Remaining detached had always been the blissful characteristic of ice. Well…no, not really detached, but rather farther spread apart. If it moved closer it would be denser than water, then where would we be? We'd all be frozen or starved, animals gone, cells dead…and hungry, so hungry.

Not to say we're really in any other place. Whether I was hungry from the ache in my stomach or the ache in my body that screamed and starved for that heat…it was the same situation. My stomach wanted the warmth of food, and my body wanted the warmth of any other living thing willing to separate me from the filaments that attached me to Sephiroth for just a moment.

That must have been it. All I saw in Leon was heat, a moment, a second of freedom. Nothing more…not even less shadows.

Realization always moves me to laughter. A chuckle, a grin, a sly slip of the tongue where my true intentions may be revealed. I don't even know what those are anymore, so it really can't matter too much. I live to lie, and in my living is lies. That's all there is to really know. Anything that slips out will not be known by me nor any other organic being.

I just wish Sephiroth didn't insist on watching when Leon fucked me. He was so violent too… He had been mad, it seemed, when he did it so roughly it brought me back to those days with Sephiroth. The pushing…the violence…the blood…just one more drop and I may never wake up again. Those had been my hopes from that time. When did it all start?

So long ago…

It was like listening to a story when my thoughts started that way. A response to my own question and not even in my voice. Whom had I stolen the identity of to verify myself? Zax…that's right… He was the victim in all of this. I had taken from him what he could have only lost that time. You have to be dead to have such a thing taken from you. Have to be alive to be willing to take it.

"Hey little boy…where did you come from?"

Youth is funny. People always tell you that you'll regret wasting it, but I always wondered why I had taken so long to rush through it. Even as I grew up, I wanted to know why I had been young…why I had been innocent for just that one moment. That's when it started. I should have never left home.

"Nibelheim…"

It was Tifa's fault…so much of this would have never happened if it wasn't for her. I began to believe I was Zax…I could have been stopped so long before. I never became something better… In SOLDIER I was always so weak… So weak…and would never amount to anything.

"Name and age?"

"Cloud Strife, 13-years-old."

I remembered it now as Leon so violently hurt me. I had known him before that time…not too long… But that was a different memory to be relieved at a different time. Memory was such a violent raping existence, that pulled back constantly to what it started out as.

"Follow me and I'll teach you what you need to be protected from."

Raping bastard… I was just 13... Even then I had a chance, such a slim chance…but just a hope of happiness that he ripped away from me. I hate him. I hate him… If I could do it all again I would have ripped it off before he could tie my hands behind my back and push it into my mouth and any other hole he found in my body.

But to me, even as I cried, he was a god. I had admired him for so long, and then to have it all ripped away like that…well…it made me understand. He was not so great. He wasn't so perfect. He needed the heat just as much as I did, but what was he hiding from? It didn't matter when it came down to it. All that really seemed to hold its worth was thought, and even that was as cheap as a hooker.

That was innocence. That was how quickly it could fade. Someone just needed to take it from me, then it would never return. I missed it… I wanted it back…

"It hurts," I murmured into Leon's ear with the tears falling from my eyes as my body trembled underneath him.

It was too cold… I was too tired. Even clinging to his back I felt like there was no heat there. I shivered, I shook…I just wanted more, was that wrong? I just wanted to go back and fix all that had gone wrong…was it really impossible? Stranger things have happened. I had been born, after all.

Leon stopped. He looked down at me as though he had been possessed and awakened later to see he had ripped the head off his favorite doll. He stood immediately and stepped back a few times as he looked down at me with surprised eyes. Even though I thought he would run away in the opposite direction, he picked me up and pulled my clothes on the rest of the way as he looked threateningly over at Sephiroth. Maybe I was his favorite doll…even if I was broken. Enough glue would fix me for a moment, until I broke again and again so that the pieces couldn't be put back together again.

Sephiroth…left. He burst into a cloud of feathers and faded from that place, but I knew he was still there, waiting for me…wanting to take me away so he could possess me yet again. What a sadistic god I knew. I wished I could have prayed at a time when a kinder one would come to me. I would never be so fortunate.

It would have been better to just stay as a child and cling onto Squall's innocence along with mine. It would have been nice, just to hold him, just to be friends. He was my childhood love, after all.

"When we get older, I will be your wife, Cloud!"

Of course, he lived in that orphanage…and I lived with…with…was she my mother? No…she must have been Zax's. Maybe it wasn't Tifa's fault I went to SOLDIER and was raped by Sephiroth, it's just her fault I can't remember. Must have been Zax's promise to her… I can't really remember the truth anymore. I have always been alone…that's the truth, isn't it? My real childhood must have been those moments with Squall…or…did that belong to that other person too?

It doesn't make sense anymore. I'm so lost in thought that even thinking appears as a dream. I hate thoughts. They drag on, never end, and for a second they seem to be truth. Then when I wake up in the morning it was nothing more than a faded dream of anticipation.

"Cloud…I'm sorry…" Squall…no, he wasn't Squall from that time, rather Leon of this. He whispered it in such a soft tone I felt like he could protect me from the pain. "I don't know…"

"It's fine. It's happened before," I replied as he placed me against the small bed and leaned against me with his head to my chest and his tears dampening my clothes more than the melting snow. I hadn't expected it. Emotion had been forgotten so long ago. Or had it ever existed in me…?

"You're…the one I want to protect," he said in a trembling voice, and then I understood his failure. As long as he had seen that he had hurt me, then he would also see that he had done the most inexcusable of crimes.

"Then…you were my light…"

Notes: Aren't kids cute? ^^ Annnnyway, hardly anyone's been commenting from before, so I think you all stopped reading. So…no love then I guess I can consider this the end of the fic since it's as good a stopping place as any other ^^ There's other stuff I can ramble on about though if anyone is interested, so feel free to tell me what to do XD I'm sick again ._. But I have a four day weekend ^^ Hmm, RO is goodness.