End All
A Kingdom Hearts fanfic
YAJJ
"Destruction: Starve"
Summary: After crash landing in Traverse Town, Cid has less than a single munny to his name and three little kids to watch out for. But he would die before he let those kids starve.
Date: Christmas 2014. Merry Christmas, happy hannukah, happy kwanzaa, and whatever Muslims celebrate (if they celebrate anything at all). And to everyone: Happy holidays!
Disclaimer: Do not own.
I've decided to throw this in; it's been a while since I did anything like this, so...
Special thanks to: Star-Shaped-X, xfallenangel13x, and unicron1000 for reviewing, and to those who favorited and followed me or this story!
A/N: This is going to be the first prompt in a much larger mini-series that I've titled "Destruction", which will focus on the destruction of Radiant Garden (hence the name) and the aftermath of it, including Cid learning to deal with frightened children, Cloud and Tifa struggling to live on their own, Aerith stumbling upon Cloud and Tifa... and many others. I've got 8 summaries prepared so far, so if they all work out, this will be an adventure.
The last part of this chapter is basically a summary of the ten years between BBS and KH1. It gets kind of boring and Cid-centric, but at the same time it's nice, having a background for future chapters. :)
Relative ages: Squall: 15. Aerith: 12. Yuffie: 6. Cid: ...adult...?
Cid crawled out of the smoking remains of the gummi ship, his cheeks stained and hair ashen. He was clutching his right arm to his chest as he used the other to crawl along—to be more specific, he was clutching his right arm to a little person who he held to his chest, pulling her clear from the wreckage. The girl coughed weakly, whining aloud when Cid finally dropped her.
He turned back, relieved to see two more kids help each other out of the disaster before them.
Out of one disaster and into another. Wasn't that just the way the world worked?
Cid had only just escaped the battlegrounds of Radiant Garden, towing three kids behind him. He'd found his way to a warphole and had been spat out here—wherever here was, anywho. The only boy, brunet with big gray eyes, had put his arm over the older girl. Now he sat on the ground near Cid, coughing fiercely into his arm.
The older girl was watching him, worry blossoming in her eyes. She looked back towards the younger girl, who was crawling over to her as though she was only a toddler.
"You kids doin' a'right?" Cid asked finally, surveying the three. The boy lifted his head and glared at him.
"Yes. Thank you," said the older girl.
"Where are we?" the little girl asked. She was clinging to the older girl like a lifeline.
"Don't know." Cid peered around him. They had crashed in a field of grass. There was a town right nearby, but Cid had never seen it. He didn't recognize the field, the town, or the feeling it put out. "Some suburban area, I guess."
"You guess," the boy scoffed, his coughing fit calming. He pulled his knees to his chest and crossed his arms over them, grumpily nestling his chin into his arms.
"Well, it's not like I meant to bring us here," Cid grouched, crossing his own arms.
"And where were you gonna bring us then, huh?" the boy snarled, glaring fiercely. "Back! Bring us back! Our friends are still there!"
"Your friends weren't there. Trus' me, kid, I checked. You three were the only ones left," Cid replied darkly.
Honestly, he had no idea who these kids were. They'd lived in the orphanage across the street from his place, which was about five minutes from being swarmed with those little freaks when Cid had fished the kids out. When he found them, he'd pulled them out, set them in the gummi ship and told them to stay, and they hadn't minded. Probably because they knew he was going in for the others. When he'd come out empty handed and climbed into the pilot seat, the boy had attempted to climb out and go back in, but Cid had pushed him back and taken off.
In truth, and Cid wouldn't admit it to the kids, the reason he'd left empty handed was because he'd seen all of those kids. Little chests ripped open, missing hearts. Dead. All of them. The only reason, he figured, that the kids had escaped was because they'd hidden in a closet, and the monsters had gone past them.
The boy glared harder at him, and then he moved around so he could glare up at the moon, not facing Cid.
Cid rubbed a temple in exasperation. Why was he arguing with some kid? It wouldn't get him anywhere. For now, they had to find shelter, and hopefully someone to help check the kids over. The little girl still hadn't risen to her feet, and her ankle looked a little swollen. He was no doctor, but that didn't look right.
"Come on, kiddies. We need to find a place to stay and rest up."
"We're not going anywhere with you," the boy spat to the moon. "Ma said to never go anywhere with a stranger."
Cid groaned. "A'right, a'right. She had a point. Fine, 'en. The name's Cid Highwind. I lived across the way from the orphanage."
The older girl looked to the boy, who wouldn't look at her, deliberately turning further away. Then she smiled weakly at Cid. "Hello, Mr. Highwind. My name is Aerith, and this is Yuffie. That's Squall, but he's busy being upset."
"Shut up!" Squall said.
"Now that we all know each other," Cid said over Squall's exclamation, "we really shouldn't stay out here too long. Any of those freaks could have followed us."
That seemed to get Squall animated. He looked back to Aerith and Yuffie, who were watching him anxiously. "Fine," he groaned, but Cid could see the fright in his eyes, even in the moonlight. He was as freaked out by the monsters as the others were.
Once Squall had climbed to his feet and approached his friends, Cid leaned down to grab Yuffie, who had climbed to her feet but wouldn't stand on her right leg. He picked her up and shuffled the kids along, toward the town.
The town was called "Traverse Town". It was known as a place of rest for weary travelers and homeless people. The very first thing that Cid did was talk to a local citizen about getting them checked over. The man instructed him to a place called the First District, where there would even be a shelter waiting for him. Taking a crudely drawn map, Cid led the little trio to the First District.
A kindly young woman took Yuffie, who cried for Aerith, so the older girl followed them into a nearby tent, leaving Squall and Cid alone. Squall stood at least five feet away from Cid at all times, arms crossed and glaring at the ground. Cid tried to get him to speak, but all he gave were grunts and glares. Finally, Cid demanded to know why the kid was bent on hating him when he saved his life.
"You left behind my friends!" Squall snarled.
"Your friends weren't—! Ugh. Trus' me when I say this, kid. You don't want your friends here, in the state they are now." Decaying, maybe being devoured by those monsters, rotting away on their destroyed world.
Squall looked his way, eyes darkening into a glare. "Cloud and Tifa were out, stupid! You left them behind! I saw them and you left them behind! Now, if they're dead, it's because of you!"
"You saw 'em?" Cid asked, confused. He sure as hell hadn't seen any kids capable of moving when they'd left.
Squall nodded darkly. "Yeah. They were coming back from the store, an' they were coming and you took off. I was looking right at Cloud and we left them behind. H-he saw me and we left them behind..." Squall started trembling, anger melting into grief.
Cid opened and closed his mouth, as if trying to make sense of what he was saying. Then he sighed. "Look, kid-"
"Squall," the boy corrected heavily.
"Right. Listen, soon as it calms down, we'll go back and find your friends. But if we go back now, 'en that'll put us all in danger, no doubt, an' I ain't riskin' yer lives jus' to find a couple of kids who might not... er, be there."
"But they'll be dead by then!" Squall replied.
"Then we can give them a proper burial. We're waiting until it's calmed."
Squall fumed at him silently, looking for all the world like a volcano waiting to blow its top, but he didn't argue. Insatiable grief settled over him like a storm cloud, and for just a second Cid stewed over the idea of putting his arm around the boy, but he rather fancied keeping his arm attached to the rest of him; it was bound to prove useful in the future.
"It can't be too long from now," Cid continued pointlessly, hoping to calm him. Squall still didn't say anything.
Aerith and Yuffie returned half an hour later, Yuffie looking like she'd been crying even though she sucked on a lollipop. She was riding Aerith piggyback, her ankle bounded in pale gauze.
"She twisted her ankle," Aerith reported, tipping a little toward Squall. Yuffie put out a sticky fist; in it, two lollipops were nestled. Squall took one without complaint, and Aerith let Yuffie pop the last in her mouth. "She can't stand on this leg for three weeks, but she only has to keep the gauze on for a few days. But we have to bring her back; they'll have real casts then."
"A'right," Cid grunted, chewing on his own unlit cig. He looked over the kids, who watched him almost nervously. All three of them looked tired. Yuffie was leaning forward on Aerith's shoulder, and Aerith's eyelids were drooping. "Well, if i ain't wrong, an' I don't think I am, miss what's-her-name said summat about a shelter. If we need to do anything, it's get you three to bed. Y'all look like you're gonna fall asleep standin' up, and I ain't carrying you anywhere." He glanced sideways at Squall, who seemed the most lively of the three, though his head dipped every once in a while as if he was a second from passing out. "Come on."
Squall glanced to his friends and nodded, going over to take Aerith's hand. When Cid headed toward a sign that read 'Refugee Shelter This Way', they followed without a word.
Cid had never had any sort of plans to have kids. All that he'd wanted to do was make it to space sometime in his short life (something that he did, indeed, manage to do early into his career), and then settle down with a mechanic's shop to ease into simple living.
And yet, here he was, thrust with three kids who needed him, who followed him around like lost puppies now that the threat was over. Well, the girls did, anywho. Squall, not so much. Squall stayed out in the hallway or on the streets, away from them, watching the skies as if hoping to see his friends sail down on a gummi ship like they had.
The worst part was that he couldn't find it in his heart to abandon the kids. The youngest one was only six years old, and had lost her parents to that flu epidemic that had struck Radiant Garden four years ago. He couldn't even find it in his heart to just let them do what they needed or wanted.
Cid had never intended to be a father, but apparently fate had other plans. Which was the only reason he was scouring the streets, hoping for a sign somewhere along the lines of 'help wanted' in a window. If he wanted to keep those kids off of the street and out of trouble, and Kingdom Hearts knows that for whatever reason he did, then he had to find a decent job, earn a decent pay, and set them up in a decent home.
The decent home and pay wouldn't come for many a year, once Squall hit twenty and Yuffie grew into her eyes, but a decent job was something that he could do then.
There was a mechanic's shop down the way, in the center of the Fourth District, that worked on old cars and trucks, mostly. The owner was looking for a few hired hands, who could lift heavy things and knew their way around a vehicle. Cid could lift heavy things (much as his back would hate him for it later), and he knew his way around most anything that had an engine.
Which was how Cid got himself and the kids started in Traverse Town.
He worked every day except Sunday, which Aerith demanded that he have off because apparently they needed to spend time 'as a family', if they could count as that. He worked long hours, and though the pay was small, he figured that it was well worth it. He managed to put Squall through another grade at the local high school, before Squall chose to drop out to work a job at one of the stalls in the market in the Fifth District, helping sell small homemade wares on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and every other Saturday. Aerith ended up making it all the way through high school, although she dared not continue on. By then, they had moved into the house just outside of the square in the Third District, and when Cid wasn't busy at the mechanic's shop, which he soon co-owned (the promotion had given them enough to move into that house), he was busy at the Accessory Shop in the First District, which he also owned. Yuffie ended up dropping out of school not long after Squall did, finding little point in it, and Cid decided he didn't have quite the authority to make her continue.
They lived, and eventually thrived, in Traverse Town, staking claim in it and garnering respect in it like few others could. And when the monsters appeared-the Heartless, they would later learn-they fought, to protect this new town, their new home, and the people in it, perhaps in memory of the many Radiant Garden citizens who had passed on, perhaps in memory of those two friends that they prayed had made it. Squall picked up a gunblade and changed his name, Aerith found a staff and learned beyond the necessary healing spells and treatments, Yuffie discovered the shuriken and trained to become a 'ninja master', and Cid… Cid found a spear and protected them from the sidelines.
He was no father, and he didn't really want to be one. A cool uncle, a much older big brother perhaps, but he was no father. But until those kids could stand on their own two feet, could manage the day on their own, he would fight for them. Maybe even after. Even if it meant working day in and day out, never resting, never sleeping, never stopping or taking a break, it would be well worth it to see the kids grow up, grow into themselves, their past, their present, and their future, maybe even become father and mothers of their own.
Until the day that he would die, he would fight for them. He would fight for them, and protect them, and damn it all if he wouldn't raise them, too, to the best of his ability. He would play father-but-actually-real-cool-uncle-who-would-smite-them-if-'dad'-came-out-of-their-mouths.
Until the day that they didn't need him anymore, he wouldn't let those kids fail.
Yup, a crap ending, but I can't get to where I wanted it, so I'll take it.
As always, please review! All reviews will be answered via PM! I'm still accepting requests!
Until next time,
~YAJJ
