Wither
The autobiography of Adrian Leonhart
In destinies sad or merry, True men can but try
-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Reading this story are you? I see you've gotten tired of your sugar coated romances, your smutty tales so innocently entitled "yaoi," your gossiping fables and blatant lies. Or maybe you are not and you simply stumbled upon this story by accident. If that is the case then I apologize, for it is human nature to want the simple lie than the complex truth. Click the back button on your browser and leave me here in the dark ranting and raving about my nonsensical complaints because who really cares what the son of a legend has to say anyway?
My name is Adrian Leonhart but you probably have never heard of it before. However, I bet you are familiar with my father's story, or at least some twisted version of it. My father you see was the great Squall Leonhart. Surely, you must know about him, the great SeeD commander, the loyal sorceress's knight. Yes, I know, you've heard. The textbooks in school, the newspaper articles, the novels of so many authors. So many false stories of glory and of strength that so often plague one whom society has chosen to be a symbol of heroism.
I'm sorry if I sound bitter. You would be too if you only knew the truth. I finally understand the legacy my father has departed upon me. No that legacy was not one of naive awe or of the empty ambition to be "just like him." I can't be my father. There could only be one Squall Leonhart. Like all men he will one day die and I will not be here to replace him. I'm not the sorceress slayer or the intrepid leader.
I did try, however, to do what I believed to be right. I tried to make sense of all this gibberish, all these conflicting accounts of my father's deeds. I guess I will never truly find out what happened more than two decades ago as my father defeated the sorceress Ultimecia. The stories tell so many lies. Some say my father was a weak man, giving into the wiles of one woman. Others say that he was a far lesser man than his rival Seifer Almasy. Still other tell me that he never loved my mother at all but sported an affair with his former instructor.
I don't know the truth.
I know that I bear the name Leonhart and for that I will always be cursed with the burden of my father's deeds. I am my father's son and even though I know my father was no glorious champion, I tried to be. I tried because I wanted to give the story teller his star. I knew the truth, the one which no one else can ever tell you- my father was just a man.
But I was such a fool. I failed miserably.
In the end, time will forget me, I am not immortal as my father is. My name will not be carved in stone or on the fiery gunblade. No author will sing praises of my name or say that the one I choose to love was destiny.
It's alright.
Forget me.
But I want to tell you a story now about a girl whom you must never forget, a girl named Diedre. This is a sad story, a story about mistakes and flaws. Remember as you read the record of this tragedy that I will not defeat the villain and save the damsel, not in this story.
This is a tale about the death of heroism.
Part 1 - My Childhood
I lived in the town of Balamb for most of my childhood. I guess at this point I could list my date of birth, my hobbies, my dreams but that's all rot. You didn't come here to hear that and frankly I think I am beginning to adopt my father's terseness with words.
You see, some things in life change you. Afterwards, you are never quite the same. Whether it be a little quieter, a little calmer or just a little more indifferent. I think the people around me know that or maybe it is my perception that has changed, or as some say, your focus determines your reality. However, I move ahead of myself.
I do remember the plains behind my parent's house. It was a vast stretch of land, overgrown with weeds. The vines coiled in and out of the deserted toolshed hidden by the foliage. I remember how on a summer mornings, softly, so softly, I would take Diedre's hand and take her there. We used to run, scampering, like two fugitive trespassers over the wild undergrown. The green fingers tickled my ankles the first few times but it was soon trampled flat and a winding path cut through.
Often, after a while, a figure would appear over the horizon, a smug of black, a insignificant mirage created by the rising sun. But my would heart would sink with distaste as I realized that it was my younger sibling, Tristan.
"Go home," I used to holler, rising to my feet. My attitude toward my brother back then was closest to disgust. He never appeared to be able to find his own independence. Always, upon me he leaned for support, for friendship and for pity. Perhaps it was in our combined distaste for Tristan that I grew so unconditionally fond of Diedre.
It's hard for me to look back now, upon Diedre. So much has passed between us. Now as I write this story I wish somehow that I could have gone back and been kinder to her. Her life was so short, so miserable. I always had a mother and a father. Granted, my parents were not perfect and perhaps I had the most tumultuous kinstrife known to the history of Balamb. However, Diedre, beautiful Diedre, always harbored a deadly secret, one which no one understood, not even my mother. But once again, I move ahead of myself.
Standing on the plains, Tristan never asked to play. He just stood there like a wooden statue. It used to irritate me to death. It made me want to shake his puny little form and ask him why he couldn't be a little more assertive. He just picked up a piece of wood and used it as a staff. It's funny now that I think about it that when he entered Garden he choose a sword for his weapon. It's puzzling in a way. I always thought that he was afraid of all things pointy and sharp.
"Let him stay," Diedre would advise, being the voice of reason. Somehow, when she spoke I listened. There was just something about Diedre. Perhaps when you enter a certain age, one infatuation melts into another until they are like a bag of worthless buttons, tossed in the back of your memory.
But childhood infatuation, that's quite a different story.
The ones you love before the birth of bitterness and despair are frozen in time like portraits of neverland. They never really change in your eyes, never really age. To me Diedre never grew up. That's why now as I am pushed to describe her so you the reader can visualize her features that I am tempted to use words like "nymph" and 'fairy." But I won't use those words because even they cannot do her justice. However even if you were to see how now you would not believe me. You would say that she's just a girl, like every other flashy girl that struts down the street. But she was beautiful to me and perhaps only to me, was she so flawlessly gorgeous.
I see her now in my mind like a segment of a movie replaying over and over again. The same picture of her sitting there, her dress in a circle around her, her red curls lifting gently on the wind and her long curved neck lifting her chin to the sky. I see her like that, closing her eyes and smiling. In the picture in my mind she does not close her eyes to conceal the empty sockets bloodied and black or the yellow flaring sorceress eyes. In my mind I still see her light blue pupils behind that soft skin.
But I lie. I never noticed her eyes when she still had them. Now I see them so clearly it's as though the picture has burned two duel holes in my memory.
"You can play," I said to Tristan as I walked around him in a circle, trying to intimidate him. "But you are the bad guy. You are trying to kidnap the fair lady Diedre and I'm her knight so you better start running."
Strangely, he smiled suddenly. I remember that so clearly, how the sun was shining directly upon him and I was squinting. There were shadows beneath the fold of his lower lip and it retreated as his lips curled up. It made me feel guilty, because he was so easy to please. I had cast him as the villain and he was so grateful, so eager to make me happy.
But he couldn't please me.
My brother never really understood my nature and likewise he never really understood our father. For most of my childhood I saw little of my father. He was busy always, he was married to his position at Garden. Some books I've read of my father's adventures during the Ultimecia Crisis often spoke of his so called great self realization where his loyalty transferred from the corrupt institution of Garden to my mother. I'll tell you right now I thought that all that was rubbish. Those writers are lost in some fantasy world conjured up by lack of sophistication or lack of intelligence. Garden was as corrupt as ever and my father was in love with it as ever.
I always held a contempt for my father as I grew up, however that contempt could only be matched by my admiration. Like every little boy in existence, my father was my hero. He left every morning and saved the world before he came home for supper. But then I realized the horrible truth and he was no longer my hero - he really did save the world.
For those like him, legends frozen by time, there was no relief. The misery my realization brought upon me cannot be grasped by one such as yourself. You are probably scuffing at me at this moment thinking that you would give anything to be in my place. But it is I who laughs at you. At your naive hero worship, at your innocence at your insatiable need for entertainment at the expense of others.
My father saved the world but he could not save my faith in him.
I remember one day when I was fourteen I stormed into our little house in Balamb and thrusted a handful of papers at my mother. She was sitting at her table sorting laundry from what I remember. All I really remember is my fury and my disgust as I flung that scattered cloud of white at her.
"How could you let this go on?" I asked her. "How could he?"
"Adrian!" She scolded gently as she tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear and turned over a sheet with the other. Her eyes went over the paper rapidly before she slowly looked up, not at all perturbed. She must have seen of this before. How could she tolerate it? How could she look at me as if all was well in Balamb?
"Adrian," she muttered again, more sorrowful this time as thought it was me who needed the pity.
"How could you love him?" I asked in fury, shaking with anger as I clenched the back of a chair with my right hand. "How?" I demanded but she kept looking at me in that irritating nonchalant as though I had brought home a bad report card and not a romance story, labeled fact, written by a inconsiderate scoundrel on my father's affair with his former instructor. It was some blond hussy, bearing a whip, waiting for him on the balcony of Garden as he danced with my mother just a few feet away. Oh it made me so furious I could burst with insuppressible rage.
"Stop this Adrian, you are no longer a child." She told me. I remembered staring straight into her eyes, unable to look away. Even now as I recount this tale I see only brown, a endless brown hole which I was plummeting into.
"It's all a lie, Adrian," she said calmly, going back to her work, ignoring me.
"Do you realize how many people have written about this subject?" I demanded. "Surely there must be some sort of fact which this is grounded in."
"I lived through this Adrian," she reminded me.
"Mom," I began.
"Sometimes, you just need to have a little faith, Adrian." She interrupted. "I have faith in your father. I don't want to talk about this anymore. Quistis disappeared over twenty years ago. Let them write whatever they want."
"But it's everywhere, mom. This garbage is spreading faster than the plague. Do you know what they call you in these stories? They call you a whore."
"I have a simple way of dealing with it Adrian," she brushed a few loose papers off the side of the mahogany table. "I don't read it."
"I bet he does." I said bitterly.
"Remember what I just said about faith?" she reminded me coyly.
"Faith," I muttered under my breath. "I bet you had plenty of faith as you stood there on the dance floor as he fondled a blond wrench a few feet away."
"What did you say Adrian?" She asked.
"Nothing. I'm going." I turned to leave when she suddenly called out my name.
"Adrian, don't mention this to anyone else alright? Especially not your father. ."
"Why?" I asked grudgingly.
"Because I'm your mother and I'm asking you not to."
And so I swallowed this atrocity and many more thereafter. My brother knew little of what I saw and even if he did, he must have kept it from me. I see that picture of him smiling, pitifully, stupidly on the plains, running on the plains, dodging my mock blows in the morning sun. I wish I could tell him, bring him into my misery and share this secret with him but I could not, and worse yet I did not want to. I did not believe that he had the capacity to understand. I was the only one who defied father.
I was my father's accuser.
Until, he died.
____________________________________________________________
It began that morning as I strolled into my father's office. I remember how tired he looked as if he had stayed up all night and the night before. Standing there, watching him, I couldn't help but wish I could take some of the burden from him. My father was only forty but his eyes looked decades older. Immortal may be his name, young still may be his body but I knew that his soul had aged centuries by the weary expression on his visage.
In the end he was just my father, my mentor, and my friend. But he was also Squall Leonhart, the great hero. It was the name that was my enemy, not him. He was just trying to be my father.
"Is there something wrong?" I asked. "With Diedre?"
"I'll take care of Diedre," he replied curtly. At that moment all the cliched expressions came into my mind. Cold and uncaring, Squall the stoneheart. Oh how the women threw themselves at him simply because he was rude and unreachable. The vision of that blond hussy came into my mind again. Take care of Diedre? Will you really? Like the way you took such good care of mother?
"Adrian," my father said as he studied my face. "You don't need to worry about Diedre."
I knew he was lying. I knew even then that Diedre was far from fine. But I didn't push the matter further. I watched him stand up from where he sat and walk towards me. It's hard to explain how I felt then. I wanted to turn and scamper away but at the same time I wanted desperately to approach him, to shake the truth out of him. I wanted him to tell me that Diedre was not a sorceress and that he was not Squall Leonhart. I wanted to force the truth out of him and to end this vile nightmare. I wanted to embrace him, to have my father back, the one that used to be my hero and not the world's hero.
"She was just sleep walking," my father answered softly as he stopped advancing upon me. "They found her, Dr Kadowaki won't let it happen it again."
"Sleep walking." I responded bitterly. "Don't lie to me." I said that even though I wanted the opposite. I wanted him to lie to me. I wanted him to tell me what I wanted to hear and looking back, I now realize that he did just that. He lied to me. And he died.
"Adrian, I know you are protective of Diedre but you can only do so much. I am trying my best, you need to trust that."
I sighed and took a seat on one of the many plush leather couches in his office. He leaned against his desk for a moment and crossed his arms over his chest. It was hard to imagine then, that the man I saw before me, the one wearing a neat three piece suit with his hair combed back immaculately was once a shaggy teenager like me. He used to wear leather, the books told me, with a fur collar. His eyes were stars and to see him was like ambrosia to one's sight. Oh how I wanted to laugh at those descriptions.
My father's eyes hardly resembled any celestial. They were just eyes, round glossy objects with a center of blue, made of tissue and cell like that of any other man. However, that was far from the most preposterous material I came across. My father wearing leather and dueling now that was complete rot! For most of my childhood I thought he had just stumbled into a beam and banged his head upon it.
I observed him study the carpet. I knew then that he was on the verge of telling me something. He was collecting himself to give me a revelation of a great deal of importance. Had I listened then perhaps the death of so many could have been prevented. His death, as I know now, could not have been prevented, because of his nature. Oh his nature, my nature, it was the same in the end.
"You called me here because of Tristan didn't you?" I asked although I knew that was hardly the most vital issue on hand at the moment.
He hesitated. I saw him swallowing that speech which he was on the verge of giving. My father was always so easy to elbow aside in a conversation. He was a virtuoso at the art of thought but a novice at the act of distributing that intelligence.
"Tristan is taking the field part of his exam," my father mused.
"Your point?"
"I worry."
"You mean you want me to help him pass the exam, right?" I asked somewhat sarcastically.
"No, Tristan is just timid, Adrian. He's competent enough but sometimes. ."
"He gets scared." I stated finishing for him.
"He needs to learn to have some confidence in himself." My father replied.
I heard someone cough behind me and I realized that Tristan had entered the room. He stood there quietly, waiting. I smiled at him, my younger sibling and gave him my greetings. However, my smiles were not sincere. I was worried about Diedre and about those words which my father did not say.