Barriers
There was only pain in his eyes when he said it. When he could bring himself to look Leon in the face. When he could bring himself to utter the words, his voice so small and unsure and in agony. Leon could tell he didn't want to do this, that he didn't want to be here, saying these things.
Yet he was.
"I … 'm sorry." Cloud mumbled completely unable to bring any conviction to his voice. He was sorry. So deeply profoundly would never be able to express it in words, sorry. But to him it just sounded like rhetoric, like cliché and stupid cheap meaningless sentiments.
Cloud shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, hardly able to stand the intense stare from the other man. He felt himself shrink and become less than worthless under it. He was not worthy. He never had been.
"Just… I…I…just." He felt the Darkness swell within him at his own pitiful broken stammering words. He knew he owed Leon just one explanation out of the hundreds that he had. Maybe it was because he didn't want to leave that made it so hard to say goodbye. Or maybe it was the fact that no matter how hard he tried to reason with himself, his one hundred and one reasons came to nothing in the face of his lover.
He just knew. He had to leave; for his sake, for Leon's. How come it felt so heart achingly wrong then?
Leon hadn't moved a muscle. Hadn't said a word.
But he couldn't. He was aching all over. His legs felt too heavy yet too weak to be able to move them. His chest felt like it would collapse in on itself from the invisible weight on top of it.
How could this be happening?
Why did he have to suffer?
"Just can't." was the last thing that Cloud said before he turned his beautifully traitorous face away from his lover. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, where they sat threatening to fall.
Cloud heard Leon take a breath; it was shaky and full of all the emotion he knew he wouldn't find on the Gunblader's face. He felt the air between them shift as Leon took a small step back, severing the almost contact between them. Cloud knew that almost in an instant Leon's carefully placed barriers that he had taken so long to take down were back in place, and he would never, never be allowed back in.
"Fine." He heard Leon say. His voice betraying none of the feelings that his shaking shallow breathing had done.
"Goodbye Cloud."
In an instance Leon was gone. And Cloud couldn't help the feeling that Leon had left him instead.
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