What They Leave Behind

Warning: not proofread.

Chapter 14

As Clouds Go By

It all came down to one simple thing: Squall had moved on. It made impeccable sense, so much that Cloud couldn't deny it. It was a simple as riding a bike. Squall had shifted to another foster home about three months ago, hadn't called once, had been unusually awkward around him--Squall just didn't have the cruelty to admit to him that he'd found someone else.

At least that was what Cloud decided by the time the train chugged to a stop in Balamb Station. Just as in Midgar, the fog swirled around them as they exited the station and engulfed them in damp, salty air. Cloud hadn't thought to bring a warmer jacket, and so he snuggled into the soft cotton and hugged himself. Zack, always playing the hero, deftly stepped closer to him and placed an arm around his shoulders as he had earlier while they walked to no specific destination.

They walked around two blocks about four times before even Zack noticed and he swung himself in front of Cloud to stop him and said, "Don't you know where Leonhart lives?"

"On Garden…" Cloud muttered, but he was now positive he didn't want to go. He avoided Zack's intense gaze and tried focusing on the sign indicating how to reach the beach from where they stood.

"I don't see a Garden around here, so why don't we go in that gas station and ask? It's a small town, right?"

Cloud shook his head. "I've changed my mind. I don't think…maybe I should have told him I was coming before actually coming. I feel…I don't know, sorta like I'm intruding on his life." He expected Zack to gloat, since that was his point all along, but instead he was surprised by Zack's comment.

"Oh, Cloud, we came all the way out here to talk to him, and now you're going to do it, okay? Even if he's got a girl--or a boy or…whatever--you have a right to know. I spent 25 bucks to get you here, and so we're going to bang on his door and he's going to talk to us…or you," he added when Cloud's eyes widened in panic.

"I'd rather not know."

But apparently, Zack did, and so he marched into the gas station and asked the sleepy man behind the counter where he could find either Garden or a foster home, and he got what he wanted because he came out into the cold night beaming. "All righty, Cloudy, it's not far from here, okay?"

Cloud felt completely numb and he wasn't quite sure it had anything to do with the icy air beating across his face. He didn't want to move, and he wouldn't have if Zack hadn't pulled him forward, threatening to drag him there. So he had to shuffle his feet in long enough strides to keep up with Zack but short enough strides to assure Zack he was not happy. He was promptly ignored.

They winded through the residential streets for about a half hour before Zack seemed satisfied they were going in the correct direction. And once they arrived on the street, Cloud planted his feet and was promptly pulled forward a few staggering steps forward before Zack realized what he'd done. He turned around to face him, tapping his foot impatiently. "No more wasting time, Cloud. What's up now?"

"How will you know which house?"

"I've been over to Seifer's house enough to know a foster home when I see it. You go to the crappiest home on the street and it's most likely the one."

Cloud flushed. "I'm not going to a total stranger's house in the middle of the night asking for someone who might not even live there!"

"No worries, baby, I'll do it for you." Zack turned back to the houses to see which one fit his description the very best while Cloud patted his hot face with his icy hands to cool it down and tried to ignore the fact that Zack had called him "baby" without using the insulting inflection Seifer often used when addressing him. It had rolled off his tongue naturally, and it shocked Cloud.

He hurried to catch up to Zack, who had found the house he was looking for, and was striding up the pathway through the lawn to the front porch. It was an old house, but since this area was generally a nice one, it held up nicely compared to his own house. It was boxlike with a flat roof and a small front lawn with a few palm trees lining the sidewalk. Cloud jogged up the pathway to the door as Zack rang the bell repeatedly.

Cloud glared at him, knowing that if someone pulled that at his house, he'd open the door with the kitchen knife in his hand, but Zack grinned back. "It's the only way to get results, Cloud. Seriously."

The blond rolled his eyes and focused on the door beyond Zack's shoulder. After a moment of silence, the porch light was turned on and illuminated the two of them as a man peeked through the curtains to see who it was. With a groan, he opened the door and said, "What the hell do you want at this time of night?"

Cloud was appalled. The man was mostly bald, but had a thick patch of hair across his chin, and a full stomach that could have passed off as eight months pregnant, which hung out of his wife-beater shirt. This was who Squall was living with?

"Excuse me, sir, but we're friends of Squall's and we--"

"Squall?" He gaped at Zack, and then said, "You mean the foster kid? He's across the street." He pointed to the house directly across the street and to the left.

Zack's face lit up. "Thank you, I was--"

"Never knock at my door again." He slammed his door shut and turned off the porch light.

Cloud was so relieved that Squall didn't live there, he didn't bother moaning about the rudeness of the man. He skipped down the path without actually realizing he was heading for Squall house for sure, and Zack followed behind him, still smiling.

Squall's house wasn't ugly, but it was simply decorated and all the more nice for it. There was a walkway created with flat slabs of stone toward the front door, and as soon as they began stepped across them, an overhead light flashed on. This time Cloud knocked at the door, but as soon as a dainty woman answered, he withdrew to behind Zack.

"I'm sorry for the late hour, ma'am, but we're old friends of Squall's--"

"Oh!" She looked at them with bright eyes. "He hasn't made any friends here, so it's a relief to see someone visit him, even if it is a little late on a school night," she added pointedly. But she opened the door wider and nodded them inside. "His room is at the very end of the hall on the right."

Zack drew back. "I'm going to wait outside."

"Oh, no, no, no, dear!" The woman nodded him inside. "It's so cold out there. Why don't you come in and I make you some hot chocolate?"

Cloud was about to tell her that it was late and they didn't want to trouble her any more, but Zack took the offer immediately and followed the woman into the kitchen, winking at Cloud as he passed him.

Cloud gazed down the darkened hall, feeling as if he was staring down a bottomless cliff. There was just no end to the darkness permeating the long corridor, and a deep feeling of dread washed over him as he took his first step. Squall hadn't made any knew friends, which meant that, perhaps, Squall still wanted Cloud. That was a good thing, right?

With eyes clamped shut, he made his way through the darkness until he came to the end, where he stared at the darkened shadow that was Squall's door and deigned to open it. He figured knocking would rouse anyone else but coming right in might frighten Squall--but that was the most unlikely, and so he turned the cool brass knob and peeked inside. It too was dark, except the curtains in the window was open and the orange light of the street lamp outside pokes its head into the room to cast a faint luminescence on a bare white room, a plain desk hardly touched, and a twin bed with a dark comforter disrupted only by the body within it.

Perhaps he shouldn't wake up Squall. It was a school night, and he always slept early, whether Matron and Cid told him to or not, which meant that he liked to get a good night's rest. This might cause problems, it--

He sighed. He had come all this way, and if he didn't take the chance now, then he most likely wouldn't like where it ended. He had spent the past few months speculating about Squall, and then that horrid phone call had come by, making it harder to sleep than to wonder at what it could mean. He needed this settled, for better or for worse.

He edged inside and then hesitantly closed the door softly behind him. The vague noise didn't disturb Squall's sleep, leaving Cloud to determine how exactly to wake him. Taking a deep breath, Cloud bent down on his knees beside Squall's bed and tentatively reached out. Before making contact, he withdrew his hand. A touched would make the dream go away, and was he sure that was exactly what he wanted?

Without anymore thinking, he shook his head and shook Squall awake. While he might have been used to, at one point, Seifer's midnight tantrums waking him up now and then, he didn't seem to take it as well as he used to. Squall shot up in bed and flung himself as far away from Cloud as possible before taking his arm away from his chest and saying, "What the hell are you doing here, Cloud?"

Cloud withdrew. "That's a good question."

Squall unfurled a bit and reached over to turn on a tall lamp standing beside his bed, lighting the room up some more. Cloud looked up and hungrily sucked in as much as he could of that familiar but unfamiliar face once more. Squall's features seemed to have hardened in the past few months or at least in sleep, and the Balamb sun seemed to have gotten to his skin, however subdued, but he seemed mostly the same. A perpetual frown, those cloudy blue eyes, bangs falling across his face.

"I really missed you," Cloud blurted out, widening his eyes in horror when he'd realized he's voiced his thoughts.

Squall's frown deepened but he didn't withdraw inside himself again. "I did, too. That's why I was going to…I wanted to tell you that I'm coming back to Midgar."

It was exactly what he'd wanted to hear. He'd been hoping…and dreaming it would be so. So what was this tempest of confused emotions raging inside of him? "But…but how?"

Squall sighed, his defenses crumbling. "I--it was a little odd. I wasn't sure how to tell you because I didn't know how to explain it to myself. Do you remember Mrs. and Mr. Loire?"

How could he forget? They were family friends, Mom was always spending time with them. "Of course," he offered when Squall didn't move to reply.

"They want to adopt me. They say that…" Squall looked away, his normally sleepily pale skin darkening ever so slightly. "They say I'm their son."

"Like…really? Biologically?"

"Yes."

"But that's great. Mr. and Mrs. Loire are really nice!"

"I'm not sure it's what I want."

Cloud stared at his old friend with confusion. "I don't understand." Of course, Mr. Loire was a bit of a klutz and a marshmellow, two of the worst characteristics to have in Squall's book, but that didn't mean that he couldn't learn to love him. Squall needed a parent--always wanted tone. And he was coming home.

Squall shrugged. "I didn't expect you to." The words hung in the air longer than usual, reverberating and stinging Cloud each time they echoed. How could words hurt so much? "It doesn't matter anyway. I'm going back to Cid and Matron's for a while until they 'get used' to me." It was as close to an apology as Squall could possibly offer, but Cloud couldn't let it go.

"It makes sense," he muttered, "why you've been talking to Lulu about it. She…she knows more about being an orphan that I do."

"I said it didn't matter," Squall repeated firmly.

"I know," Cloud replied, "but it still makes me feel bad."

There was a long silence after that admission, where awkwardness fed on each moment until both of them were unsure how to ease out of it. Finally, Squall moved over on his bed and patted on it. "Come here and tell me how you managed to get here by yourself."

So Cloud crawled onto the bed beside Squall and covered his legs with the little warmth left behind by Squall's body, and launched into the story of how he'd come, forgetting for a moment of the pain that lingered between them. Instead, he focused on how impulsive and stupid he'd been, especially by allowing Zack to come with him, which caused Squall to snicker. He told him of the neighbor who looked pregnant and his horror at the thought it was Squall's foster father, and then eased into Squall's foster mother's offering Zack inside.

"So Zack's waiting for you in the kitchen?" Squall asked easily, masking any sort of emotion that might have crossed his face.

"Yeah. He said he didn't mind waiting, though."

"I wonder why."

"Why he doesn't mind waiting?"

"Why he's doing all of this for you. He never took much of an interest in you before."

Cloud paused and then scooted further down until he lay nearly flat underneath the bedding. "There's a lot about Zack I never knew before. He's brimming full with mysteries."

"Like what?"

"Like…" Cloud paused. An ocean of thoughts arced through his mind, drowning him in each of the emotions junctioned to each one, until he didn't have half a second to think before he blurted out, "Zack hugged me. He just…put his arms around me and held me close, and I…really…liked…it."

If Squall was confused, he hid it excellently well. His expression remained impassive while he studied his hands splayed out in the air before him. "Zack was always very touchy. I never thought you were the same."

"I'm not." Cloud couldn't deny that. But it had felt nice anyway. He could still feel the warmth that had engulfed him that night, that had held him and rocked him to sleep.

Cloud slowly stood then. "I should go. You have school tomorrow."

Squall nodded. "All right."

"When are you coming back?"

"I'm not sure. But soon."

Cloud bent over to kiss Squall sloppily on the cheek before darting out the door into the silent hallway before any goodbyes were required.

Catching his breath, he waited a few minutes before going down the hall and greeting Zack who sat alone in the kitchen with an empty cup of hot chocolate. He looked up and said, "So?"

Cloud shrugged, keeping his face cool. "Outside."

As soon as they were outside and safely walking down the street, Cloud said abruptly and rather monotonously, "Squall's coming back."

There was a pause while Zack processed what it could mean before he exploded. He hopped up and stepped in front of Cloud as he often did to stop him. "That's great, Cloud! When's he coming back and why aren't you grinning uncontrollably?!"

"He said soon, and I don't know why."

"Aren't you happy?" Zack's smile flickered and then disappeared. "This is good news, right?"

Cloud shrugged. "It's what I wanted."

But it also means Zack won't need to pay attention anymore.

Cloud's expression soured. Where did that come from? Since when did he even enjoy spending time with the nonstop talking, the rich enthusiasm, the emotional charge?

Zack slipped out of his way, then, taking his expression to mean something else. He nudged Cloud forward and then said, "I asked Mrs. Forester where we could find the beach from here. It's just down this way. I want you to see it. It's beautiful at night!"

Zack couldn't possibly mean anything to him. He was annoying and loud, he was emotional and too caring, he had a motorcycle Cloud absolutely hated, and he had a girlfriend who took up a lot of his time. Not to mention he was best friends with Basch. That was the worst of it.

Zack took the news as a remedy to the silence. He chattered on excitedly with as much excitement to cover for the both of them, and made plans for the future for all of them. Plans that were stupid and would never come to pass, but Cloud found that it was nice to set them all out before him and look at them the way you would look at the stars in the midnight sky. They were beautiful and sparkling and perfect, but they were never reachable. He took comfort in them anyway.

They heard the waves crashing onto the shore before they actually saw it. The beach was far below them so they looked at the ocean from atop the steep bluffs, where there was a grassy patch with a park bench nestled beside flowers and a palm tree. The fog was less dense then. Cloud could see the sliver of the moon's reflection shimmering and wavering across the cresting waves. It was beautiful.

But it wasn't good enough for Zack. He dragged Cloud down the winding stairs to the beach, where they both had to pause and take off their shoes, and then Zack dared Cloud into a race to see who hit the water first, which Cloud naturally won except for that fact that he hadn't actually touched the water since it was cold and Zack did, so Zack considered himself the winner and spent the next half hour gloating about nothing.

It wasn't until the horizon turned a faint green as the sunlight threatened to end the night that Cloud needed to sit down with a yawn. It had been a long night, full of discord and confusion, but it had also been a good night. He had something to look forward to in a few weeks, which hadn't happened since Squall had left, and he had spent a good deal of the night laughing because Zack was an idiot but in a good way, and it was a nice way to end it.

Zack settled himself in the fine sand beside him and let out a content groan. "I could use some breakfast just about now."

"I don't have any money," Cloud told him unthinkingly and started digging holes into the earth with his feet. The sand turned darker the deeper he dug and wetter. Despite the chill that shocked him when he uncovered each layer, he continued to delve deeper.

"That was my way of getting you to tell me what you felt like getting. I'll pay."

"I don't know what's around here."

Zack leaned forward and dug his fingers into the mound of sand sitting beside Cloud's hole and then pushed it over until it flooded the ditch. Cloud glowered at him before starting again.

"Well, there's Sandy's."

"And?"

"I don't live here! How am I supposed to know?"

Cloud grinned at Zack, who paused in his attempts at filling up the holes and stared up at him. "You know, Cloud," Zack began softly. "You look amazing when you smile."

Cloud looked at him doubtfully but still playing along, his grin disappearing. "And do I want to look amazing?"

Zack straightened up and said, looking off to the roaring waves, "I guess it depends on what you expect to get. I doubt many people can get this without at least doing something that's amazing."

Cloud couldn't keep the smile from blossoming across his face. "What was is this? A night with little reward?"

Zack grumbled. "As if there was nothing tonight that was rewarding." And then he leaned over and pressed his lips against Cloud's. He lingered there for a minute before pulling back. "That's a good enough reward, right?"

But Cloud was frozen. "What was that for?" was all he could muster up and say.

/ - / - / - / - / - /

Author's Note: I think I glossed over everything I had meant to savor, but I still got it done. Who saw that coming? I suppose it's only fair to say that if I didn't know Zack's thoughts as I wrote this, then I wouldn't have expected that, either! And Squall coming back! My story is changing right before my eyes! It was a good opportunity and I took it. Both of these actions are going to put Cloud in a place that is going to weigh anything and everything, and I'm very excited.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the slow progress, but I can't seem to pick up the pace. Also, I'm sick. Either the flu or the cold, I can't really tell. Both ways, I'm entirely miserable, and school started last week :( But that's not even the biggest of my worries of late! - sigh -

I won't promise this next chapter soon, but I hope I write it and post it as soon as possible. Anyway, thank you all for putting up with my erratic updates, and I would love to hear what you all think of the turn of events--and whether you saw them coming or not.