Prologue : the Fall
Squall watched as a bloodied and battered Shan stumbled backwards, still somehow managing to put his body between him and the girl. Tifa's eyes had tears in them, as she suddenly backed up from her former student.
"I'm sorry, Shan… Squall, I can't do it!" she shook her head. "I can't kill him."
Squall sighed and looked at Cloud. Cloud looked at him in silence, before grumbling two words. "Not interested."
Barret pointed his gun arm at the pair standing on the edge of the cliff; It made a clicking noise, and Barret sighed. "I guess I ran out of bullets."
Squall sighed and drew his gunblade. "Fine then!" he looked at Shan. "I'm sorry, kid, but I don't have a choice. Your defending a heartless who has brought untold destruction to the worlds." He looked to the side, and Sora and Riku stepped up to flank him. "This is your last chance, Shan." He lifted his hand as an offering of peace. "She's a heartless. Come back to us. Come back to the light."
Shan merely spit out a wad of saliva and blood, and raised his fists back into his signature fighting pose. Tifa taught that boy well. Squall thought as he and the keyblade masters raised their weapons. He could hear Kairi quietly sobbing in the background as he started to walk towards the boy and girl…
…."I don't want to be alone again, Shan."
Celestia's voice floated through my ears like a sad melody, as she took that one final step backwards. Her arms outstretched towards me, she fell backwards, like an angel falling from heaven. Squall and the rest of the crowd in front of me gasped as she started to descend through the air, towards the sharp crags below. Kairi screamed, and Tifa averted her eyes. Barret swore softly.
Something inside me snapped, and regardless of all reason my legs pushed me forwards to her, my arms reaching, my fingers brushing hers and we both started to plummet to our oblivion.
That moment, seeing her before me, the two of us plunging down towards the sharp stones hundreds of feet below us, looking into her emerald green eyes that stared out at me from her beautiful pale-skinned face, framed by flowing dark hair, something happened. In that quantum moment before closure, that last juncture of space and time, one moment left, I knew one thing more surely then I knew anything else in my life.
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die.
It did.