stats
NAME: Delyn Raine Leonhart
SEX: Male
AGE: 17
HEIGHT: 161cm
WEIGHT: 54kg
WEAPON/POSITION: Mirrorwand/Gunblade specialist
RANK: Senior Student
(delyn is happy squall's son. delyn is wonderful top student in balamb. delyn follows in his father's footsteps, uses the gunblade like a pro, passes the seed test, fights sorceresses, gets the pretty girl who is herself a sorceress and seifer's daughter, becomes commander of the garden, saves the world, retires happily with his wife and seven children. delyn is a big hero, and among his friends he counts the children of irvine and selphie—of course gun and close combat specialists—and the children of zell and quistis, or zell, and quistis—instructors or martial arts specialists, of course—and used to have a nice rivalry going with seifer—who returned to the garden—'s daughter before bedding her. happy heroic doings et cetera yadda yadda to infinity and beyond. right?)
the lion's cub
[llyse]
He always dreamt the same thing.
In his first dream, he would be running wildly, fleeing from a formless, faceless entity that wanted—what? He would not know, would not think to now or wonder. He would just run, thoughts scattering like quail before formless terror, just as he would scatter before the one chasing him. In his dream, he would run, and he would run, and he would fall, breath whooshing out in a soundless puff as the world of impressions shifted around him and the thing would snatch him up. He would know it was bad, that it meant to devour him, to destroy every shred of him that was and replace it with another. This he knew for in dreams there was no sight, no sound, no touch, no taste, no world, only disjointed impressions that would rush through him unstoppably as the dream would draw to a close. The thing would hold him up, and stare at him coldly, and it would be him, calm and perfect and wonderfully heroic, as he would never be. A leader of men, a strong lover, a great fighter. And even as he saw it, he knew it already was him, at the same time that he was him.
And he would wake up, and scream.
Graffiti seen in Deling City slum building:
"That Leonhart kid is HOT! Just like his dad."
The gunblade's tip sliced through the air, graceful death in a length of polished shimmering steel alloy, reflecting sunlight every which way. A new design, the guy who had upgraded it for me said, special just for the Commander's son. Metal somehow cut and beveled and forged into a surface composed of uneven planes of metal that cut as smoothly as any other blade along the edge, but with the uneven metal on the blade it did not reflect light, it sprayed light, sometimes a halo, sometimes a hundred thousand spots all around me. Mirrorwand, the guy called it.
Delyn, she asks.
Quiet, like all of them. They don't dare to interrupt me when I'm practicing, all because my father used to accidentally hit people all the time when he was practicing. The gunblade swings in an arc, less impressive perhaps than father's Lionheart, but no less special. Not that I wanted it to be special, but the shop owner said just a normal upgrade. I should have been suspicious when he asked for twice the normal amount of adamantine.
Delyn, she repeats, more forcefully now. Delyn Raine Leonhart: Knight of Demetera, mother of Squall, and family of the Lion. If there ever was a name for a future hero, this is it, Delyn being the supposed knight of Demetera, the one who stuck with her through a whole lifetime of hunting rogue sorceresses back during the Centra wars. If that's what being a knight means, I think I'll pass.
Yes, I say. Turn. It's Ceresia Kinneas, Ceres for short, daughter of Irvine and Selphie Kinneas. Her parents were great SeeDs, great heroes, I guess. Lousy parents, though, the way they kept leaving her with my family when they went out on missions. Father used to say that Uncle Irvine and Aunt Selphie never grew up, and never would, but Uncle Irvine grew up, I guess, when Aunt Selphie died, eight years ago. As far as I remember, Uncle Irvine hasn't been back to Balamb since. He's become faculty at Galbadia Garden, and rumor has it that he's hard on everybody and especially himself. Ceres hasn't seen him since she was eight. He won't see her. Says she reminds him of her mother.
Get out of your snit, she says. She's the only one who talks to me like that. I wonder if the fact that I'm sleeping with her has anything to do with it. We're not really lovers, actually, but… Well, maybe a little. But even if we're lovers it's not official, because then there'd be a flood of reproachful 'mails coming to my network account and a flood of hate 'mail to hers.
I'm not in a snit, I say, but she's already going on, running over my words like always, I know when you're sulking, 'cause that's the only time you actually practice with your gunblade privately and not in the Training Center. So what's bugging you this time?
I just didn't want to get spied on in the Training Center and get followed around by a dozen new students ooh-ing and aah-ing and saying how like my father I am. Guess that the closest they'll get to the great Squall Leonhart is to his son.
Sucks to be you, says Ceres.
Sucks to be you, say I. At least I have a father, I think. He's usually busy with stuff, anyway, and when he talks to me it's usually gunblade tips, but he is there. Mother talks to me, and I know she loves me. I suppose she understands me a little, about the expectations and suchlike being the daughter of an important general. Sometimes I wish I was born female.
Come on, kid, Ceres is saying, grinning like a fiend. Quite a recognizable expression, the one she wears whenever she's spoiling for a fight. Whatever she said about me being in a snit, I can tell she's pissed about something, too. Let's see how you fight. (she says)
We fight.
He always dreamt the same thing.
In his second dream, he would be walking along a road leading into darkness. All around him would be mist, veiling him in a fog of off-white that would muffle and eat up all sound, light, and (it seemed) touch. No, touch he would have, but any other sense was eclipsed by the clammy mist pushing against him. It seemed his legs would move independently of his body, driving him on and on past countless turnings in the road. Where he would have chosen one path, they would invariably choose another, and it seemed he would be too weak to resist it, too weak to stop the footsteps carrying him to the (what?) future. It seemed that slowly strings of shimmering silver would become visible in the mist, and suddenly he would know that they were controlling, thousands of fine threads dancing him like a puppet.
And he would wake up, and scream.
Balamb Instructor's report—Leonhart, Delyn Raine:
Student is slightly dreamy at times, but usually attentive. Scores are above average, and he has obviously inherited his father's genes. Excels in gunblades and magic, quiet and polite. This child will have a glorious future, as expected of the son of Squall Leonhart.
Morning's light is soft and quiet. Like a shy lover, it creeps into the room on light feet, afraid of startling the sleeper, until it can caress the sleeper's skin with soft warm fingers of light, diffuse glow warming and setting aglow exposed skin and hair. As it flows ever forwards, it becomes a blanket, gently glowing on the sleeper's skin, settling into the sleeper's flesh until the sleeper glows like a child of the gods. Sometimes, as wisps of clouds chase themselves across the blue flame of the sky, it appears mottled, then settles itself back into stillness, gently warming.
Sometimes my (overbearing) lyricism surprises me.
It's morning, as I've said; the sunlight is coming in, and the sleeper hasn't awakened. Ceres has been known to sleep through thunderstorms. Right now she's glowing slightly gold, we're glowing slightly gold, warm and comfortable tangle of arms and legs illuminated by the light shining in through the oversized glass windows (special rooms for the Commander's son indeed). Ceres must have got up in the night, because I always draw the curtains. She always draws them back. It pisses me off. The notion of anybody in an aircraft (and there are damn many of them nowadays) being able to see me sprawled half-dressed in bed creeps me out, but it doesn't seem to bother her, although she's got less on than I do.
Today is the SeeD exam. I don't want to get up and out of this room, because once I do, I'll have to go forward. Forward to the exam, to the SeeD status everybody's certain I'll get; to the future I don't want to think about. It's dark, all of it. Everybody thinks I'd love to be a SeeD because father and mother and all their friends are, as if everybody in the world loves swinging weapons around. Sometimes I feel I've been shepherded all my life.
Four-year-old me, getting accepted into Balamb Garden as a SeeD cadet (even though I didn't ask for it). Six-year-old me, getting a gunblade shoved into my hands at weapon selection time before I even got a chance to look at anything else (gunblades are so… in your face). Ten and eleven and twelve-year-old me, automatically enrolled into whatever classes the best students study, because my father was one (I hate most of them).
But then again, I suppose it's my own fault. I did go along with everything they chose and I didn't object or scream with fury. As Ceres says, I'm a spineless, gutless toad. People control my life because I let them control my life. It's much too late to change now, though. I'm set, and I'm set, but I'm not set for the exam. I hate them. If I pass, everyone behaves as if it's to be expected. If I fail, everybody will smile and pat me on the head and say never mind, you must have been in a bad mood or something, and my father will scowl at me and my mother will sigh.
Somebody's being self-pitying today. Ceres would hit me if she were awake.
Sooner or later the light is going to intensify, and I'll have to get up and draw the curtains. Ceres will probably wake up, and then I'll really have to get up and get dressed and get ready to get going on the test to get my SeeD-ship. Not that I want it.
For now, though, I'd rather lie here and watch the sunlight.
He always dreamt the same thing.
In his third dream, he would be walking through the Garden, talking with people and smiling at them and generally being nice and sociable. Everyone he would meet would greet him respectfully, calling him 'Sir' and 'Commander' and bowing. He would be happy, and contented. He would go on missions, time rushing by like a sped-up waterfall of minutes and seconds and hours and days, would be heroic and gallant and everything he was supposed to be but didn't want to be. But somehow still he would feel that there was something wrong, that there was a reason that he was being treated this way, a reason other than his own merits. And then he would turn, and look into a mirror and he would see Squall Leonhart staring back at him.
And he would wake up, and scream.
SeeD test report for Team B, Test 0399:
Instructor-in-Charge: Milena Edwards
Members: Delyn Raine Leonhart (team leader), Marcus Denverian, Alyssa Cardis Revraine
Team generally performed well in test. Leonhard suffered mental breakdown partway through test and fled the battleground after killing an enemy soldier.
