore off on him, but Yuffie told me long ago that it was Mako, not fire, that brightens his eyes so.

He was a friend of Aerith's and Yuffie's and Cid's, and I had been present at their reunion. I had diverted my attention when he arrived, only thoughts aching for my own friends that I would likely never see again, for although Sora had told me that Selphie still lived, he told me in the same breath how she had died, and unlike the time with the Galbadian missile base, how she wasn't going to be coming back.

So, I wasn't watching when the thud of Yuffie jumping for joy reached my ears, and I ignored Aerith's coarse, disbelieving cry with my usual coldness. When Cid slapped my shoulders in general good-spirits, though, my gaze automatically jumped towards the others and... stopped.

It had never seemed strange to me that, back at Garden, my eyes had more often watched my peers than others of the 'fairer sex'. Irvine's graceful form as he twisted and pouted for girls, and, one memorable time when he winked at me for watching that led to my storming off in a huff, was more appealing than Selphie's too-chipper bounciness, and even Seifer's snarling smirk held further attractiveness than Quistis's curvy length. I certainly related to them more than females, who confused me an unduly amount, and it was, after all, a female who had ultimately betrayed me, although I cringed at thinking of Sis in that way. It was Quistis I had finally told my feelings to—for I truly did feel guilty about many things I did, and my injustice to her nagged at me greatly—and she was surprisingly acceptant and even partially thrilled that I hadn't rejected her through any fault of her own. Quistis did express some skepticism, however, pointing out that I still welcomed Rinoa to my bed every night anyway.

And that was true, in its own way, although sleeping was the usual course of action and not anything else. It was so hard for me to trust that just laying defenseless with someone took huge effort of will, but I deemed it worth it until Rinoa let in the Heartless. I had only time to comment on the apparently new, oddly shaped necklace she was wearing to bed that night before she raised the dagger and brought it down, giving me several new scars which, luckily, were easily hidden by conventional clothing.

Yuffie, with her annoying, relentless asking was the only one to ever pry the story from me, and after dealing with the loathingly sobbing, trembling state I worked myself into, vowed to never, ever betray me, or leave my side for any reason. This often led to a strong wish to strangle her, now and then, but secretly I didn't mind, and her endless prattle drowned out the voices in my own head.

But, the reunion. I saw him then, and the name finally clicked—he was the one Sora had prattled on about, the man from the Coliseum, described as 'wicked cool' and 'so fast, man, he just leapt up and BOOM!' along with a dreamy look that made me wonder if it really was Kairi Sora was looking for, and not his just-as-oft-spoke-about friend Riku.

He did look like Sora, with the slightly feminine touches and gravity defying hair—which didn't strike me as that gravity-defying; I had known Zell, after all—but the aura around him was the oddest mix of my father's and rival's that I didn't know what to make of it. Just from that glance, I could tell he was stoic, cocky, sweet-hearted, and prone to rushing burning buildings but not a stereotypical hero all the same. Despite common rumors, I can read people quite well (reacting to them is a different matter) and I was quite sure that I had never seen anyone like the wiry man, who was holding the happily babbling Aerith a little too tightly. Rage and grief filled me suddenly and I left the room.

Yuffie immediately rushed after the thud of my boots, babbling a thick stream of gargle that seemed to focus on how yes, Aerith did like Cloud, but probably not that much, there was still hope for me, after all she was a goddess or something like that and she probably could have found Cloud if she really wanted to, but she did stick with me after all, unless I wasn't jealous and merely upset that she was getting a hug, and in that case, did I want a hug, and would I stop walking so fast and glaring like that?

I thought about reassuring her that it wasn't Aerith I was jealous over, for I had seen the thief watching the goddess-in-pink rather often and I knew it would calm her, but there's only so many secrets I can tell a person. Instead, I merely stopped, and nodded, before remembering what she said and being immediately enveloped in an enthusiastic, rather surprised hug. This invoked a sigh and I patted Yuffie's back, causing her even more alarm, but not, I think, unpleasantly. She grinned at me, and then we both had to jump at Aerith's sudden scream and race back to where we had left.

When we arrived, the normally serene girl had obviously just calmed herself from hysterics, and even Cid looked quite pale, muttering things to her too quietly for my ears to catch. They were both staring at a blank spot in the room, which had apparently held a quiet blonde-haired warrior a moment before.

"...what happened?" I asked.

Aerith dried her cheeks before raising her head to look my way. "Cloud... he... the Heartless darkness just sprang up and surrounded him out of nowhere. He just... disappeared!"

Something crashed into our door and we all jerked and turned that way, preparing for the worst. The boy that burst through the doorway was not a foreboding, sweet-natured SOLDIER, however, but the clockmaker's doll, whose name always escapes me.

"Sora's done it!" he cried. "He's sealed the door!" And he was gone again, before he could notice our less-than-cheery states, an insect of some sort with an absurd umbrella following behind him.

The news came as a further strike in the already eventful day and we all stood blankly until even I felt pressed to say something—I didn't, of course, but I was tempted. Finally, the ever impatient Yuffie jumped up and started flinging a throwing star up into the air, catching it as she paced back and forth. I watched it idly; up, down, up, down...

"Okay, then, Cloud's disappearance has to be related. I mean, it's not like people just go away like that every day. 'Cause, I mean, this is Cloud, and he's all important and so on," she said, then snapped her fingers. "I'll bet Sephiroth has something to do with this. Or, or... he worked for Hades. I bet Hades recalled him."

Hades. I had enough problems with sorceresses; gods were not anything I wished to investigate, aside from uttering an occasional curse involving Hyne. Aerith had been very upset when she learned, a few sentences after hearing he was alive, that her beloved spike-haired hero had been employed by the Underworld god. I had never been familiar with the particular deity, but hearing he was Malificent's right-hand immortal, as it were, did not inspire kind thoughts in my mind towards their supposed savior.

But now, having met—well, briefly seen—this Cloud Strife, I truly wondered what he was doing with an agent of darkness. I found it probable that someone had been held captive against him, but when I mentioned the idea to Yuffie later on, she explained in a voice much subdued for her that they were the only survivors, and that Cloud rarely ventured out enough to make friends that quickly that they could be used against him. Apparently others had been used against him before, just as Rinoa had been used as bait for myself.

Hyne. Rinoa.

A few days later found me cleaning Leonhart in the living room—I had taken some pains to explain to Yuffie that the gunblade had been named after me by someone else, but she refused to believe it and teased me mercilessly—when Aerith approached. She took my leather gloved hands in hers, an act which froze me, and begged me with tears in her ocean eyes to find Cloud, or at least word of him. I was so relieved that she hadn't tried to kiss me that I agreed to do so immediately without review. Her thanks were so great and heartfelt that I began to fear that she would kiss me after all, but she remained collected.

And that was how I found myself in a rotted-wood, filth-encased bar, talking to, of all things, a triple-cursed fairy, or, rather, to a young woman with brown ringlet hair and a kind expression, who helpfully translated what glingle-glingle-gling actually meant.

"There's a new story being told in Never Never Land," she said earnestly, in an implacable accent from a place that probably existed no longer, "by the children they call the Lost Boys, the ones doomed to never grow up. Or, well, blessed, possibly. They live in such a state, the poor dears, but they seem to enjoy it, although how that is, I couldn't imagine... oh, I'm sorry, Tink. The boys are saying that a man with wild blonde hair, a sword a foot wide, and eyes that glow blue—and actually glow, not simply in the figure of speech, their speech tends to be rather simple, I'm afraid; the only stories they know are the ones they tell themselves—anyway, eyes that glow, is camped out on the banks of the lagoon."

It was possible that some other spiky warrior was being referenced, but it was the first clue I had gotten in a month of searching. The fact I had been searching for a month attested partly to the utterly crushed look in Aerith's eyes when I returned to Traverse yet again without her hero, and partly because there was nothing to do, with the Heartless gone. Even in its tamer times, Garden's training center always survived, but here there was nothing—no enemies to fight, no Coliseum to take the edge off of boredom, not even any wrongdoers to straighten out.

The little voice saying 'and partly because you've never seen anyone as lovely as he is' I ignored as illogical and unnecessary.

"How do I get to this Never-land place?" I asked, trying to look bored, a feeling that always expressed itself as annoyance on my disgustingly scarred face.

The girl—Wendy—explained, describing a complicated route that involved the ability to fly, which I didn't have, a flying boat, which I didn't have, or a huge amount of belief in childhood and mankind, which I was most certainly lacking in. Finally, after some prodding and a significant amount of putting the girl back on track, Wendy admitted reluctantly that it was fairly easy to get there by Gummy Ship, which I did have access to. Although I preferred the Ragnarok over the graceless block designs Sid admittedly crafted with elegance, my dragon ship was a few destroyed worlds away and effectively out of reach. Thoughts of the Ragnarok led to thoughts of other things—you trusted her you stupid damned wretch and now you think of trusting again, stupid stupid—and I found myself ordering perhaps more drinks than was strictly wise at such a dingy bar. I thanked the girl with words and the fairy with munny, and left slightly more unsteady than I had arrived.

Despite my drunkenness, the sounds of swords being drawn behind me snapped me instantly out of my reverie and I had a fira prepared before I even glanced over my shoulder. The first thug received a face-full of fire that left him howling, and the second quickly met his end with a trigger-pull, but it occurred to me shortly that the one I should have been paying attention to was the third brute, who had come up behind me and introduced a dagger hilt to the back of my skull.

As I sunk into darkness, it seemed to me that, despite all, the darkness of Heartless was nothing compared to that of men. And then there was nothing.

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A/N: I came up with this after reading a few too many absolutely awesome Leon/Cloud stories, which I wouldn't have been caught dead reading awhile ago if I hadn't clicked on one by accident. It seemed to me to have turned out pretty good, until I reread it and found it was absolute drivel that was a little telling of not having written so much as a paragraph in about five months, so I typed a page and a half more and hopefully it's at least not horrible now. Thanks for reading; do leave a comment if you will :)