All characters © their respective owners
(T-T)
KN: I hope no one was expecting a Christmassy thing for Christmas. I've been drawing holiday-related pictures and publishing holiday-related oneshots for twenty-four days straight. I've had it up to HERE with Christmas. Therefore, have a multichapter LeonXCloud story with AUish stuff thrown in that I've been working on whenever I had the chance.
Warnings: Well, I did just say LeonXCloud, or I should say eventual LeonXCloud. Yes, they will take turns topping. I should have more warnings, but I want things to be a surprise. I will say that Reno is a survivor from the destruction of Radiant Garden, and he is part of Leon's group in Traverse Town. I guess I can also say that Vincent will be making an appearance too. And finally, lots of spoilers for all the Kingdom Hearts games. Just saying.
KN: Also, I'm going to change the summary and title once I think of something better, all right?
(T-T)
Someone else survived.
That was all Leon could think as he watched Sora, Donald, and Goofy fight against a blond man he easily remembered. Don't get the wrong idea, though. He wasn't close friends with him; he wasn't really close to anyone who survived Radiant Garden's fall. It just wasn't all that difficult to remember someone with such a…distinct hairstyle. That was all.
But Cloud had changed in the last nine years. It'd be hard not to in such a long time, but this wasn't something he – or well, anyone else he could think of – would expect. Why did he wear a tattered red cape? Why was there a golden claw where his left hand should be? When did the once puny kid from his childhood become strong enough to wield a sword like that? And what in the world did Cloud go through to have that almost angrily melancholy look in his eyes?
"C'mon, Cloud!" Yuffie was next to him in the stands, cheering and bouncing with energy only she had, "Teach that keyblade brat a lesson!" The ninja seemed satisfied with the fact that Cloud survived. To the point where she was trying not to be concerned about his condition? Or maybe just seeing Cloud alive was enough reason for her to be happy. "Hey, Leon," she tugged on his sleeve as she turned to look up at him, "we should talk to him after the match!" Normally, he would've sighed and let her do whatever she wanted by herself, but this wasn't a normal circumstance. Cloud looked kind of...unstable.
"…all right." He answered. He wasn't all that close to Cloud; Yuffie was closer than he ever was, but he did want to find out what Cloud was doing in a place like this. She smiled widely before she turned her eyes back to the match. Her smile was replaced with shock as her eyes widened, one of her hands pointing to something in the arena. Leon turned to see what caused such a response and was shocked himself (even if he didn't outwardly express much other than widening his eyes).
Cloud was in the air. Cloud had a wing. A single black, leathery, demonic wing.
It was evident from the near identical shocked look on Sora's face that he hadn't known about Cloud's newly gained appendage either. He didn't have time to stare, however, as Cloud was flying at an insane speed while holding a very dangerous weapon while Donald and Goofy were already knocked out. Even then, the keyblade wielder couldn't do much aside from run and endure the blows. After a round of relentless swings, Cloud's wing retreated under his cape, and the blond swordsman was on his own two feet again as Sora wearily raised his keyblade to cast Cure.
The audience seemed used to a sight like this; no one reacted the same way Yuffie did.
"Leon…" Yuffie looked up at him again. "What did…why? Did that really just happen?" She asked as if his saying, 'No, Yuffie, Cloud can't possibly have a wing' would change the fact that he did, indeed, have a wing. Even then, Leon couldn't assure her doubts. He didn't know what to say because all he could think was…
Cloud had changed in the last nine years.
(T-T)
The match ended in Sora's victory. After Cloud presented Sora with a small, golden bird-like charm thing, he left the arena. Yuffie then all but dragged Leon out of the crowd to chase after the other man. And that brings them to the small area near the entrance to the Coliseum lobby.
"Cloudster!" the girl practically tackled him with what looked to be all the strength she had, but the swordsman didn't seem to budge under the force. He awkwardly turned around in her grip to put his arms around her in some attempt to return her hug. He didn't even so much as glance at Leon. She looked up happily at his response and started going on about how she didn't think he had survived and why was he here and how was he doing. "Hey, you remember Squall, right?" She let go of Cloud to point at Leon, who was leaning against a wall.
"It's Leon." He said almost instantly. Cloud looked at him almost dismissively, as though Leon was not worth the effort to be happy over.
"Not really…" he answered quietly, roughly, like a voice that wasn't used to idle conversation. Yuffie raised a brow at this.
"But didn't you-?!" her mouth was quickly covered by Cloud's hand, the one without the gold claws. He narrowed his eyes at her.
"Things change." He said in that same quiet voice. Yuffie didn't seem deterred by the tone, and pulled his hand away.
"Will you come back to Traverse Town with us? Aerith and Cid are there, you know! They'd want to see you. I don't know about Reno, but I don't think you being there would be bad news to him." Yuffie offered even though she knew damn well that they didn't have enough room in the Gummi ship to fit Cloud in. They'd have to make two trips if they really wanted to, and they didn't have the time for that since they were only supposed to be here to cheer Sora on in the Hercules Cup. Although, the idea of leaving Yuffie behind to take Cloud to Traverse Town had its appeal…
"Not interested." He pushed away one of his bangs casually as he said that. Yuffie's smile turned into a frown in less than a second.
"What do you mean, 'not interested?!' Why not?!" She stomped one of her feet as she balled her fists. "We thought you were dead all this time! Do you have any idea how we felt thinking we were probably the only ones left?!" She yelled, but Cloud's face only stayed blank. "Don't you want to see Aerith and Cid?!"
Leon almost told her that she was being too loud, almost told her that it was Cloud's business if he didn't want to see anyone, but Cloud beat him to it when the blond's eyes flashed and narrowed dangerously.
"Of course I do." Cloud replied almost indignantly, the hand without the claw clenching tightly. Yuffie looked at him with confusion conquering her expression. The swordsman's face softened then as he turned away from her. "But I can't right now." His eyes trailed to his cape as if he was afraid his wing had revealed itself without his knowing. "…not like this."
"So what?! You think that wearing this," She gestured to the cape with the scorched ends, "and having that claw," pointed to the claw, "and wing will make Aerith of all people treat you any differently?!"
Again, Leon almost told her she was being unreasonably loud (and while it looked like Cloud was worried about his appearance, there seemed to be another reason he didn't want to see anyone) but the blond beat him to it again.
"I JUST CAN'T, OKAY?!" the normally quiet blond yelled clearly. Yuffie now sported an indignant expression mixed with confusion while Leon's grip tightened on his arm. His claw thing gripped his cape, the hand that possessed them trembling slightly. Yuffie probably shouldn't have mentioned seeing the wing, but Cloud's eyes softened again as his claw returned to his side. "It doesn't matter what you say because it won't change the fact that I can't." That was probably the longest sentence Cloud said today.
"You have two legs, don't you…? I don't get why…" She weakly argued. Both refused to look at each other as they simultaneously turned away.
'It'd be like watching two children fight if the subject weren't so serious…' Leon thought to himself.
"Just…AAAAAGGGGHHHH!" Yuffie abruptly flailed. "Do whatever you want! See if I care!" She stomped one of her feet again. "Can you at least let us tell Aerith and Cid you're alive?"
"Yuffie, listen…" Cloud said almost woodenly. "I'll come back on my own, but I need some time." He looked at her unhappily when she looked up to meet his eyes. "Please. Just don't tell anyone I'm alive and here like this. I can't see them like this." He explained so quietly, so stiffly, Leon wondered if Cloud would just vanish like a wisp or break somehow; he seemed so small and fragile all of sudden.
"…a…all right, fine." The ninja reluctantly agreed. "I guess it should be enough if me and Squ – Leon – know that you're still alive, but!" She quickly pointed her finger up. "You'd better come home! Really! Aerith and Cid and maybe Reno I don't really know would be so happy to see you! I know I was. Not sure about Squall, though."
"It's Leon." The brunet impulsively corrected her.
"Whatever!" She stuck her tongue out defiantly.
"If you're done chatting with your friend, then we should probably get going." Leon pushed himself off the wall he was leaning on.
"He's your friend too!" She somewhat flailed again. 'Hardly…' He thought. "Hmph. I want to see if Sora beat Hercules, though." And now Yuffie was just making up excuses to stick around.
"WHAT AN AMAZING BATTLE! THE WINNER OF THE HERCULES CUP IIIIIIS…SORA, DONALD, AND GOOFY!"
"What?!" Yuffie shouted incredulously. "There's no way - I gotta see this!"
"Yuff-!" Leon had an arm extended in her direction, but she had already disappeared into the arena stands. The brunet's hand then met his forehead as he sighed. He glanced back at Cloud (who only offered him a blank look) before he followed the little ninja.
"Leon…" Cloud looked down and said quietly once the man was gone.
(T-T)
"There's no way that squirt beat a demigod with a barrel!" Reno expressed his doubts as he carried the spare gummi parts over to Cid's workplace.
"I know, right?! I bet Hercules went easy on him!" Yuffie wholeheartedly agreed as she moved some boxes around.
"Maybe Sora just became stronger?" Aerith offered as she set some tea down on the table.
"You guys should've taken me to this tournament, yo. I would've put that brat in his place." The red head said as he paused to chew on the end of a toothpick. "Can't find a decent cigarette here…" he muttered. Cid nodded to that as he worked on…whatever it is that thing was supposed to be.
"Don't be silly, Reno! Leon's way stronger than you." The ninja explained as she sipped her tea. Aerith smiled and nodded in agreement much to Reno's slight indignation. "And we don't have enough room in the gummi ship."
"Strength isn't everything, yo!" Reno somewhat flailed at the insult. "And just wait till we get this second gummi ship ready to go!"
"We'd get this second gummi ship done if ya stopped standin' around doin' nothin' every five seconds." Cid pointed out as he waved his wrench around.
"Tch. Olympus wasn't built in a day, old man." The other man quipped.
Leon carried more parts to Cid without a word or an expression that wasn't blank.
Just another typical work day, really.
(T-T)
It was a sea. It was a moving, shadowy sea.
Squall – that was what he was back then – didn't know what happened to the people that got dragged under it, but he knew they didn't survive at the least. But all he knew how to do at the moment was run; he had to get away from it, had to save Aerith before she got pulled under too. His hand was holding hers as they both ran to who knows where just trying to survive whatever this was.
Movemovemove…wait. Screaming.
He hesitated slightly before he ran again. That person was probably too late to save, but Aerith had dug her heels in, so he had to stop unless he wanted to drag her around in the dirt. The end of the world was not an excuse for mistreating a girl.
"Squall, it's Yuffie!" she pointed to the then small form of the struggling girl trapped under a small, shadowy creature. She was only a kid; what did the little monster want from her?! "We have to save her!" He looked from the oncoming wave of those swarming shadows to the girl to the monster raising a claw above her.
"Get off me! Help!" Yuffie looked like she was punching it, but the thing just seemed to shrug off her light blows.
You couldn't save Rinoa.
Or Irvine. Or Zell.
You watched your orphanage drown.
"Help!" The girl seemed to be in tears. Aerith had wrenched herself out of Squall's grip and ran towards Yuffie before Squall could register what she just did.
"Aerith!" He reached a hand towards her direction with the other instinctively gripping the hilt of his gunblade.
You can't save anyone.
Just then, a thin, long, white rod had pierced through the creature before its limp body was lifted off Yuffie and electrocuted till it disappeared into purple and black wisps. A red-haired man in a suit picked up the girl in one arm and pushed Aerith towards Squall with the other, away from the sea of monsters.
"C'mon, we got to go!" He urged as Squall took Aerith's hand again, and they ran.
"Wh-where are we going?!" Yuffie asked as she swayed back and forth from the way the man was carrying her.
"Anywhere but here!" The man responded. "Lead the way, kid!" he instructed Squall as they continued running. There wasn't really anywhere to go; the world was starting to crumble, bits and pieces of land getting sucked into this black hole in the sky. Or so Squall had thought. "Wait!" the man said again after a while.
"I don't think we have that luxury." Squall replied, but before he could continue running, the other man had stopped him by gripping his shoulder.
"You see that yellow thing over there, yo?!" He pointed to a large structure near some ridges. They could probably make it there in a few minutes, but the small crowd of moving black things near it looked pretty discouraging. "That's probably a gummi ship!" The unspoken 'if it's a ship, then we can get out of here, yo' was heard loud and clear. They ran towards it.
"Are you a pilot?" Yuffie asked as they ran.
"No, but it wouldn't hurt to learn!" the man replied.
'Well, that was certainly reassuring…' Squall thought. As soon as they reached the ship, they saw that the bottom of it was swarming with those creatures, but there was a blond man fending them off with a lance. Wasn't he…?
"Cid!" Aerith shouted as one of those things had jumped up to pounce on him from behind. Cid quickly turned around to impale it mid-jump. Squall drew his gunblade as the red-haired man put Yuffie down next to Aerith and raised an arm.
"Thundara." He said quietly as bolts of thunder rained down on a small group of creatures a little further away from Cid, so as not to accidentally hit the other man with the spell. Squall rushed in to join Cid in getting rid of the other group that had clustered on the rockets.
"Is this all o' ya?" Cid asked as he took out another one.
"I think so." Squall answered as he managed to cut one. He raised an arm to the one he cut. "Fire." A ball of flame made it turn into black and purple wisps. Aerith raised an arm while the other held Yuffie's hand as she walked closer to the crowd the red-haired man was working on.
"Thunder!" she yelled as smaller bolts of the element fell onto the crowd, finishing off the stragglers that survived the red-haired man's spell.
"It'll be a tight fit, but I think the ship'll fly." Cid declared to no one in particular as he, Squall, and the other man finished off the remaining crowd. "Everybody get in!" He yelled in as the door quickly opened. The pilot went in as Squall made sure Aerith and Yuffie got on first. The remaining man was about to jump on when his leg got caught by one of those monsters.
"Whoa!" he exclaimed as the door was closing on him.
You can't save anyone.
Squall grabbed Cid's lance (which had been left outside as Cid had ditched it in order to grip the ship's controls with both hands) and stabbed the thing as the girls hurriedly pulled the red head inside. He didn't have time to retrieve the lance as the monster had fallen with it and the door closed on him as the other man made it without losing a limb.
"Don't have time ta fasten yer seatbelts, just hang on to somethin'!" Cid called from the cockpit. The ship was slowly lifting off of the ground while heartless tried to glom onto the sides before it rocketed skyward and violently shook the creatures off. Aerith hugged Yuffie towards her with one arm while the other grabbed on to a chair. The other man hung on to a chair as well. Squall grabbed a structure on the door so he could look out of the door's window to watch his world get swallowed up.
Squall – that was what he was back then – had lost his close friends, his orphanage, and possibly his older sister, who had disappeared when he was nine. He doubted she had jumped on a gummi ship. Aerith had lost her mother, Tifa, Zack, and Cloud. Yuffie had been out wandering around because it was a habit of hers, so it was hard to say if her family had survived or not, but chances were practically nonexistent. Cid had lost Shera…and his lance, which he gave Leon hell for when they arrived in Traverse Town. Reno had lost his group, the Turks.
So now the question was: What did Cloud lose to make him the way he is now? Perhaps it was a good idea not to bring Cloud to Traverse Town. Until the blond became more stable, he'd be better off in Olympus.
(T-T)
Cloud tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, his palm bleeding even more as he raised it slightly. The ice titan towered over him, it's freezing maw ready to exhale its frigid breath over the stands of the Olympus arena. The heartless that hovered (so as not to be stomped on) around the legs of the massive creature were lying in wait, looking for opportune moments when the blond's guard would lessen. The swordsman snapped his wing out and soared upward as the titan's breath poured over the stands, and the hovering heartless followed Cloud as he ascended.
It wasn't graceful. Cloud didn't have to be to cut them down as they charged at him in such a single-minded way. Of course, they proved they were anything but single-minded. These heartless were from the underworld, Hades' domain. No one in the tournament would face a batch like these. One of them managed to claw at Cloud's wing while another had cut into his stomach. It wasn't deep because of the mako that made it harder to inflict fatal wounds, but it was enough to make him bleed. It was enough for him to be preoccupied with killing it to not notice the small glacier above him that the titan had formed.
At least, until that glacier plummeted onto him and quickly brought him back to the ground. The heartless retreated to the ice titan's side as one small glacier after another fell on the swordsman as fast as the creature could conjure the chunks of ice. Cloud hung onto his sword as he endured the blows until the monster reached a point where it needed to rest. The giant shards mostly shattered once they fell and could only form bruises on Cloud's back, but one managed to cut further into the wound on his wing caused by the heartless and the glaciers that followed it hammered it in till the impromptu spike shattered too.
"Ah…!" He gasped. The glaciers had finally stopped, but the heartless were going to move again, and the ice titan was already forming small icicle spears in the air in front of it.
Why are you doing this?
What's the point?
He staggered in a desperate attempt to get on his feet as the heartless had swarmed around him and the icicle spears homed in. He gripped the hilt of his sword harder and snapped his somewhat torn wing out as electrical sparks danced around him.
Then he screamed.
…
…
It was over after that. He had shattered the titan with his blade, pieces of it littered everywhere while there was nothing left of the heartless he tore apart aside from the munny and materials that he managed to pocket. Cloud fell against a corner of the arena heavily, his injured back and ripped wing practically colliding against the stone wall. He winced as he panted out of breath, taking a potion out of his pack. There was only one thought as he attempted to down it…
'Remember who you're doing this for… Don't…forget…'
(T-T)
KN: Anyone want me to continue? I have the second chapter written about halfway. Haven't played Kingdom Hearts in a while, so if I got any facts wrong, just say something! I hope to get to the more light-hearted chapters if I do continue because writing sad things brings me no joy.
Holiday moral: Sometimes there isn't a moral. Life happens. This is one of those times.