Disclaimer: I in no way own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII or Final Fantasy VIII. Don't sue; I"m simply an E5 in the USN, therefore I have no money. Ha.

A/N 1: Each chapter is written from a different POV. The identity of the 'speaker' is located with the chapter'sname. Just trying to avoid confusion here. :) For review replies, please see the bottom of the chapter. And that, as they say, is that.

A/N 2: Before you read this, you might want to touch on the special secret extra chapter, 24.5. Here's the addy (eliminate the spaces) - www. angelfire. com/ ca/ shard2/ wsama/ bcd24-5. html . Be warned - this is one of those 'optional' chapters that have been hinted at. Read at your own risk. If you want to submit a review for that, I'd be much obliged! Please just include it with a chapter 25 review, if you would. Thanks much!

-BEGIN FIC-

'Behind Close Doors'
Chapter 25 - The SeeD Commander - Hole

The haul was slow and long to the idly spinning planet we'd emerged next to when we'd abandoned hyperspace. To say we were a bit bored was an exceptional understatement - I was nearly prepared to join Cloud in humming the cursed march music he continually vocalized. Sleep was a decent escape from the sheer dullness that had come to encompass the hours, but the time spent in the darkness of dreamless rest ended far too soon, leaving a man flooded with energy and prepared to face something, anything other than the mind-numbing repetition that was the view outside of the gummi ship's windows.

Cid at least had something to entertain himself with. He'd been in the engine room of the small ship we inhabited, lamenting the damage to his precious baby and snarling as he beat on the machinery encompassed in his grungy hole with a hammer. We all had attempted to assist him at one point during our arduous jaunt across normal space - Cloud and I had been firmly booted out of his mechanic's bubble, told to get our asses out of his engine room before our very presences encouraged something else to blow itself to smithereens.

I could have argued at considerable lengths with him - I am not mechanically inept. SeeD training included engineering and mechanical maintenance and construction. After all, if a mission were dependant upon heavy artillery or transportation, one had to be knowledgeable in how to keep that equipment operational andhow to repair it if necessitated. Granted Zell was our 'fix-it' man on my team, but with the basic training everyone aspiring to be SeeD received no one could be considered lacking in mechanical competency. However, considering the intensity of the older man's glares, I had decided that simply backing away and letting him have his personal space to whine and complain in was the wisest decsion that could be made. I'd offer my assistance once we were settled firmly onto the planet we were making for and see if Cid would reconsider then.

Indeed, the only person Cid allowed back in the engine room with him was the Shadow. Maybe it was due to the fact that once he understood what was wanted of him he was exceptionally enthusiastic to help coupled with his ability to go as two-dimensional as a true shadow to fit into the most inaccessible of places, but regardless he was the only assistance Cid would allow.

It all seemed rather ridiculous to me.

So, with the Shadow spending most of his time with Cid in the off-limits engine room, Cloud and I were all but trapped in the cockpit. All we ever saw of the wily pilot or his shadowy helper were their brief appearances to fetch food, something to drink, various tools that weren't located in the considerable mounds of toolboxes I knew were stashed in the vapid spaces behind us or a bucket of water for only whatever god rules these regions of space could ever know.

I would have simply attempted to sleep through my time next to the blond in that cockpit, but as previously stated a man can only sleep for so long until the body consciously objects to being thrust into such a restful state again.

Besides, it's not like I wanted to return to my dreams so readily.

It's not that they were unpleasant - rather far from that, actually. It's that they were rather questionable in nature.

Maybe my mind was wrapping itself too firmly around the confession I'd found within my torn heart while trapped in the darkness bestowed on me by the black angel's sword. Maybe the vision of Rinoa quietly telling me that I was letting my soul cry for another to fill the void her death had riped into its substance was setting itself firmly upon my mind's front. Maybe...

Maybe I was obsessing.

After all, it had been so very long since I'd let myself feel any sort of residual attachment to another human being. It had taken nearly six years to find myself feeling friendship for others again. And now my heart was obviously lusting for more.

I wasn't quite so certain I was willing to take the plunge into what I had admitted to my dreamed beloved. Part of my mind still rejected the probabilities that my heart had thrust into my conscious awareness - to love another was to replace her. That was a sacrifice I'd never make.

I hadn't been lying when I'd told the Rinoa in my dreams that she held an undying place in my heart. I would never remove her from that pedestal. I would never see her replaced.

She had been the first to ever draw that depth of feeling from me. She had been the first to melt the proverbial ice I'd encased my heart in, chiseling with her stubborn resolve through the walls I'd constructed to keep the world away. She had been the first to assure me that I could love and be loved in turn, that I wasn't so truly alone in the world, that I wasn't always destined to be abandoned by any I cast my heart towards. She had been the first to so resolutely stay by my side despite any and all of the horrors that fell around me.

Through everything - the battles against Galbadia, the struggles against Edea, the battles in Ultimecia's castle and our struggle against that all-powerful sorceress herself, she remained with me. Her love upheld me, braced me, supported me. For so long it was the only firm lifeline I had, the only stability in my world, and I held onto it with unmatched desperation. It was a precious commodity that I refused to relinquish, that's forceful removal from my waking world had nearly broken my will to continue my farce of a life.

But she had told me that I had the capaility to love once again. That my heart, so long broken by the removal of everyone who'd been precious to me, was bleeding for the attentions of one of my newer companions.

Thanks to her words and my acceptance of them, I'd found myself looking at that particular companion in a bit of a more glorified light.

I'd also been dreaming about him. As for the contents of those dreams...

I'm quite happy that I have the control over my impulses that I do, otherwise I'd certainly embarrass myself.

Those dreams were reminiscent of what I'd had when I was a teenager lusting horribly over those I'd seen that I thought were worthy of pining over. Those dreams were the type that lead to sweat-dampened sheets, mangled pillows and sodden pajamas on the return to consciousness.

As stated. Great thing I've got wonderful self control these days. I didn't once make an ass of myself during the entire journey.

Cloud, however, was obviously a bit more lacking in said self control. Whatever dreams he was having were intense. There wasn't a time when he closed his eyes that he wasn't moaning into the comfortable cradlehisarms made for his head when he was curled into his chair, sweat lightly dappling along his brow.

I learned quite a bit about Cloud during that tedious journey to our landing area. Like the fact that his frame is small and flexible enough for him to fithis entire body into one of those chairs, hiking those supple legs of his underneath him and curling like a kitten on the cushions. Also, every piece of underwear he owns has chocobos on them making them exceptionally easy to segregate from one's own laundry heap (black silk for me, thank you very much. I like the way it feels. And it doesn't look half bad). There's the fact that he seems entirely obsessed with march music and hums it incessantly when he's bored out of his mind. And he's nearly as conversationally quiet as I am - the cockpit normally is flooded with comfortable silence when it's just the two of us. While his curiosity shines in those oddly glowing eyes of his, he's polite enough to not pry without invitation.

I also learned that he's a solid enough sleeper that one can brush his spiked hair away from his face while he's resting without encouraging a single stir from his frame. That his hair is ridiculously soft despite its hard look, defying gravity without the assistance of any cosmetic products. That the light sheen to his lips is not gloss, but a natural phenomenon that suits him well. That when he's not actively fighting away the proof of the touch of darkness upon his soul the wing granted to him by Hades' contract makes itself physically present, and when he sleeps it curls lightly against his back and his side.

He shivers very slightly, never waking but letting soft mewls of appreciation leak from his lips, when that leathery wing is carressed.

I'd only done it once. I still have no idea why.

With him resting, looking so pale and vulnerable, I couldn't help it.

It was almost like the reactions I'd had with Rinoa - he was naive, innocent, pure. He was someone to be protected, someone who drew that longing to act as the Knight I once was from deep within my soul. As I'd come to terms with earlier, he was a presence I sought out, one I wished to keep from being tarnished by the harsh realities that had destroyed me, one who deserved to keep his emotional levity and beautiful heart intact. Just like her.

Unlike her, I didn't have to treat him so delicately. I knew this - indeed, I treated him entirely differently when he was conscious. When he looked at me wtih those glowing eyes with their impossibly bright blue coloration and a flat line pressing his lips together, treating him as I would any other person came naturally. Perhaps I was a bit more biting and focused on him, but that's because...

Because I care, I suppose.

I don't know. Perhaps life had tramatized me to the point that I could only express caring and friendship as cynicism and snappish criticism. After all, my closest comrade back at Balamb before I was sent on my fateful job to Timber with the Forest Owls was Seifer. There wasn't a time when we weren't at one another's throats. We swung so violently between casual acceptance of one another and billowing hatred that no one understood us, no one dared imagine us peacefully sitting in the same room together, and everyone expected us to kill each other during our exams. After all, we'd given one another our rather telltale scars during training, going more than a bit overboard.

Still, we had been comrades. When we'd received news of Seifer's execution, I had been stunned into tears and isolationism. It was a reality I'd never thought I'd e ale to cope with, a grim punch to the face that from then on he existed only in the past tense, a fate I hoped to never be demoted to myself - I suppose it was then that I realized, despite our bickering and our constant driving of one another, that I would have considered him my dearest friend. Then the asshole ended up being alive, being Ultimecia's Knight, and making my life just as miserable as he'd done before.

Even my other friends received what most people would consider to be cold, callous treatement. I don't remember smiling at them all that often. I never went out of my way to socialize with them, to encourage them, to converse with them at all. But still, those people I had tied myself with, those four other individuals I had lashed my fate to during the crises that fell upon our world, were people I would gladly die for. I did care - I cared so much for those people that it frightened me, considering my abhorred luck with maintaining those I let my heart open up towards in my life - but my actions towards them were what they were, and nothing could change that. Indeed, sometimes I got the feeling that I was more harsh on them than anyone else I dealt with; that harshness was namely to drive the seriousness of our situations home to their odd little minds and make them strive towards the goal ofliving to see yet another day. I wanted them to go on. I wanted to live with them.

That's why it killed me to hear them die, to see them murdered. To walk into that ballroom and see their corpses scattered about. To walk beside Zell's still body, his lips blue and his eyes staring without focus at the ceiling above. To slip in the blood that had poured from Irvine's chest, spilled across the floor like paint from an overturned can. To carefully avoid traipsing on Quistis' hair that had spilled free of her bun, her face hidden from view by her falls of bangs that were stained ruby by life's liquid.

To pass their dead bodies was almost as terrible as gathering Rinoa's still, heartless frame into my arms so I could sob my apologies in her blood-matted hair.

Cloud was like my friends that I had lost. He was a person I desired to keep alive, that I would criticize and ridicule within an inch of his life to get him focused on the situation around him or get him properly riled so he wouldn't put himself at risk by tra-la-laing happily around potentially dangerous circumstances.

But when he was sleeping, when he was as sweet and innocent as Rinoa, I couldn't help but be gentle. All the harsh demeanor I would show him otherwise couldn't make itself known despite my greatest efforts.

I'd have no problem kicking Cid firmly if he started mewling in his sleep.

I couldn't help but just sit back and watch Cloud, fascination burning in my mind as I pondered what it was he could possibly be dreaming about. I couldn't help but reach out and lightly caress his brow, sweeping his bangs away so I could watch the twitching of his eyes underneath his closed lids and the slight furrowing of his pale eyebrows.

"Hey, lover boy, you gonna start our descent any damned time soon?"

I nearly jumped out of my chair, my heart bursting into a panicked run before I smoothly turned and focused my most bland stare on the boxer-clad pilot that had just shoved his head through the hatch between the cockpit and the engine room. "Of course," I replied, my voice carrying its practiced flat tone. "I've got another seven minutes until we're in range, Cid. Calm yourself."

He snorted heavily before lifting a crunched cigarette box to his face and shaking it a few times. Gripping the butt of one of his wrinkled sticks of tobacco between his lips, he threw the box back into the engine room he'd been using as his home. "I'm perfectly fucking calm, Leon. Just makin' sure you ain't so enraptured with sleepin' beauty there that you're gonna crash us into the surface."

I glared as his lips turned with a wry grin even as he lit his cigarette with a lit match handily given to him by the Shadow. "I'm paying attention to our approach. Why do you suggest that I'm... wait a minute. Did you call him 'sleeping beauty'?"

Cid just sneered at me. "You think that, don't'cha?"

I huffed quietly as I turned and laid my hands on the controls, truly taking note for the first time in hours how close we actually were to the planet we were approaching. Hell, I could see a perfect landing spot - right in the middle of a large green field. Tweaking our approach slightly, I angled towards that grassy plain and adjusted the curvature of our parabolid approach to limit the heat buildup along our shielding during reentry. "You assume too much, Cid."

"Come off it, Leon," he chuckled as he marched in, wiping his hands off on a rag handed to him by his dark little helper. Bending over near the pile of crap we'd shoved into the back corner of the cockpit, he routed around before righting himself and shaking his pants straight. "We all know you're head over heels for the kid."

My grip tightened on the wheel.

"Been observing you long enough to tell the difference in how you treat him compared to everyone else. Won't say that I'm takin' all too kindly to havin' the two of you lusting after each other in the damned gummi, but won't say I disapprove either. Know how you were when I picked you up. I think Spiky there can do you some good. And it might be possible that you could do him some good, too. He's got a ton of emotional baggage he can use a carrying buddy for."

"Sephiroth?" I muttered as I pressed in on the wheel, beginning our descent.

"Well, that's one of 'em. Aerith, too, considerin' that he was too late to save her from the Shinra General when he done killed her. And before you ask, don't bother. We don't know how the fuck it is she's alive. Something about being shit out of the Lifestream so the Planet's heart is being preserved while its trapped in darkness or some monkey shit like that," he stated as he shuffled into his pants and started digging for his shirt and his boots.

I just shrugged. Didn't sound too far-fetched to me.

Go through a Sorceress War, then get back to me with stuff that's supposed to rock my world. Or how about some time compression? Maybe go stare at Lunatic Pandora for awhile. Or get a Garden to fly.

After he'd finished getting himself dressed and snapped his goggles onto his head, Cid flopped himself down into the chair I had been sitting in when we'd started our arduous little trip, apparently happy to let me continue our approach and land the gummi. "So, care to tell me why you're so damned focused on getting Vincent? Seems kind of odd that you of all people's so concerned with that."

A slight turn of my head to acknowledge him with my eyes retaining their focus on the displays before me, I huffed. "We need another point of view into the fiasco that's ripping apart the universe. I want an intelligent opinion. Also, the fact that this Shadow's here brings to mind questions of whether or not others who'd fallen to darkness can be restored. Tifa, Barret and Red first made me question the possiility - the Shadow's appearance brought that curiosity to be fully realized. I want to know if it's actually probable for something to slip through from behind a potentially closed door."

"Because then your buddies might stand a chance of living? Maybe even making it over, even if they're like the little twerp we're haulin'?"

I was silent and still for a few moments before I let myself nod a soft affirmation.

"Then why not look for them instead?"

I felt rather than willed myself beginning to chew my bottom lip. Truth be told, it was because of Cloud's miserable recollections upon the arrival of three of his friends that Vincent and Reeve never made it that I was so focused on them. That those were the only ones of his gathering of loved ones that were missing.

I wanted to find him for Cloud.

I had figured Reeve would be a long shot that stood as much of a chance of being in the land of the living as my friends, those who's corpses I'd stepped around and held that fateful day when my world had vanished. He was at the center of the calamity that struck Cloud's world.

But with Vincent's position being unknown, there was at least some small chance that my theory of people being able to reemerge from darkness without their world being restored would be proven. Selphie could possibly be alive - she'd been swallowed by a column of darkness, not ripped to shreds by the Heartless. Seifer could possibly exist in the realm of light - I'd never found his corpse, no matter how desperately I'd searched for the visiting ex-Knight.

"Because I think that this 'Vincent' of yours might be more helpful," I finally replied, my voice steady as I bent the truth considerably.

Cid snorted his snort of 'I don't believe you for a momeent' before finally letting it drop, allowing silence to tumble back over us once more.

With a grunt as I pressed a bit harder on the wheel in my hands to accelerate our descent towards the planet towards the planet we'd been aiming for, I steeled my gaze on the ground so very far below. "Why do you assume I like Cloud?" I grumbled, my mind still firmly gripping the tangent the wily pilot had decided to bring up.

"As said, been watchin' you. You're kind of obvious about it, if a guy knows what to look for. Don't worry yourself. Cloud's too fucking dense to notice if you don't want him knowin'."

I almost breathed a sigh of relief before I caught myself and kept my face in its schooled stony expression.

"Cloud likes you too. He fuckin' fauns over you when you're not lookin'. Checks you out like a lusty little schoolgirl."

That, for some reason, finally made me lose it. "Cid, will you shut up?" I snapped, ripping my gaze away from my panels and my displays to focus a harsh glare at the older man.

Holding his hands up defensively, he smirked and chuckled. "Sure, sure. Don't mind me." He then turned in his seat, facing the aft end of the ship and the small room that rested behind us. "Hey, you! Get your worthless shadowy butt in here and sit down before I tape ya to the chair!"

"Cid, he doesn't understa-"

I blinked as I caught a reflective view of the little Shadow ambling into the cockpit, hopping into the chair and tethering himself in place.

"Shit, he doesn't understand. Of course he don't. He just gets the tone of voice. Just like a puppy!" Cid cackled.

"You're sick," I noted as I pressed the ship towards the planet.

He simply snickered at me before reaching over and harshly shoving Cloud's shoulder.

I felt my eyes narrow considerably, willing the smoking man to burst into flames.

"Yo, Spiky! Wake your ass up. We're 'bout to land."

Cloud looked groggily up at Cid before yawning heavily and turning himself in his chair. Fastening his seatbelt properly, he smacked his lips a few times before nodding. "Sure thing," he muttered, his voice thick and dazed with the remnants of sleep. Moments later he glared at his wing, grumbling so softly under his breath that even my sharp hearing was unable to comprehend what he was saying before he willed the leathery limb to vanish. A few sparkling crackles of yellow energy and a wince accompanied by a grimace from him and he was as ordinary as myself and Cid, the only exceptions to such human meekness being his glowing eyes and his gravity-defying hair.

Shaking my head as the two blonds finally got correctly situated, I pushed the ship into the atmosphere and gripped the wheel for dear life as it rattled its way through turbulence. The gummi proved to be more able than I'd given it credit for being, though. It rocketed through the atmosphere without problems, only losing a few chunks of colorful heat shielding and a couple pieces of our battered aft end. Soon enough I had the landing gear of the small craft set solidly upon terra firma and Cid was out of his chair, his grandiose spear gripped in his left hand while unlatching the main hatch. In the mean time, Cloud found his clothes and got dressed.

I tried not to stare as he slipped his pants on over his thin, shapely hips and began to tuck his shirt in before pulling tightly on his belt to hold the articles in place, his actions oddly captivating. It wasn't as if staring at his mostly nude body, eyes roving over the faded remnants of scars and well toned muscles wasn't invigorating enough, my mind was now chortling that this was like a strip tease in reverse and almost just as alluring.

A snort escaped my nostrils before I hastily shoved my errantly wandering thoughts into the darkest recesses of my depreciated brain and rose from my chair. After all, I needed to get dressed as well. No good wandering outside in nothing but my boxers.

As I joined Cloud in the task of finding days-disregarded clothing, the old pilot stepped outside.

Moments later we heard his startled yelp and saw his blond head vanish from sight.

Cloud and I looked at one another before hastily yanking our assorted clothing on, him grabbing his shoulder guard in his left hand and the hilt of that oversized monstrosity he calls a sword in the other. I forwent trying to find the jacket I'd packed, just remembering to snatch Griever and Lion Heart before I burst into a run, my heavy boots right at Cloud's heels.

He suddenly stopped with a screech.

I barely managed to stop before plowing into him. Looking over his shoulder, I felt my eyes widen as I stared into a strangely suddenly appearing abysmal hole.

The Shadow that had been chasing us wasn't so quick to stop himself as I was. The solid thwack of him running into my legs upset my balance.

With a combined scream we fell into the huge black hole before us.

-tbc-

Review replies:

Shadow Cat17: Well, if my tiny hint about the planet's identity in this chapter didn't clue you in, the next chapter should make it blatently obvious. Mwa ha ha. Glad you liked that last chapter! Hope you like this one!

Dark Mog: Yeah on the 'stereotypically male' nudity to avoid laundry - that's why I call most've my buddies before visiting. Nothing quite beats glancing into an apartment and seeing dangling man. Geh. Anyway, glad you liked the content of the last chapter (and neh, you might wanna check out the optional chapter. No plot points - just gratuitous smut)! And hope this one clarified Leon's thought processes behind the Vincent hunt. The reaction of our resident ex-Turk should be marvelously funny when they meet again. Neh heh heh. Oh, and on the subject of the Org babes we love to love and hate to see get mangled, expect them to have a few appearances. After all, this story does tie KH1 to KH:CoM. I promise I'll do my damnedest not to butcher Zexie and Lex. I'm replaying the Riku mode as I sit between chapters to refresh my brain.

littlekittykat: Eh heh, no worries about the age. Been legal for quite some time. And alcohol is good! Yes, goooood... I just have to remember to have designated drivers, is all. So I'll be around to write this thing until its completion, whenever that'll be. :)

Li the Twilight Knight: (dances around) David Bowie is SO FREAKING HAWT! Especially in his tights and his support cup! (cackle) Alright, seriously now. Actually, there's no going serious after thoughts of David dancing with a baby and muppets. I have to stop now. I'm laughing too hard and staring at my VHS collection too appreciatively. Thanks for the birthday shout-out!

DarkStarPhoenix: Well, my damned email account on the ship filtered the stuff I sent from my hotmail account, so I never got your poems at work. (sniff) But it should be delivered in, say, a week. Sometimes stuff gets locked out for a month when the computer geeks who crash the network regularly (attempting to maintain it, they claim) mess stuff up beyond repair. But anyway. Hope you liked your Leon POV! He's always so... interesting to grapple. Neh heh. Nope, this ain't the 'Black Hole' world. 'fact is, that doesn't really feature a planet - it's just, well, a giant black hole. You'll see when the next Sora chapter comes up. Heh. Glad you're liking the fluffiness! Grip it while you can - things are gonna get rather demented from here on out for awhile. (evil little cackle)

The One Who Creeps You Out: Well, I was planning on every world being Disney. There's going to be a very, very slight deviation to that - not for Sora and company, but for Leon and crew. And yep, you're correct in your assumption over the Shadow's identity. :) Huzzah! Glad you've been liking this fic, and hope you continue to do so!

Mwa ha ha! Review, por favor? (cringes as the plushie breaks forth with much more menacing cackling. "MWA HA HA HA! SUBMIT!") Yeah. (tired sigh) What he said.