Disclaimer: Unswervingly not mine.
A/N: Originally meant to be for the Challenge 184: Brothers over at KH Drabble, but as you can see, it didn't want to be a drabble. Durnit.
Brothers and Sisters in Arms
© Scribbler, April 2009.
"Here together," Tifa began.
"One forever," Aerith continued.
Cloud carried it on at her nudge. "Um, bond unbroken."
They looked expectantly at Squall.
"This is stu-"
"Say it," Tifa hissed. "Or it won't stick!"
He rolled his eyes in the manner of someone indulging those of lower intelligence. "No, not ever."
Tifa grinned. "We agree!" She punctuated each syllable with a bounce of their intertwined hands.
"You do realise only little kids think pinkie-swears are binding contracts," Squall deadpanned.
"You're saying don't want to stay friends forever?"
The three expressions that confronted him – one outraged, one disappointed, one alarmed – made him grumble into the collar of his uniform. "That's not what I meant."
"Humph." Tifa, the only girl who'd passed this year's entrance exams, was good at looking imposing. She'd perfected it while smacking heads together and punishing those cadets who'd thought it was a good idea to try panty-raiding her quarters. It helped that she could back up the look with a roundhouse that could crumple steel. She had to be tough to stop herself drowning in all testosterone she'd landed in when she signed up for the Royal Guard. Now she fixed Squall with what all the other boys secretly called her Gonna-Bust-Some-Balls look – the one that reminded you she'd been born in Resplendia, where fairies gave each newborn a magical gift, and how her birthing gift hadn't been a silvery voice or hair like silk, like most girls.
"Tifa," Aerith touched her arm, "he said he didn't mean it that way."
Aerith was the only one not training to enter the Royal Guards. It was odd such a gentle girl would want to associate with three rough-and-tumble cadets like them. Many people commented on it when they saw them together, but their friendship was the most solid in all Radiant Garden.
They'd become close thanks to always meeting in the Infirmary where Aerith was serving her Apprentice Healer tenure. Sparring with Tifa was dangerous, though Squall still tried. Somehow Cloud, as Squall's best friend and Tifa's childhood friend, always ended up in the mix – usually right in the centre, getting between them and injuring himself while breaking them apart. Aerith mended what needed mending, extracted promise after promise that they'd take better care next time, and sent them on their way. Then the next time arrived and they did it all over again, only breaking the cycle on their days off, when they left the castle to do things normal teenagers – those who couldn't wield a gunblade or punch through a brick wall – did for fun.
If anything, those days off had made them even closer. Normal teenagers didn't like those from the castle. Their one-step-above-dry-ice stares and whispered comments usually led to retreat, or fights that got the foursome into trouble the moment they got back – or when Commander Braig came to fetch them home in disgrace.
"So how did he mean it?" Tifa demanded.
"Tifa…" Cloud's reproving murmur deflated her like a popped balloon. Despite her confident exterior, Tifa found it hard not being accepted. Except when she was with Squall and Cloud, she always felt she was being tested – Squall because she'd already passed, and Cloud because he never saw any reason to test her.
"I meant," Squall gritted, "we're not little kids anymore. We should be thinking about bigger things than meeting secretly just to pinkie-swear a friendship we already have."
"This is just an insurance policy," Tifa sniffed.
"Which we need because…?"
Her gaze flicked to Aerith, who lowered hers.
"I've had… dreams," Aerith said softly. "Darkness. Bad things. Something is … something is coming."
Squall didn't answer. Aerith often had dreams that portended the future, though never anything concrete. She'd foreseen 'people being burned' before the Air Corps was bombed by Dazzle Island separatists, and predicted 'fresh blood coming to the Garden' right before the little mouse-man called King Mickey first appeared.
"I just wanted to be sure … it's silly, but I just …" Aerith trailed off. "We're not related by blood, but you guys feel like my family. It felt important to … to do something to commemorate that. It felt important," she repeatedly lamely.
"Which is a good enough reason," Tifa said in a much stauncher tone. "Right, Cloud?" She turned to her usual ally.
Cloud nodded. "It's only a small thing, Squall. What harm could it do?"
"Except make you look less mature than you think you should look," Tifa mocked. "Or does the Big Bad Squall Leonheart not do emotions like the rest of us peons?"
Squall rolled his eyes. He did that a lot when Tifa was wearing her Strong-Woman-Who-Takes-No-Crap hat. It was remarkably similar to her I've-Got-PMS hat. "Girls."
It took both Aerith and Cloud to pull Tifa off him.
The bitter stench of battle was thick in his nose. He couldn't see – could barely hear after that last concussive blast – but somehow still scrambled over the rocks to the crumpled figure. He'd seen that person fall while he was still on top of the ridge with Heartless at his throat, and could now see there had been no movement since.
No. Oh please, please, no. Not now. Not after everything …
He didn't know why he was begging, or even who. He had spent the last nine years frantically petitioning some higher power to make things right again, or at least not let them sink any lower into hell. He used to plead aloud, but now he hid it behind a mask of indifference that approached boredom. At no point since Radiant Garden fell had any god given the hint they'd heard his primal begging: Please undo this nightmare.
Someone else was already leaning over, the blossoming flower of light identifying her the moment it appeared over her head.
He stumbled. Strong arms caught him. He was vaguely surprised it wasn't Yuffie. She usually trailed after him like a watch-puppy, guarding his back under the guise of annoying the hell out of him. Then he remembered: the last he saw, she'd been backing up Sora on the West Battlement. No way could she have made it over here to the Badlands outside the city walls so fast.
"I didn't know you were here." He should've guessed, though. If Cloud was here …
"Like I'd miss a party this good?" Tifa's smile was brittle. Her face was smeared with black dust mixed with sweat. He wondered when she'd arrived. Before the fighting started, or after? Had Cloud been chasing his demons again and wound up here by accident, or had he actually remembered enough to come on purpose this time? Ever since he met Sora and came home the first time he'd flitted in and out, but it had always felt like only half of him was ever there when he did put in an appearance –
Then they arrived at Aerith's side and all that ceased to matter.
There was so much blood. His gorge rose, but he forced it down. Instead he knelt – awkwardly, since his left knee felt wrong and his right shoulder busted. The crumpled figure stirred. The light-flower dwindled. Aerith was tired. She'd been using her magic almost non-stop since the battle started, but she refused to give up. Even if it hadn't been this important, she would've refused.
Slowly, Cloud's eyes flickered open. It still hurt to see the emptiness there, a permanent resident since Sephiroth. This time, however, there was something else – something besides the pain he shucked like an irritating insect trying to settle on his skin. Muscles trembling, Cloud wordlessly raised an arm. His glove dripped blood so thick it was almost black, like treacle. All the fingers were curled into a fist except one.
Like thunder, the knell of the past went through them all. For a second everything was both bright and dark, and before he could think I'm Leon now, not Squall he'd raised his own hand and linked his pinkie with Cloud's. Beside him, one arm still keeping him upright, Tifa reached to add hers, and Aerith completed the set.
"Here together," Tifa croaked.
"One forever." Aerith's voice was weary but resolute.
Cloud's smile was acid, but his eyes were different. For once he was there – the real Cloud; the one who'd disappeared years ago when a wing burst from his back and he stared into the abyss like it was a mirror. "Bond unbroken."
Squall, Leon, or someone in between: at that moment it really didn't matter. "No, not ever."
Tifa rasped a laugh that jolted his shoulder, but he shoved away the urge to cry out. She wasn't nearly so ill-tempered these days. Perversely, as the rest if the universe went to hell, and all the rules and laws they'd sworn to uphold decayed like the castle, she'd mellowed into a more carefree version of herself. He couldn't even remember the last time she punched him and intended it to hurt.
"Still think pinkie-swears aren't binding contracts?"
He couldn't answer. He felt like he'd swallowed a fist of clay. His mouth was dry, and it wasn't just because of the free-floating bits of Heartless in the air. He couldn't break Cloud's stare – didn't, in fact, until Cloud's eyes shut and he slipped into unconsciousness so his body could finish the healing Aerith's spell had started.
Aerith sat back on her heels. She seemed tiny against the backdrop of Hollow Bastion and the aftermath of battle. This had been a bad one; one of those battles that made them wonder if their world would ever truly be free of Heartless. They hadn't disappeared even when Sora defeated Organisation XIII, after all.
She blew out a breath and looked up at them. "You know, other people hold their family reunions at posh hotels and only have to worry about someone spiking the punch."
His throat tightened. He realised with consternation that he wanted to laugh.
To laugh. Him.
They said you could choose your friends, but you couldn't choose your family. Whoever had said that, he had the same word for them that he had for the people who told him Cloud would never be Cloud again, that keyblades were only a legend, and that Radiant Garden was irretrievably lost.
Bullshit.
Tifa breathed a sigh that was only partly about tiredness. "We agree."
Fin.