DISCLAIMER: Me no own. Me no likey.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This. Thing. Is. HUGE. O.O
Seriously, this chapter here is the longest thing I have ever written for fanfiction. I've written one short story longer than this, but only one, and one paper, which doesn't at all count. This thing is eighteen pages long; before this, my record was sixteen. Damn...
Okay, here's my question: where is everyone getting the ages from? They're not in the game manual, nor on any of the sites I can find. Are the in-game ages on some site that's now defunct or what? I'm just really, really curious.
All right, here's a question. When ff.n says "For whatever reason, some writers feel it's okay to copy-n-paste musical lyrics they have not written into their fiction. If you did not write it, do not post it. This has always been our policy. Please remove these entries immediately to avoid account closure," do they mean people posting nothing but song lyrics as a chapter (which I've seen and made me wonder), or songfics entirely?
Rating change because of language (mine, Cid's, and future) and many, many deaths. Review replies at the bottom so I don't take up any more space up here ;;
It had been hell.
Life at Hollow Bastion had been nearly idyllic. Ansem was a wise and good ruler whose intelligence and sense of justice had made his people proud to say they were under his protection. The military arts were kept up really only out of tradition, for the sake of the exercise and the strength and grace that most of them gave the practitioner. The castle guards hadn't been needed in anything beyond ceremonies for decades and kept their weapons and uniforms in good order, but they themselves weren't so in shape. Life treated the people well, with mild weather and a short winter, plenty of food, and the skills that craftspeople and artisans had developed over the centuries. The lifts in the castle were almost a century old and still in perfect order, while the castle itself was beautiful, shining like mother of pearl as it stretched away into the sky. When gummi technology first became known to them three years before, it had been adopted and mastered as quickly as anything, though the number of ships was kept small and used for either intraworld trips that would take a long time or brief cruises out in space, where both child and adult would press their faces to the windows to stare around them in wonder. No one ever thought about other worlds, though gradually they were realizing they existed. The meaning of the stars' light gradually disappearing filtered to them, but life seemed too good for it to worry them. They had all they wanted right there.
Which is what made it so easy for the Heartless to take over.
No one knew where they had come from, or what their purpose was. Workers for the castle had gone up the lifts that morning just as usual, leaving the towns around it near dawn as the rest of the world began to wake as well. It was a pleasant morning, with a few fluffy white clouds in the sky and the birds singing lazily in the trees, the sound of the Rising Falls not too far away a constant background to the daily routines.
An hour later, the panicked yelling began as only slightly more than half the men and women returned at a dead run, panicked, shrieking, looking constantly back over their shoulders so much that some of them stumbled, fell, and were trampled under the feet of the people following without the runners even realizing it. The people who had dashed outside at the sounds stared back in horror as they could see the men and women of the castle guards, about the only fighting force the Bastion had, running after the townspeople, one or two or three occasionally turning around to attack groups of monsters that were outdistancing the rest of the wall of things rushing after people: things like shadows, giant pink things that flew, slow, clanking things that seemed to be made of metal, small things that whirled like tops in the air and seemed to call down destruction with magic, larger things with big hats that attacked with even stronger magic, and the most terrifying looking, the gigantic balls that seemed to burn with black flame and flew after anything and everything as if going insane with the want to eat something. A flood of these things was coming, spreading in all directions, racing after people and bowling them over, throwing spells and setting them on fire, or…
…plunging enormous claws into a person's chest and dragging out their heart, breaking it into shards that disappeared on the wind as the person disappeared while writhing in pain, as the man in Squall Leonheart's vision was doing right now.
The boy, though tall for his eleven years, and strong, had been shoved back into his house by his mother the moment she saw the coming attack. Raine Leonheart was a good woman to have on your side in an emergency, but this was beyond an emergency – this was a slaughter, a catastrophe. Instead of rushing to pack blankets and cold compresses as she had in the past, she'd yelled in terror, dragged her son back inside, and slammed the door – "Stay inside, Squall!" – guarding it with her own body while yelling out offensive spells at anything stupid enough to come at her. It was effective, too – though only because there were so many people around who were easier targets. Raine stood there, gripping the doorknob behind her with both hands and leaning forward so the whole weight of her body was holding it shut, draining her energy and guarding her son who stood watching her in shock out the window set in the door.
"Dad…" he said under his breath. His father Laguna was out there somewhere, somewhere with the rest of the guards, fighting. He knew his father hadn't taken his best weapon today – and he knew his father was going to need it. Squall turned and sprinted upstairs to his room to find his own sword, then into parents' room, grabbing the hard black case that held his father's most prized possession before hauling it downstairs. Taking one more glance out the front window, and seeing his mother doing brilliantly, he dashed for the back door, the slam as he yanked it shut going unnoticed in the now unoccupied house.
Eight-year-old Yuffie Kisaragi was awakened much earlier than she liked to be by what sounded like a bird or cat fight of some sort far off in the distance. She turned over, lumped herself under the covers on her bed, intent on ignoring the noise until it stopped or going back to sleep in spite of it. But not getting softer, or ending, like she wanted it to, the noise grew louder, closer, and more distinct. First she realized it was more than just a couple of birds or cats; it sounded like tens, hundreds even- hundreds of people, that was, as one shrill shriek of terror rose high enough above the rest to stand the hairs on the back of her neck on end and snap her eyes open with fear. She rolled out of bed, getting tangled in the covers and viciously kicking her way free to jump to the window, pressing her face against it and craning her neck to try and see what was going on.
Not even two blocks away, the flood of fleeing humanity ran down her street, and her already large eyes widened like saucers as she saw what they were fleeing from – or enough of it to give her nightmares for all her life. Not even remembering that she was still dressed in her pajamas, or that her father was still snoring loudly in his room, Yuffie practically flew down the stairs, running out the door as fast as her little legs could carry her and next door, bursting through that door and not bothering to close it as she started yelling at the top of her lungs. "CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD!" She ran into her surrogate brother's bedroom and felt an immense flood of relief that even though nightmares ran behind her, he was still there and just waking up, sitting up with an irate expression on his face.
"Yuffie, you-" was as far as he got before she dove into his bed and yanked his covers over her head, huddling close to him and trembling in sheer terror. Cloud was immediately worried; she'd never been like this before. "Yuffie, what is it?"
"MONSTERS!"
Knowing she wasn't one to panic out of hand, Cloud flung aside his portion of the blankets and went immediately to his window, flinging it open and leaning out – and immediately seeing what was wrong. His blue eyes widened in shock at the sheer impossibility of the scene before him, before he started cursing a mile a minute and yanking himself back inside before he fell out. Still cursing the worst that Yuffie had ever heard anyone curse before, and not caring if she watched, he practically ripped off the old sweatpants he slept in and yanked on his training gear the fastest he'd ever done it, grabbing his sword out of the corner of the room. "Yuffie, let's go!" he yelled, and she complied, rocketing out from under the covers and into his hold as he ran down the stairs, only adrenaline and speed keeping him from falling headlong under the weight of his sword and the girl held in one arm, hoping to whatever god existed that he'd trained enough in his sixteen years to be able to protect her.
Cid Highwind was, as usual, face-up under the belly of a gummi ship high in the castle, trying to ratchet in place a part that had come loose, the cigarette hanging from his teeth getting chewed to pieces in frustration with the stupid part. It had just broken, which was highly unusual in and of itself, but it was essential as it was part of the control system for the ship's engines. Without it, the ship couldn't turn, leaving it completely unable to swerve, dodge, or even return to where it came from. A ship was unflyable with that part missing, and he'd noticed it dangling under the belly of the gummi when he'd come up for work early that morning. His internal time was severely messed up: he was awake every day either long before or long after every other person he knew, but he was lucky in that his job didn't need him to stay on a regular schedule. He could work whenever he wanted, and he kept a bag in the garage with a change of clothes, a razor, and some soap (and cigarettes) in case he wanted to just sleep there, which he sometimes did. He was a brilliant mechanic and pilot, one of the main minds behind the learning of gummi technology, and as long as he got to work with them everything was fine with him. His crew would have looked up to him with reverence if he hadn't been so… Cid. As it was, they were his closest friends and favorite companions, a sort of wacky brotherhood. And…
Where were they!
They were never this late. Cid glanced at his watch and growled under his breath, planning the chewing out he was gonna give them when they did show up, knowing full well that all of them missing probably meant they were planning something unhappy for him. With one last twist of the ratchet, he gave a triumphant cry as the broken gummi part was snapped back into place, pushing himself out from under the ship to get some glue to seal it off.
He was starting to get back under the ship when something caught his eye: a strange shadow under the belly of the next gummi ship over. Feeling his blood start to chill, he slowly approached it and knelt down to peer under. His gut feeling was correct: the exact same piece that he had just fixed on the first ship was snapped off here, too. He stood and went to the next one, then the next one even quicker, then the last almost at a run.
They were all broken. In exactly the same way.
Mumbling a curse around his mutilated cigarette, Cid began to stride back towards the only working ship in the garage – the one he'd just fixed. Something was wrong, something was very, very wrong; that type of damage could only be deliberate. Cid tossed the container of glue aside as he headed for the door to take the lift down and find Ansem. But the sound of the lift whirring once he actually reached the door was enough to make him back up and take cover behind the ships, reaching for… something. Anything. His hand met a long pole, a broom, and he wrenched the straw head off, grabbing a knife from nearby and lashing it to the end with a thin rope. The utter sense of wrongness that had come over him at the sight of the damage had filled him up entirely, making his knuckles white on the pole as he gripped the makeshift weapon, made even his deliberately quiet breathing sound like a gale wind in his ears.
He heard running footsteps down the short hall that led to the lift and he clenched his hands so hard he nearly broke the pole. "CID!" He relaxed, or started to, until he realized that that voice was panicked, frightened, and altogether nothing like he knew it to be, and he stayed hidden as Shera, his mechanic, sprinted into the room. "CID! CAPTAIN! CID!" Her use of his name was also nothing like her. When he realized nothing was following her, he stepped out of his hiding place, and as she spotted him she ran over as fast as she could. "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!"
"Whoa!" he commanded, grabbing one of her wrists to still it so she wouldn't flail herself to death, not letting go of his makeshift spear. "What happenin'!"
"There's monsters and people dead and panicking and running and they take your heart!"
"WHAT!"
"THEY TAKE YOUR H-" Her last word was cut off with a choking gurgle that should have been a shriek as a clawed hand was thrust right through the center of her chest towards Cid's face, taking her heart with it and displaying it as if it were some form of trophy. Cid jumped back, eyes as wide as they'd ever been and cigarette falling to the floor as his jaw dropped, as that hand casually crushed Shera's heart in its iron grip, the pieces slowly dissipating into nothing… along with Shera's body. It was dissolving, vanishing, right in front of him, and behind her was a small black form with yellow eyes, almost harmless-looking.
"Sher…" Cid trailed off quietly in disbelief – until the shadow-thing in front of him pulled back its arm, as if it was going to go after him next. He growled, deep in his throat, and swept his spear around quickly. "Oh no YOU DON'T!" On every word he hit it again, until finally it dissipated itself, in a cloud of smoke though instead of the nothing that Shera had gone into. Teeth clenched in rage, he swung around, looking for any more of those, when he spotted a shadow, a real one, in the hall to the lift. He paused, waiting, every nerve on edge… and in glided the strangest person he had ever seen.
She – he was fairly sure it was a she – was wearing something that looked like a black robe that clung to her like skin, made little horns on her head, and gave her the impression that she had bat wings. Her skin seemed tinged green, and in one hand she held a tall staff with a green sphere at the top. But she was no laughing matter. He could feel the evil radiating off her, the pleasure in malice and suffering that seeped from her very skin.
She spotted him almost immediately and her mouth stretched in a close-lipped smile. "Well, what have we here? Another puny mortal come to play?" She laughed as she noticed his weapon. "Is that all you have to save yourself? You and your people really are weak."
A plan was forming in his head, but he needed the right time. If he moved at the exact wrong instant… "What's goin' on?"
Pursing her lips a little, she shook her head. "Manners, mortal, manners. What's happening is the final claiming of your pathetic little world by the darkness. And soon… that won't matter to you. Heartless!" Flinging her arms wide, she called out something he couldn't understand, and immediately the room began to fill with creatures much more terrifying than that small thing that had stolen Shera's life, and much more deadly.
But Cid wasn't watching. The moment she had lifted her head he dove to the door of the gummi ship he'd just finished fixing, smacking the doorplate open and vaulting inside with his spear. He shoved the door closed just before something awfully big came at him, and the ship rocked as the mass slammed into it. He raced to the control center and started pushing buttons faster than he ever had before, then reached over and pulled a lever. Instantly the room was filled with fire and smoke as he opened the engines up to full, hoping to toast any of the monsters out there and maybe that devil woman herself. He heard a shriek through the glass canopy, and he thought he heard her cry "You shall regret this! Maleficent never forgets!" as he disengaged the parking locks and shot out of the garage at a breakneck speed that he would have killed one of the rookies for trying.
Yuffie was terrified, but still cognizant, clutched in Cloud's arm and feeling perfectly safe. He'd already cut down several of the monsters as he raced past them, defending both of them with ease. She wasn't looking closely enough to see a heart get torn out of a person, or the number of corpses around them, and though she heard the screams as well she convinced herself they were the screams of the monsters and not of the people she had known all her life.
The teenager holding her, however, wasn't fooled for a moment – he knew they were having it too easy, he knew there was something coming. He just didn't know what, and it terrified him down to the bottom of his soul. He slashed at another group of the shadow things, knocking them back into a wall and tearing by them in an effort to conserve his energy for the flight, having no idea where to run to. Yuffie's weight was also slowing him down, and he knew that even his fear-driven adrenaline rush wouldn't carry him much farther. He couldn't fight as well with her in his arm; he was strong, but not strong enough to handle both her and the sword. And the sword really required two hands, one of which he didn't have right now. But he knew that if he tried to tell her to get down she would only latch on closer, and her short legs could never match his stride, nor could her energy hold out like his. So he ran on, girl and sword in hand, beating back enemies that got in the way and just continuing to move in the direction his feet were taking him.
One of the flying ones with the big hat and the staff glided towards them and he smacked it with the flat of the sword, driving it into the wall as he had the shadows before it. He didn't know how much longer he could do this; he could feel his feet start to give out as he slipped on something – he refused to think what – spilled over the road and his energy start to wane as he continued running mindlessly, until Yuffie's tugging at his hair intruded into his brain. "What!" he had to yell above the noise that was still too close for comfort.
"Aerith! Aerith! Look!" Yuffie was gesturing wildly across the roads, pointing to a recognizable pink and brown shape in the next one over, with two larger shapes beside her that were definitely not monsters. Yuffie's yelling attracted her attention and she turned to look at them, eyes widening as she spotted them – and what was chasing them. "CLOUD! YUFFIE! BEHIND YOU!"
Cloud instantly dived into a sideways roll, shielding Yuffie with his own body and fetching up against a house as a large… very large foot slammed down into the area they'd been in just before. It was made of some sort of purple metal and created a dust cloud every time it moved at all, let alone stomped, and as Cloud struggled to his feet, still holding Yuffie, he looked up, and up, and up, because the thing had to stand at least twenty feet tall. It was enormous. It had tremendous armor. It could squash them like bugs just by stepping on them.
They were so, so dead.
He vaguely registered a yell and didn't realize its significance until two shapes imposed themselves between him and Yuffie and the massive metal thing: Aerith's parents, joining the fight. The Gainsboroughs and the Kisaragis had always been friends, and Aerith frequently babysat for Yuffie – which was how she and Cloud had met in the first place. But thoughts of their unspoken mutual understanding were not for this time, as the thirteen-year-old Aerith quickly took Yuffie away from Cloud, knowing what he needed with that strange sense that was almost psychic and proved she knew him inside out. He nodded his thanks, quickly shifted his sword to two hands, and ran at the attacker at full tilt, swinging his sword up to collide with the metal, producing a great deal of sparks and the most painful squeal he'd ever heard in a fight from the metal. Briefly he wondered where Aerith's parents were, until he realized that other, smaller monsters had been following this one, and they were doing their damnedest to take care of those so he and the girls wouldn't be overwhelmed. He heard Aerith's voice raise behind him, calling down thunder on something that he realized had been about to leap for his back, and yelled back a wordless thanks while still swinging as hard as he could at the metal in front of him, until a sickening splat made everything around him seemed to stop.
The first thing he saw was Aerith and Yuffie, staring at the ground with their eyes wide, Aerith's free hand clamped over her mouth and Yuffie's hanging open in shock and fear. Cloud quickly deflected another blow from one of the thing's gauntlets before getting the opportunity to look. There, on the road, was Aerith's mother, lying limp as a rag doll and twisted into an unnatural position, blood everywhere, eyes wide in now eternal shock, even her head crushed under the metal weight that had come crashing down on her. Unconsciously Cloud parried yet another swipe as he ran over to the woman, knowing she was dead and refusing to believe it at the same time. Just then Aerith's hand dropped as she let out a blood-curdling scream, falling to the ground and squeezing her eyes shut, Yuffie almost instantly copying her in screaming her little lungs out and clinging to the older girl.
Mr. Gainsborough stood stock still, staring at the limp body of his wife for several moments, before an expression of absolute controlled rage overtook him and he spun around, catching yet another attack on his iron staff and looking as if he were quite capable of killing that thing all on his own. "CLOUD! TAKE THE GIRLS AND RUN!"
"NO! I can help you!"
"HELP THEM!" Mr. Gainsborough yelled again, twisting the staff around and shoving the gauntlet back with an unnatural strength. "DO IT! NOW!"
Cloud wasted no more time trying to argue; the shrieks had died as he hauled Aerith to her feet, Yuffie still clinging to her, and they began flat out running in the direction Cloud and Yuffie had originally been going, not knowing where that was. Aerith sobbed as she ran, as did Yuffie, and only Cloud's self-control and determination to not let these two down stopped him from doing the same.
Squall stuck to running behind the houses, the case bumping along the ground behind him, his own sword unneeded in his hand for the moment. Every chance he got he stopped and looked, searching for his father in the chaos and battle, each time staring with more and more horror at the carnage he saw. He wasn't prepared for this – no one was, as the actual fighters kept getting cut down as if they were blades of grass. He heard a growl behind him and spun, dropping the handle of the case and sinking automatically into a defensive posture. He'd been praised, moved to the head of the class, all those sorts of things when he'd begun training over a year before, but was he good enough? It was just one of them, one of the ones that looked almost like a bad parody of the soldiers he'd seen in books, that walked like it was drunk. Well, drunk was good for him. He waited, as he'd been taught, getting a sense of the thing's movement, studying, when all of a sudden it leapt for him, spinning for what was sure to be a very, very painful kick right at his head. He just dropped to the ground and let it sail over, then surged up and began beating the hell out of it, not knowing or caring if he was doing it right or not. But either he'd caught it off-guard or the thing really was drunk, because after a few solid hits it vanished into black smoke.
Too anxious now to revel in his victory like he normally would have done, Squall just grabbed the case and kept running. His father would be here, his father was here somewhere…there!
He skidded to a halt as he spotted Laguna crossing blows with something like a giant cylinder with enormous white wings, beating it back and being beaten back by it but not defeated. His father was sooty, mud-streaked, grimy, and even a little bloody and he looked fiercer than Squall had ever seen him. Normally a happy man, Laguna took training seriously, unlike most of the others, and had earned one of the top jobs in the guard because of his skill – a skill which was paying off now as he was still alive, and the scattered corpses of people, people Squall knew and tried not to think about as dead, were just lying there.
What happened next would haunt him for the rest of his life. Without thinking, he yelled "DAD!" and started running up the alley towards the fight, still with the case, so intent on bringing his father his favorite weapon that he didn't notice the large metal thing looming in the shadows only a few feet in front of him.
At his son's voice, Laguna spun, horrified, forgetting his current fight for the moment. An expression of pure fear came across his face as he saw the hulking metal shield start out of the shadows, and he began running, sure he wouldn't get there in time. "SQUALL! GET DOWN!" As his son slowed, confused as to why his father was yelling, Laguna jumped and threw himself over his son, bowling him over and sending them both tumbling over the weapon case Squall had dropped. The unexpected fire blast tore over both their heads, singing Laguna's long hair slightly but not doing them any real damage, and the clanking sound that followed seemed to tell them that the metal monster was probably the stupidest of the lot and was actually walking away from them, towards the main road, and leaving them alone and unharmed.
Laguna immediately began tearing into his son. "What are you doing! It's dangerous out here and you could've been killed!"
Still pressed to the ground under his father, Squall couldn't look back to see him, and so couldn't see the fear that was still there and was the main cause of the yelling. "Dad, I'm sorry, I just thought you'd-"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!" Laguna's entire body convulsed and Squall, too, yelled out in pain as a searing energy suddenly seemed to pierce both of them, Laguna taking the brunt of it but enough reaching Squall to still cause harm. The smell of burned cloth and meat started rising as the energy beam stopped, and Laguna grunted as he pushed himself to his feet, slowly, using his blade for support and turning to face the winged cylinder he'd been fighting before, glaring at it with a look more ferocious than anything Squall had seen on him, ever. As the boy rolled over, aching all over but otherwise all right, he could see the vicious wound now on his father's back, a thick line of charred, bleeding flesh showing through his ripped clothing. "Squall," he grunted, not moving his eyes off his opponent, "go back home. Take care of your mother."
"No! Dad, I can fight, I want to-"
"GO!" Laguna roared, launching himself forward once again to battle as the thing rushed at him, apparently having regained some energy with his roaring. Squall stared at them for a few eternal moments, then turned and began running down the alley – only to stop and whirl back when he heard his father yell out in pain again. He was just in time to see his father's body hit the ground, another searing line burned across it, his blade clattering out of his fingers to lie forgotten on the ground as the winged demon turned and began drifting slowly towards Squall.
Eyes wide, not able to process the horrible image, his body reacted automatically. Still holding his own sword in his right hand, Squall grabbed for the black case that had come with him from the house, then dove into the open doorway of the house next to him right as another energy beam shot through the space his stomach had been moments before. Yanking the case in after himself, he slammed the door shut and then scrambled to his feet, racing as fast as he could through the house and out the other side before that thing could figure out how to deal with a door.
He slid into the back ways again and just ran, the terror of his father's death just starting to catch up to him, making him shake as he ran full tilt down the narrow path, not even realizing where he was going. No tears came; the whole thing had been too sudden, and too recent, for sadness and grief to overcome him yet. It wasn't until he was racing up the space between his house and his neighbor's that he realized he was following his father's instructions and going to his mother. He burst out of the passage, only to see nothing – no monsters, only corpses of those who had been outright killed and not had their hearts shattered. His mother was gone. His mother's heart was no more.
He stared at the last place he'd seen her, clinging to the door and trying to protect him, and the tears started to come. Hot and sharp, they stung his cheeks and washed away the layer of dust that was forming over him as he spun and ran off, strength starting to ebb, in the one direction he had left open to him: Rising Falls.
Cloud realized before the girls they were heading towards the Falls, but he figured the girls wouldn't care anyway. He couldn't get those pictures out of his mind: that kind woman, so much like her daughter, lying there like a broken doll, and that normally gentle man possessed by absolute fury at the death of his wife. His ears had followed the sound of that fight for as long as they could, but the closer they came to the Falls the more their roar overwhelmed his hearing, though he was certain he could still hear it, somehow.
He knew Aerith's father was in danger. He had to go back.
He could tell the girls were exhausted, both from the sheer emotion and the running Aerith had done. By now he wasn't feeling all that great himself, but he knew he could continue long after this. So, pulling to a stop, he grabbed Aerith's arm to halt her headlong dash, pulling her around so he could see her eyes, wide and green and panicked. "Aerith, take Yuffie and get to the Falls. Go as fast as you can. Don't look back. Hide if anything else comes. I'll be back." And he turned and began to run back.
"Wait Cloud! CLOUD!" she shrieked after him in panic, only causing him to step up his pace so he could be there and back all the faster.
Aerith had absolutely no idea what to do, so she began blindly running after Cloud, still cradling Yuffie, until her mind caught up with her body. Cloud would be back. He'd said he'd be back. He'd never broken a promise to her yet and he wouldn't break this one. And she had another responsibility, she remembered, as she looked down at the too-small-for-her-age child she still held.
As if sensing Aerith's scrutiny, even though Yuffie had buried her head in her neck, the small girl whimpered, "Aery, I'm frightened." She'd never been more terrified in her life. Her own mother had died, but she'd been two at the time and could remember hardly anything about it or about her mother at all. Aerith's parents had always seemed more like parents to her than her father, Godo, who loved his daughter but didn't know what to do with her. And to see her "mother" just… Yuffie's eyes widened and she raised her head to look Aerith in the face, plainly scared out of her mined. "I left Dad alone in the house…" she whispered, just now remembering that.
All Aerith could do was hug her tightly, fighting to get her own tears under control so the younger girl wouldn't panic and she wouldn't be tempted to follow that lead. That could get them both killed, which would destroy everything her parents and Cloud had worked so hard for this morning. "Your father's strong, Yuffie," she whispered, stroking the girl's hair as well. "He'll be fine. He's a ninja, remember?" Godo was the only one in the village – though Yuffie had recently taken to the training like a duck to water and nowadays only wanted to follow in her father's (fighting) footsteps.
Yuffie nodded at last, face still worried, but she remembered how Cloud had fought back those monsters before they'd seen the Gainsboroughs, and he was only sixteen and was carrying an eight-year-old. Her father was much older, and more practiced – he'd be fine, he would, if Cloud could be fine after all of that. She hiccupped and started to settle in to Aerith's shoulder again, only to catch sight of a blotch coming over the hill between the field they were in and the village. She squeaked on an inhale right into Aerith's ear, causing the brunette to swing around and spot the approaching… thing. She couldn't tell what it was. Without thinking, she quickly dove behind a nearby tree, trying to conceal both herself and Yuffie while still being able to look out and see what it was. If it was a person, they had a companion, but if it was a monster…
Yuffie stuck her head beneath Aerith's so she could see out as well, staring just as intently at the approaching shape as Aerith, squinting to see because that was the east and the sun was still fairly low. It was approaching too quickly to be a person at a walk, yet too slowly for someone running, and there was something behind it – a tail, maybe? – that dragged along the ground. The sun blinded them so that the figure was nearly on top of them before Yuffie realized it was not only a person, it was a person she knew.
"SQUALL!" she yelled, running out from behind the tree to Aerith's surprise and trying to latch on to him as well, heavily relieved that he was still alive. But Squall shook her off as she tried to cling without tripping over the case or getting sliced by his sword, and when she looked up she saw he had his teeth clenched and was crying, though he seemed to not be aware of it as he neither made sounds nor wiped the tears away. "Squall, Squall, lookit me," she pleaded, not liking seeing him this way.
"Squall?" Aerith was less familiar with him than Yuffie was, though she still had some knowledge of him. She herself still looked a mess, still crying much as he was, though Yuffie had stopped for now. "Squall, what happened?"
He didn't answer when he looked at her, only asked, "Where's Cloud?" Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before the two of them became something more, even despite the age difference – they just had that something, even at this age. Because of that, Squall fully expected her to know, and so he was a little surprised when she bit her lip and looked down at the ground. "He… said he'd be back. He went to look for my… my father." Even though he hadn't said that, she knew it was true.
Squall was smart enough to understand why she'd hesitated before saying "father," and his grip tightened convulsively on both case and sword hilt, looking at Yuffie to see if his intuition was true. One look at her face convinced him it was. He was desperately looking for something to distract him, something to drive the picture of his father falling dead, his picture of his mother disappearing as her heart was ripped out, out of his head, and these two girls provided that right now. They'd lost Cloud, their protector, so he'd protect them for Cloud until he got back. "Come on," he said abruptly, starting for the falls at his much-reduced trot again, and hearing both of them start to scramble after him.
The Rising Falls were perhaps too quiet. It was a risky gamble, since it was close to the castle, but Cloud and now Squall had surmised that since the monsters had been chasing everyone towards the village, many probably weren't left there. While terrifying, they didn't seem too smart. It was also an easy place to check that theory in, because one could look over the edge and see if there was anything there with just a careful cursory sweep of the head. Squall did this, breath catching at the height he was staring down and not liking the idea of falling before pulling himself back into the clump of bushes they'd found. "Nothing. Aerith, you're gonna have to help Yuffie." Though he wasn't the oldest, Squall had somehow found himself leader of the group and Aerith simply nodded at his statement. Squall didn't mention it, but he would need help himself – especially in getting back up – as the case was enormous and he didn't know how he was going to jump from ice float to ice float with the thing battering behind him. The thought of abandoning it had barely even gotten started in his mind before he swiftly crushed it; it had been his father's, and he was going to protect it. He was going to learn to use it. It would be his way of asking his father's forgiveness for being the cause of his death, because he knew that if he hadn't distracted Laguna, he would still be alive.
They managed all right getting down to the bottom, with Aerith carefully guiding Yuffie and Squall lowering the case as far over the edge of each floe as it would go before dropping it the last two or three feet to the surface. His biggest fear, that the ice would break beneath the heavy case, proved completely absurd as the ice wasn't even dented. Leaping the last way to the final point, which was at the very bottom and was larger than most, a good place to stop, he realized he had absolutely no idea what to do next. And it didn't help when Yuffie turned to look at him with her big eyes and asked "Squall? What now?"
"Now… we wait." He said the first thing that came into his mind, taking a seat on the case, just then realizing how exhausted he was. Aerith and Yuffie settled down as well, Yuffie crawling up against him as well as she could. He didn't push her away, but he didn't acknowledge her as the scenes of his parents' deaths kept playing over and over in his mind. He closed his eyes, put his face in his hands, and still he could see them, over, and over, and over, and over-
"Squall!"
Aerith's voice snapped him out of his torment and he looked up to see something moving… something inside the ice moving. That was no person. He stood up, sending Yuffie scrambling back so as to not be hit by his sword, and stood there and waited, waiting to see what it was. What felt like an eternity later, a black form rose out of the blotch on the ice, forming one of the smallest monsters they'd seen – but one of the kind that Squall had watched pull the man's heart from his chest in front of his house. His grip tightened on the hilt, waiting, when all of a sudden two more of them sprouted up as well and he began to feel the first traces of panic.
He pushed them down and quickly stepped forward, swinging, slashing the first one right across its nose, if it had a nose. It hissed and jumped back, and its two companions took its place, and Squall fell back into defense, blocking and parrying and occasionally getting in an attack. Aerith yelled behind him and suddenly a spray of freezing water shot over his shoulder to hit the first one smack in the face, knocking it backwards, and Squall took the opportunity to jump over the other two and finish that one off with a vicious swing. Yuffie's squeal brought him back to the girls where he fell in before them, going back to blocking and occasionally attacking, Aerith helping as much as she could. But when they killed the second one, Squall saw to his complete horror an entire troop of those drunken soldiers materialize out of thin air directly in front of them.
They were dead.
That one moment of distraction was all the shadow-thing in front of him needed. Its hand shot straight for his heart and he dodged and turned instinctively, but his boots lost their grip on the now-slippery ice and he fell. One of the thing's claws drew a mighty gash between his eyes, causing him to cry out in pain and his sword to go flying, landing in the falls and being carried upwards by the current. But before he could even register the loss of his weapon, his head hit the ice with a sickening crack and he blacked out entirely.
Aerith and Yuffie both screamed when he fell and didn't rise again, and Aerith instinctively shoved the younger girl behind her to protect her. She yelled something and threw a handful of fire at the shadow that had defeated Squall, causing the thing to burst into black smoke, then something seemed to snap inside her and she just kept throwing handfuls of fire at the soldier things that were now advancing on her and Yuffie. Yuffie, getting the idea quickly, started copying her; she wasn't nearly as good as Aerith, but she kept doing it anyway with typical Yuffie determination. But there was no way they could hold them off, and while the advance was slowed there was no way to stop it. They'd run too far that day; there were no other places to go. It was over.
"Damn friggen'…" Cid let loose yet another stream of obscenities as he threw the ship into yet another barrel roll that tied his stomach into knots. He wasn't sure how much more of those the ship could take; those things weren't designed very aerodynamically, being meant for the airless depths of space, but he had to keep doing it. The cloud of giant featherless, clawed birds chasing him wasn't quite as agile as him, and if he was lucky he would be able to turn the ship and blast a few of them to dust with the ship's laser cannons before they would regroup from his sudden maneuver and begin the chase again. He knew he was slowly losing his armor from their dive bombing attacks on the ship as well as his dive bombing attacks on them, but they were trying to rip the ship apart. He smashed and held down the button to fire the lasers, then decided it was time for emergency measures. "You wanna fly? Let's fly." Expertly, he spun the ship around, punching another button as he did so. A canister was ejected from just above the rear engines, and it held in the air exactly one second before it exploded, taking the last of the creatures with it in an eardrum-splitting death keen.
He desperately wanted a cigarette. There would be more; he'd seen more appear from nowhere when he'd done that stunt once before, and he only had one more explosive left. He had to leave before his daring plan failed and he died either in a ship crash or an explosion. But he couldn't just leave everyone; he had no idea what had started this, who that Maleficent person had been what these "heartless" she spoke of were, or what was going on anywhere else, but his gut told him it wasn't good. Before more of those things could appear, he swung the ship around and headed for the villages at top speed.
He looked down in shock from the cockpit, only able to stare at the carnage. Houses and stores were burning now, there were few things moving in there. What few there were were monsters, some of which he recognized as being the types that Maleficent had called to herself. He shuddered as he sped over one of the worst scenes, where a gigantic pile of metal that he would swear had once been moving had collapsed in the street, pulling down buildings as well. There were three bodies near it, one of them half trapped underneath, bodies he didn't want to get close enough to identify. He couldn't see anyone still alive in that mess, so he just blasted what monsters he could with the ship's lasers, vindictively, then turned and began to speed towards Rising Falls.
For some reason, it was easiest to get through the world barrier at that point. The barriers weren't quite gone: they were passable, in some places more easily than others. Cid was fairly sure these monsters couldn't survive in space – did they need to breathe like people did? – so he'd take his chances with the longer in-air flight but easier breakthrough in case anything else showed up.
His luck held out to his astonishment, and he spotted nothing until he reached the Falls. He was starting to prepare the ship for passage into space when he looked down and spotted a group of those monsters – and, opposing them, something that kept shooting fire. People, was his instant reaction, and he quickly pulled the ship into a dive for the bottom of the Falls that sent the engines screaming in protest. He got close enough to recognize that it was a bunch of kids before yanking the ship out of the dive and hitting the lasers at once, sweeping them over the monsters and blasting more than half of them into nothing in one go. One quick, tight circle and another sweep of the lasers and half the ice was chewed to bits in that area while there were no more monsters left.
Bringing the ship around and setting it to hover, he sprinted down to the door and opened it as fast as he could. The little girl – Yuffie, his mind told him – was trying to drag an enormous black case towards the ship, and she was visibly shaking. An older girl who he at last identified as Aerith was trying to drag the body of a boy he knew fairly well, a boy bleeding freely from the head, to the door. Cid raced over and tried to pick her up, tried to get her away from the corpse, but she shrieked loudly in protest and Cid quickly reversed his idea that the boy was dead. He put her down and lifted Squall in his arms, noting a strong breathing pattern and the ugly gash across the bridge of the boy's nose, very fresh by the looks of it. Running inside, he set the boy in a chair in the cockpit, briefly wishing there were beds, while Aerith tried to find a towel or something to use as one. She yanked out the first aid kit located under one of the seats and finally tore a strip off her shirt before she realized they were still missing someone. "YUFFIE!"
Cid, about to send them into space, realized immediately what the problem was. Dashing back outside, he scooped the small girl into one arm and grabbed a handle of the case she was dragging, something much more manageable for him than all the rest of them, and was back inside almost immediately as she latched her arms around his neck. He slammed the door shut, dropped the case in the hall, and ran back to the cockpit, where he quickly found out that she wasn't going to let go of him under any circumstances. Growling a bit in his throat, he set up the procedures one-handed and sent them climbing back into the sky, looping around the castle to build up speed, ejecting the last exploding canister into the group of featherless birds that had just appeared, and made their escape in the confusion.
It took them all a long while to move. Cid robotically set the ship on auto-pilot, adding in the feature for diverting some power towards the shields and away from the engines. As much as he wanted to get away from there as soon as possible, the bird things had done so much damage to the ship that one or two direct hits from a meteorite would finish them. What good was escaping only to be smashed to smithereens by a big damn brainless rock?
As the auto-pilot engaged, Cid let out a long breath he didn't know he'd been holding and turned to look behind him. "Everyone all right back there?" Aerith and Yuffie both nodded, staying silent. Squall said nothing, still passed out in his seat. That was probably a better thing than not, for Cid was sure the boy wouldn't like what they were going to have to do.
He looked down at Yuffie, who just watched him with those eyes, almost trembling slightly. "Will ya let go of me?" he asked, most of his usual gruffness absent.
"No," she replied, far too solemnly.
With a sigh, he prepared to do this job as best he could with the awful circumstances. "Aerith, I need ya t'get 'im loose, set 'im on th'floor. Try an' get 'im as comfortable as ya can. I'll be right back." Though tears still streamed over her face, Aerith nodded once again and began to unbuckle Squall's safety straps as Cid stood and went a little further into the ship to find a towel and something to use as a pillow. Finding two towels, he took them back to the cockpit, where there was the best light, and gave one to Aerith to make into a pad for Squall's head. She silently complied as he began wiping the blood away from the boy's wound, noting that his breathing was still even. That was a relief; he hadn't lost a threatening amount of blood yet, though with every moment there was a better chance that that would happen. He opened the medical kit that Aerith had pulled out and found the sterile needle and thread, wincing just a tad as he saw them. Turning his head to face hers, he pushed them gently at Yuffie's hands. "Thread that for me, will ya?" He didn't have the muscle coordination to do it one-handed. The small girl nodded and began, doing it mostly by feel since his head was in the way. "Cut me a pad from that, Aerith." Cid motioned to the thick gauze that was included with the kit and the small scissors as well, and she too fell silently to her task, looking up every once in awhile to make sure that what she was cutting would fit on Squall's face without obstructing his vision as Cid continued to clean away the blood. They needed water, which they didn't have… damnit.
A needle and thread dangled in front of his eyes, and he took it with a "thanks" to Yuffie before turning to look at her again. "I'm gonna need both hands, kid. Ya cin get on m'back if ya want, but ya can't stay there."
After a moment's consideration she nodded, and he helped boost her onto his back, where she continued her stranglehold on his neck and peered over his shoulder with worry, but almost with interest as well. Feeling her adjust her seat, he remembered a question he'd had but not registered at the time he pulled her off the ice. "Why'd ya bring that?" He gestured with one hand at the case still propped in the back despite the erratic flight patterns they'd had to take.
Pointing at Squall, she simply said "He wanted it."
Cid sighed internally and hoped he didn't have a case of puppy-love crush on his hands here, as that was just the absolute last thing they needed. But right now they had more important things to worry about, as he didn't know how soon Squall was going to wake up. "Let's hope he's got a high pain tolerance…" he muttered through clenched teeth as he bent over the boy and began to sew.
He'd never been very good at this kind of precision field medicine; he could split a leg or arm, set a broken head (which he was debating doing with Squall), treat a burn or a sting, but surgery had never sat well with him, which struck him as ironic considering he worked with much smaller bits and pieces of his machinery every day with no problem. The stitches he produced were of uneven lengths and spacing, but serviceable enough and about all one could ask for when in a cramped ship hurtling through the reaches of space. Yuffie watched over his shoulder with a kind of horrified fascination, while Aerith helped by holding the wound shut with her long-fingered hands. Cid noticed, in the way of someone not having time to concentrate on the discovery right at that moment, that Squall didn't move or protest when Aerith was touching him, but whenever she took her hands away he looked closer and closer to waking up. Well she is from that 'magic' branch of all of us, he remarked to himself, forgetting that "all of us" was probably reduced to just them four now. If she had the healing gift, he wasn't protesting – it made his work now much easier.
Cid finished, cut the thread, and sat back with a sigh that was cut off in the middle in a choke as Yuffie tightened her arms to not fall off his back. He quickly leaned forward again, letting the girl resume her precarious balance on his back as he realized he still needed to put the gauze pad on anyway. That was a job of only a few seconds, most of them spent in making sure it didn't obstruct the boy's eyes, and when he sat back again he felt dubiously good about it. No new blood was immediately welling up to come out of the wood, and the wound had been over a place that was mostly bone. As long as the bone itself wasn't damaged, and it didn't seem as if it was, the boy would have a pretty conspicuous scar from all of that but nothing worse. And while all the rest of them were shaken, grimy, beaten, and probably bruised, there didn't seem to be any other problems. It seemed like these monsters went for all or nothing…
"He hit his head," a small voice said in his ear.
"Where?" Yuffie pointed out the place to him as he carefully lifted Squall, and a quick exploration showed the boy had nothing more than a knot on the back of his head, not the broken skull he'd almost started to fear. There'd be one hell of a headache, but not a concussion. All to the better. Then his mind caught up with his instincts and he looked up, wondering how he could consider any of this situation "better."
"Mr. Cid…" a tentative voice broke into his thinking, and he focused on Aerith. "What happened?"
There it was: the one question he had no answer to. Cid sighed, a heavy sound, and sat back, only dimly registering that Yuffie clambered around to sit in his lap. Perhaps he was just getting used to her doing that. "I don't know, kid. I just don't know." When he'd woken up that morning, he'd had no clue that in less than three hours he would have fled from his home of thirty-four years in a barely stable ship with three kids he'd rarely ever spoken to. Yes, he knew Squall, but that was because of Squall's father; Cid sometimes trained with Laguna and the other guards, and Squall had been a frequent visitor there until he'd begun his own training. Yuffie was similar, though because she was younger (and a girl, which her father apparently thought counted for something) Godo hadn't brought her around nearly as much. He recognized Aerith from seeing her, but he'd had to dig for her name and finally compare her to the adults he knew to pick out her parents. But – his breathing contracted as the thought emerged – he was all these kids had now. They would've died down there if he hadn't come, completely by accident, and he knew in his gut that their home was lost. Whatever had done this to them had completely overrun their world, and there was every possibility that they were the only survivors. Why else would these kids have been at the bottom of the Falls, one unconscious, about ready to give in, if they hadn't lost every other protector they had?
A soft whimper and a sniffle drew his attention to his shoulder, where Yuffie had buried her face in his shoulder and began to softly cry. Aerith was struggling to control it, but when she heard Yuffie she couldn't hold it back any longer and began to sob quietly as well. Cid still felt too dead inside at the thought of all his friends, and the very vivid memory of Shera's death in front of his eyes, to even think of crying, but he raised the arm that Yuffie hadn't taken and Aerith gladly scrambled over to him, attaching herself to his side and crying into his shirt as he leaned back against the pilot's chair.
Both of the girls had dozed off, either out of sheer exhaustion or their minds just not wanting to cope with the reality of the situation anymore, when Cid noticed Squall stirring on the floor in front of them. The boy slowly raised an arm and blinked, mouth opening as if he was trying to talk, when he clapped both hands to his head and groaned in pain.
"There's some painkillers there if ya want 'em," Cid muttered in his usual gruff matter, but more quietly than normal as he didn't want to wake the girls up. "Ya gotta take 'em dry, but that's th'best we've got."
Squall slowly sat up, still holding his head very carefully. "Everythin's blurry…"
"That's t'be expected, ya got a head wound and took a knock on it as well. Just give it a few minutes, it'll straighten itself out."
The boy carefully shook his head and reached blindly to the side where the little packet of pills was sitting in the medical kit. He ripped it open and forced the first unsavory thing down his throat, grimacing, then the second before he could think about it. Making a face at the taste of it, he tossed the packet aside negligently before he started asking questions. "What happened?"
Somehow that "what happened" was different from Aerith's, and Cid knew it – perhaps it was the boy's tone, almost business-like, or the way he didn't sound as if he was going to cry. Little did Cid know that he had begun building the armor around him that would lock him away from everyone and completely change who he'd been before into someone new – someone they wouldn't be sure at times that they liked. "I found ya three down on th'Falls, with yerself on th'ground an' th'two girls throwin' fire at those things. Blasted 'em t'smoke, picked y'all up, and here we are."
Squall glanced out the cockpit window to see something he'd only seen once before: the multi-colored swirling reaches of nothing that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, every now and then peppered with stray rocks or other debris. "Space…" he murmured to himself, then turned to look at Cid. "Where's the Bastion?"
Cid jerked his head as well as he could in that direction: behind them. "Left it as fast as we could, kid. There was no way t'stay there." Changing the subject slightly, he nodded again, this time in the direction of the case. "Yuffie here brought that fer ya."
Squall looked behind him to see the case he'd been dragging around the entire morning propped against the wall behind him, quite probably the only luggage any of them had. He didn't forget his vow of earlier, but now that he saw it again, he was almost resentful. He was who knew how far from his home, with three people he barely knew, going somewhere it was impossible to imagine, if they were actually going anywhere at all and not just drifting aimlessly. Just before he'd been knocked out he'd felt sure he was going to die, his own life being taken in repentance for killing his parents, and the thought wasn't frightening – it was almost welcoming. But here he'd woken up in the ship, with his parents, friends, enemies, everyone he could think of probably dead on the planet behind them, and he, Squall, was unfairly still alive.
The expressions that passed over Squall's face told Cid that it was better not to ask, and as the boy moved to the back, setting the case on its side against the wall, Cid let him go. You couldn't force someone to talk, and in a space this size, and after such horrific events, things could happen that you'd regret forever.
As Squall settled down with his back against the case, knees up and supporting his elbows, with his head leaning on his clenched fists, a shrill beeping began at the control console that Cid knew he had to look at. Disentangling Aerith from him as carefully as he could, he stood and moved to sit down in the pilot's chair, trying not to wake Yuffie. He shouldn't have even bothered; the beeping was too annoying to be ignored with sleep, and as he shut it off he could feel Yuffie lifting her head from his shoulder and looking around tiredly. Shuffling behind him proved that Aerith had woken up as well, and he heard her sit in the chair, not saying anything. As he concentrated on flying through a particularly erratic clump of asteroids, each of the others could only sit there with their own thoughts running around and around in their heads until they couldn't throw them out even if they tried.
I was helpless, Aerith knew, I couldn't help Cloud or Mother or Father and Mother needed help so much, so badly, maybe she'd be alive right now if I knew what I was doing, but I don't know anything worthwhile.
I left Dad alone, Yuffie's mind whispered silently. I left Dad in the house and ran to Cloud, and then Aerith and Squall and Cid. I just ran, like a baby, like a little frightened baby and I left my daddy alone. I'm a horrible, horrible person and I left him alone like I promised Mama I wouldn't and I did it anyway.
I failed them. I didn't listen to Mom. I distracted Dad. And they're dead, they're dead, they're dead… and I'm the reason they're dead. If I hadn't distracted Dad he wouldn't have been wounded, and if I hadn't run from the house Mom wouldn't have died worthlessly. I'm to blame for all of it, Squall thought with clear certainty.
I didn't know the right spells.
I just distracted everyone else.
I could have taken Mom with me.
I let Cloud go back.
I didn't even see if he was awake.
I couldn't even protect Aerith and Yuffie.
And, unknowingly, they all reached the same conclusion.
NEVER AGAIN!
Three days later, after the last of his vision problems were completely cleared, Squall pulled the long black case onto the broken-down table in the hotel room he and Aerith shared until Yuffie would stop clinging to Cid. He didn't know where the other three were and didn't particularly care; this was his choice and his alone. He snapped open the silver locks and pushed back the heavy top, revealing an interior fitted with custom-designed foam padding. His father's favorite and best gunblade was nestled in the sponge-like stuff, definitely needing a polishing but still looking proud and incredibly deadly even in the weak light of the room. The lion's head keychain still dangled from the end of the gun butt, and the engraved lion's head on the blade itself almost seemed to roar as he traced it silently with his thumb, thinking. A lion was strong, and capable, protective… and solitary. A lion was everything that he himself did not feel capable of being for anyone ever again. A lion would have saved his parents.
The lion had never fit his father's personality, but he knew Laguna had loved that weapon as much as any man could love a length of metal. He always kept the bullets fully stocked and polished it at least once a week when he had the time, but preferred to use a less precious one for everyday activity – which was what he'd expected when he'd gone to the castle that day. Squall had once as a very young child asked what the lion on the blade was named, to which Laguna had replied that the lion didn't need a name. But now, he couldn't help thinking that it did, and it was ironically appropriate that he'd picked his own new name before realizing that it fit so well with the weapon in front of him. We have to be called "Leonheart" for something, he told himself, so why not for this?
He wrapped both hands around the butt and pulled it out, struggling a little with the weight of a weapon meant for a full-grown man and not a boy who hadn't had his early teenage growth spurt yet. But he found his balance, one hand on the butt while the other carefully held the blade, and looked it up and down as a flash of light ran down the blade. "It's just you and me now, Griever," Leon whispered.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Tolja that was long. Oi, I still can't believe I wrote that in less than three days. Compared to a lot of people, I'm an amazingly slow writer - I can't put out a chapter a day, or a chapter in three days, and in the past have barely managed one a week. I'm actually not posting these chapters until I finish the next one, and I'm getting a lot done on this pretty fast for me. Hey, if it works, do it!
AngelKairi: Thank you! Actually the name-changing stuff happens more in this one and in the next one, but as you probably figured out, it wasn't because of Rinoa. I've seen so many stories where her death was what prompted him to change, and I just figured I'd do something different. As for the ages, I actually have no problem with the nine-year age gap; it gives things an interesting dynamic. But when I played the game I just never thought he was that much older than her, and it wasn't until I started reading KH fanfic that I went "What! That much?" So with this first story, started before I started reading, I just stuck with my initial impressions.
Gining, thanks for adding this story! Actually, the first three chapters (including the prologue) are sort of one small, linear story, but I realized that I couldn't tell something that monumental and catalystic in one chapter - hell, this chapter is eighteen pages and it's only half the story (oi...). After they get settled in Traverse it'll go into much more of a one-shot format, some of which I'm really looking forward to. Oooh yes, I'm wearing a face-splitting grin now.
xTheJackOfSpadesx, this is original? O.o I thought for sure someone had done this already. I normally hate writing overdone plots, which I thought this was, but this grabbed me and shook me and rifled my pockets for change and wouldn't let me go until I wrote it, so it got written. But if it's original, that's good! I love original (and yes, I get some very, VERY weird ideas that I just can't resist). Thank you!
Thank you for reading, everyone! And please please PLEASE tell me about any typos you see!