Title: Fallen from Grace
Chapter One: Overture
Disclaimer: I don't own Disney or Square, therefore Kingdom Hearts does not belong to me. Also, there be bad things in here. Angst. Hopelessness. Suicide. Abuse of power. Sadistic mind games. Consider yourselves warned on all accounts.
Notes: I've been meaning to write this for a while, hope the idea is as good in text as it is in my thoughts. Pairings will become obvious at a later date. Like when you're done reading this.
He had kept his promise; she was alive. She was alive, and he was dead. The first half of the thought gave him comfort; caring about the second half was more than he could manage. It was incomprehensible that he could have lived when so many others had died.
They had split into groups when the shadow beings had arrived; Irvine, Squall, Rinoa, Red XIII, Yuffie, and Aerith going to search for their leader, Ansem Hollow and herd the other, younger residents toward the docking bay, while he, Vincent, Barret, Tifa, Seifer, and Quistis had remained to keep the docking bay and courtyard clear.
Theoretically, it had been a sound strategy.
What none of the tacticians had considered was Ansem Hollow's absence; accompanied by a terrifying shortage of curative items, and the sheer numbers of Shadow beasts spawning throughout the castle. By the time the reconnaissance team had reached the landing bay; a bare hour since the attacks had started, inventories were scraped dry, and several had fallen for the last time.
All initial emotion had dried up, leaving him an empty shell of adrenaline and muscle- they all were like that, through varying levels of trauma and exhaustion. It had been Barret's sacrifice to cover him with his last few rounds as he shoved the young teenagers, one numb to the point of catonics gripping onto one struggling mechanically, as though she had forgotten her reason to try and escape.
The aviator had caught the children, giving him one last look over-flowing with heart wrenching guilt, and had raised the ramp, giving the fighting party a final grim salute. They had understood; Ragnarok was loaded with as much weight as the ship could realistically hope to move.
It was not a shock to any of the warriors. With the fatalistic instincts of killers, they knew all hope had left with a roar of Gummi engines.
Robbed of artillery fire, Barret threw himself into the thickest crowd of enemies he could find, machine gun arm bludgeoning whatever was closest, his flesh hand grasping Tifa's blistered fingers from under a pile of writhing black bodies before they went up in a fireball of mutual Self Destruct.
Quistis and Seifer were back to back; both blond mercenaries bleeding from innumerable cuts that should have been fatal, and only flashes of scarlet, gold, and black showed that Vincent was still clawing through the barely substantial beings.
He watched the Ragnarok disappear in a pinprick of starlight. She was safe. It all comes flooding back in a deluge of horror. The sheer volume of mentors, friends, neighbors who had died today was enough to give him an overwhelming sense of vertigo, darkening his vision, and leaving his back open for the enterprising Shield Shadow to score a deep gash across the blond's back, knocking him to hands and knees, sluggish flow of blood attracting even more shadow creatures to the fallen man.
He screamed as teeth and claws ripped through fatigued muscle, rendered helpless by the sheer mass of the creatures, life oozing out via thousands of lacerations, and everything, rather abruptly, went dark.