.

Chapter title belongs to Alice Cooper.

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-Chapter Four-
Welcome to My Nightmare
۵۵۵۵۵

"So where in the hell've ya been, ya spiky-headed nutcase, and what in the hell'd ya do with Vince?" Cid wasted no time and minced no words; he hadn't been there for more than five minutes before diving right in. Aerith shot him what was intended to be a discreet 'Cid, please!', but Cloud intercepted it anyway.

"It's all right, Aerith." He set the untouched bowl of cream of wheat on the table next to the couch and cast a quick glance at Leon before turning to Cid. "I don't remember," he mumbled.

"The last thing he remembers is the two of them standing outside Seventh Heaven with you and Yuffie," Aerith elaborated.

"Holy shit," Cid replied and sat down at the living room table. "So your memory's all fucked up again, eh kid?"

Aerith fired off another, more intense look at the tactless man – which was basically the same as the 'Cid, please!' look, only without the 'please' – and while she was nowhere near as good at it as Leon, her second attempt succeeded in shutting him up. He looked at her and furrowed his brow, indicating Cloud with a subtle cant of his head.

'No,' Aerith frowned, wordlessly answering his unspoken question, 'I haven't told him everything yet.' She sat down on the couch next to Cloud, and Yuffie joined Cid at the table. Leon continued to hold up the wall.

A stifling silence settled over them then, making everyone uneasy – even Cloud, who was generally okay with uncomfortable silences. The only one who seemed completely unaffected was Leon. Cid muffled a cough, and Yuffie squirmed in her seat. Aerith wished she hadn't made Cid shut up.

As the tension in the room became almost unbearable, a strong premonition washed over Cloud, leaving a sense of dread in its wake, that his life – the life he was finally coming to terms with, making his peace with – was about to be turned upside down yet again. He looked from face to face for confirmation, but everyone looked away, refusing to meet his eyes.

Everyone except Leon, that is. Leon held his gaze steady, and it was Cloud who finally looked away, ashamed of looking so weak in front of the other man – just like he had with Zack; he remembered that well enough. But Vincent and black holes? Cloud didn't have a clue. Leon must think he was a real nutcase, just like Cid said. Cloud glanced at him again, but there was no sign of judgment or pity on his handsome face.

"So is anybody going to tell me what's going on?" Cloud asked, finally breaking the awkward silence. "Where are we? And please don't say Traverse Town," he directed at Aerith.

Everyone automatically turned to Leon then, as if by means of some secret ballot, they had unanimously elected him spokesman, and Cloud listened intently as the man gave a terse account of what had happened since Ansem began seeking the darkness. Some of the tale stirred shadowy memories – things like the Heartless and Sora – but he couldn't quite grab hold of them before they had flitted away, leaving only a vague discomfort behind.

"Our world vanished that day," Aerith said gently, "right after you and Vincent."

Cloud thought back to the day of the reunion, which to him seemed like just yesterday. Vincent had arrived bearing reports of strange new creatures in the Nibelheim area, and Cid had confirmed them, recounting an incident that had recently occurred in Rocket Town. A group of rock climbers had gone on a trip to the nearby Nibel Mountains, and only one of the four had returned, his clothing in tatters, and babbling deliriously about deadly shadows.

Of course, Cloud and Vincent had both immediately suspected sinister goings-on at the Shinra mansion again, even though Hojo was dead and Shin-Ra defunct, or perhaps some sort of malfunction at the Mt Nibel reactor again, even though it had been shut down for months. So they decided to go take a look around, and Cid had offered to give them a ride on his strange new airship; not out of the goodness of his heart, he had insisted, but because he was also giving Yuffie a ride back to Wutai, and it would give the pest two other able bodies to bug for a good portion of the trip.

"So the rumors of those shadows in Nibelheim, they were these Heartless creatures?" Cloud asked.

"Yeah. Little fuckers," Cid muttered.

"They must have found their way into the Lifestream through the Nibel Reactor," Aerith added, "and from there to the heart of the planet."

"And the people?" Cloud looked to Leon for the answer.

"I really don't know."

"No one knows for certain what happens to the people when a world disappears," Aerith stated, and then once again the room descended into silence.

And once again, it was Cloud who broke it. "So, the three of you got here on Cid's ship?"

Aerith nodded. "Right after you and Vincent vanished, everything turned to chaos. The Lifestream erupted all around us, and thousands of creatures started spewing from the ground. It was as if the planet was trying to cleanse itself of the darkness, but there were just too many, too much darkness, and then everything just started ... the planet just started breaking apart, and we didn't ... we couldn't ... there wasn't any time!" Aerith cried. "The world just disappeared, and we couldn't even –" The words caught in her throat and refused to be uttered aloud, still the awful weight of them hung in the room just the same, an unbearable burden on every heart there.

We couldn't save them, couldn't save anyone.

After a moment to regain her composure, and a few deep breaths, Aerith began again. "Cid pulled me on board his ship just as everything was disappearing, and we ended up here – just the three of us. But we were lucky," she added softy, glancing at Leon with a bittersweet smile. "At least we have each other. And now you're here too!" She threw her arms around him and buried her face against his strong shoulder.

Cloud awkwardly patted her on the back, uncomfortable with her unusual display of affection and uncertain how to handle it, but not wanting to hurt her feelings. He looked to Leon again for moral support and was surprised to see a slight scowl on the man's face. Then he realized; of course – Aerith and Leon. God, he was stupid. The last thing he wanted to do was give Leon the wrong impression or come between him and Aerith, so he gently pried her away.

"There's still a chance that the others could turn up, right?" he asked. "I mean, I just turned up." His question was met with an assortment of head shakes, shoulder shrugs and frowning faces. "Well, Vincent anyway. Are you sure it was his cape I was wearing?"

Aerith got up and quietly left the room, returning several moments later with Vincent's ragged cape. "And there's this too," she said, handing him Vincent's glove.

Cloud stared at the familiar gauntlet in his hands, gently fingering the golden claws, and ran his hands over the worn fabric of Vincent's red cape, as if the objects themselves might telepathically convey the whereabouts of his missing friend. When they failed to do so, he sat and simply frowned at he floor for a while, but when it refused to yield any answers either, he once again turned to Leon.

"Couldn't the others just be on some other world?" he asked. "Traverse Town can't be the only place where people end up. After all, I've been somewhere else for a year."

Leon shrugged, his stoic expression suggesting 'Who knows?' or even 'Who cares?', but his eyes belied his indifference, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. "Traverse Town is the only such world that we know of, but you're right; there could be others, and the fact that you've just turned up gives me hope." The way it was said made Cloud wonder if there was someone who Leon was looking for, someone important he had lost.

"And you, Leon?" he asked. "How did you get here?"

"The same way that you did," Leon answered. "Through the Corridors of Darkness." Then he shoved off the wall and left the room, giving the four reunited friends some privacy to speak among themselves of their lost world.

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By the time Leon rejoined the others after a long, relaxing soak in the tub, Cloud had fallen asleep on the couch. The girls were watching TV, and Cid was still sitting at the table, reading the paper. Leon picked up the bowl of cold cream of wheat and carried it into the kitchen, dumping the contents into the trash. Then he rinsed off an apple and proceeded to eat it, standing at the kitchen sink and watching out the window as a couple of Shadows prowled around the stairs leading down to the third district courtyard – which reminded him...

While fighting Blue Flames this morning, he had noted a few additional details and wanted to get them down on paper while they were still fresh in his mind. He tossed the apple core into the trash to join the cream of wheat and went to his bedroom to get his supplies.

All of the cadets at Garden had been required to take classes in drawing – it sharpened their powers of observation, as well as hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills – but Squall had honestly enjoyed it, found it relaxing, and had continued with the hobby even after completing the required courses. He was surprisingly good at it too, and during his eight years in Traverse Town, had accumulated quite an impressive collection of sketches. Most of them were of people and creatures from his home world, lest time erase their memories from his mind, but there were many illustrations of Heartless as well, with notations in the margins regarding things such as weaknesses and types of attacks, as well as what sort of loot they were likely to drop.

With his pencils and paper in hand, Leon returned to the living room and sat down at the table across from Cid, opening his sketchbook and flipping through the pages until he came to the rough sketch he had started the evening before. After a moment of reflection, he began to work on a detail of the emblem on their chests: Rather than the usual insignia found on artificially created Heartless, these new Heartless sported an upside down heart composed of two overlapping blue flames, the tips of which came together at the top to form the heart's point. Smaller red flames decorated the interior of the heart in what appeared to be a stylized design of wings.

After he was satisfied with his illustration of the emblem, Leon returned to the rest of his drawing, adding a few minor details here and there and fleshing out the body a bit, which was similar in shape to those Search Ghosts that had begun to appear in Traverse Town a few weeks back, only smaller and faster and harder to hit. Also similar were the Blue Flames' hands, which were disproportionately large for the rest of their body, but thinner than those of the Search Ghosts, with long, bony fingers and sharp, elongated claws. Unlike the Ghosts, the Blue Flames' head and torso was wrapped in ragged bandages, and their skin, rather than a pale, ghostly white, was flushed a soft red, like the glow of dying embers. But the biggest difference between the two was the pair of black, leathery–

Leon abruptly put down his pencil and looked over at Cloud, who was lightly twitching in his sleep. Then he looked back down at his drawing. Of course, he couldn't actually see the wing beneath Cloud's shirt at the moment, but he knew...

The similarities were striking.

It was just a coincidence, he told himself. Just a coincidence. All demon wings looked alike, right? Still he couldn't stop himself from staring at the man on his sofa. He tried to return to his drawing, but could no longer concentrate on the image in his head, and after a few half-hearted attempts, gave up even the pretense of interest.

Satisfied that everyone else was fully absorbed in their own activities, he turned to a fresh page in the back of the book and began to sketch a much more interesting subject. Thus it was Leon who was first to notice when Cloud's face tightened into a grimace of pain, and the light twitching of his slender body escalated to violent jerking. Locked in the throes of a nightmare, Cloud's obvious anguish rapidly intensified, along with Leon's concern, and just as Leon was closing his pad and rising from the table, Cloud bolted upright off the sofa.

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As everything went black and the room began to spin, Cloud reached out blindly for something with which to steady himself and latched onto the end table lamp, pulling it over with him. He slammed into something solid and thought he had hit the floor, but quickly realized that while firm, it wasn't painfully hard, and furthermore, it was warm. Then the low rumble of a deep voice telling Aerith to take the lamp rolled through his body like far-off thunder, and Cloud realized with a rush of heat that the warmth at his back was Leon. Strong arms were wrapped tightly around his torso, holding him steady, and a solid chest was pressed firmly against his back, hot breath on the back of his neck.

It didn't help with his vertigo at all.

Still, Cloud slowly regained his balance, and the room stopped reeling as Leon lifted him into his arms. Still somewhat disoriented, Cloud wrapped his own arms around Leon's neck and instinctively turned his face towards the warmth of Leon's scent. He smelled like home – like fresh air and pine trees and the sweet, rich earth of old forests, like evergreen and musk. It was a comforting smell, like his mother's rosemary bread baking in the oven, and Cloud had to fight off an overwhelming urge to simply bury his face in the crook of Leon's neck and take a deep breath.

Silken hair brushed his cheek as Leon lowered him to the couch, and calloused hands caressed his back as Leon gently slipped his arms out from under him. Cloud relaxed his hold on Leon's neck and let his hands slide down the length of Leon's arms, over soft leather and hard muscle and warm skin until they came to rest on Leon's forearms, and there they lingered a little too long. But as Leon began to straighten up and pull away, Cloud let go, even though something inside of him very much wanted to tighten his grip and pull Leon closer. And something in Leon, deep and well guarded, answered, and he hesitated just long enough for a look to be exchanged; fleet, but full of meaning.

Unfortunately, neither man understood that meaning.

Then Aerith was there, fussing and fretting, and Cloud reluctantly tore his eyes from Leon's; they were dark slate now, with no hint of the ice that had been in them earlier. "I'm okay, Aerith. Really, I'm fine," Cloud insisted. "I just got up too fast."

"Well no wonder!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "You've lost a lot of blood, and you haven't eaten anything in days!" And with that she was off again to the kitchen.

Cloud returned his gaze to Leon, who was just watching him silently, and once again something was shared. Leon knew that Cloud's explanation wasn't entirely the truth, but he kept the man's secret as if it were one of his own.

۵۵۵۵۵

After putting away his art supplies, Leon returned to the living room and just stood there, trying to decide what he wanted to do, torn between watching the evening news with Cid and Cloud, or helping Aerith in the kitchen. He often helped out in the kitchen, not because he particularly enjoyed cooking – though he didn't really mind – nor because he particularly enjoyed helping Aerith – though he didn't really mind that either – but because he was fussy about his food, and Aerith tended to prepare dishes that were too heavy for his tastes. Having a hand in the preparation was the easiest way to ensure there would be something healthful on his plate.

Leon had always been a picky eater, preferring fresh foods that were simple and light. And natural – the less processed, the better, to his way of thinking. Having grown up near the ocean, the fresh seafood was one of the things he missed the most in Traverse Town: the raw oysters and fresh shrimp, the fish right off the boat.

He had once heard someone joke that if you couldn't pronounce the names of the ingredients in something, then you had no business eating it. Well, not only could Leon pronounce the multi-syllable names of those synthetic substances, he actually knew what most of them were, and he knew you had no business eating them.

Like all those boxes of artificially flavored, instant, precooked, processed stuff on grocery store shelves proclaiming to be food. There was no way in hell that crap was going into his body. Or like the hot dogs that everyone at Garden would die for; they were simply appalling. He'd rather eat worms. At least they were natural, and full of protein rather than parasites and preservatives.

When Leon was younger, when he was still Squall, he would have looked down on Aerith for the foods that she loved – the biscuits with gravy, the potatoes and dumplings – but Leon wasn't as rigid as Squall had once been. Rinoa had loosened him up just a bit. During their mission to take out Edea, they had seen the ragged street urchins in Deling, seen their hungry eyes and empty hands searching through the trash bins behind fancy restaurants for the rich, and Irvine had made the mistake of making some flippant remark about filthy little sewer brats. Rinoa had heard it and lit into him with the wrath of the righteous.

At the time, Squall had thought it was nothing more than sanctimonious show from the pampered little princess – the General's daughter playing a role to irritate Daddy – but as he got to know her better, he realized that her sentiment was sincere. She had a thing for people without, be it freedom or food didn't matter; her tender heart bled for them all. Her charity extended in like measure to those who were politically oppressed, socially downtrodden, or economically deprived. She had a nose for lost causes and was drawn to them as unerringly as a pedigreed bloodhound.

Leon sometimes wondered if that was what had drawn Rinoa so determinedly to him – another lost cause: the emotionally bereft.

She had made him understand how different food was for those who didn't have any, and how a skinny little kid could turn into an overweight adult doomed to die of heart failure from a lifetime of living on flour and fat. It was all they had, all they could afford, and somewhere along the line, it became more than mere food; it became comfort. They learned to comfort themselves with the very foods that would kill them.

Aerith had grown up in the slums.

She had once told Leon about her flower garden back in Midgar and how she had sold the flowers on the street to buy food. When Leon asked her why she hadn't just grown vegetables instead, she only laughed, green eyes twinkling with an inner knowledge, and said, "Sometimes it's more important to nourish the soul, silly."

Well, Leon didn't know the first thing about nourishing the soul, but he knew quite a bit about nourishing the body, and tried to gently steer her towards healthier choices. And though he still didn't care much for the meals she prepared, he didn't look down on her for the things that brought her comfort. Indeed, he had even learned to respect her resourcefulness; there had been a particularly difficult time in Traverse Town a few months back, with too many people and too little food.

The town's food had to be brought in from neighboring worlds, of course, for things don't grow in perpetual darkness. Leon wondered what they had done before the barriers between the worlds had broken down, but there was no one in Traverse Town who could remember that time; everyone here had come from somewhere else. Even the mayor, who had been there the longest, couldn't remember how the town had come to be. He wasn't even sure how he had come to be, nor could he remember how he had come to be Mayor. Leon suspected that he had come from that weird Wonderland world next door; nobody had all their marbles over there.

Merlin believed that the town had simply sprung into being when other worlds began to disappear, solely as a landing place for survivors: It sucked up the living debris of lost worlds like a hungry black hole – sucked up stray people and spit them out here, in this dark corridor crossroads, this barren realm of in-between, saved from an expeditious death to waste away slowly. They had been graciously spared the fate of their fellow homeworld inhabitants only to find themselves exiled to a world that couldn't even provide them with the basic necessities of life.

Cosmic irony. The universe had a twisted sense of humor.

Or perhaps they were all being punished.

Divine retribution? Or merely divine providence gone awry?

Well, thank god for Merlin at least.

When Leon had first arrived – back when the worlds were just beginning to blink out, and there weren't that many mouths to feed – Merlin had managed to provide for them all, poofing off to who knew where with his magic bag to do the weekly shopping. Leon was grateful, but there was only so much canned stew one could stomach. Evidently, Merlin didn't want to mess up his precious bag by hauling perishables.

But as more and more refugees began to pour in, it became too much for Merlin to handle, and it soon became apparent that a more permanent solution was needed, for contrary to popular belief, even magical bags have a bottom. Merlin left to seek council from the head of his order, Yen Sid, and returned a few days later in a very foul mood, muttering something about meddling and divine laws against disturbing the world order. In short, he had been expressly forbidden from interfering.

"What world order?" Leon had wanted to know, and promptly took matters into his own two capable hands, divine laws and misguided moral commandments be damned. From where he stood, world order looked a lot like utter chaos.

So he borrowed the strange little ship in which a small group of refugees had recently landed, along with its irascible captain, and flew off in search of a reliable source of sustenance. Within the week, he had established trade routes with two nearby worlds, convinced the captain to run a delivery service, and negotiated a mutually beneficial contract for all four parties involved. Fresh vegetables were back on the menu, and Merlin was off the hook.

Soon after, two of the more optimistic young refugees had seen the opportunity hidden within the gloomy situation and opened up businesses: one, a small grocery store, and the other, a modest cafe. Others shortly followed suit with clothing shops and jewelry stores, and soon there was a booming little town. With Heartless still being relatively scarce, munny had not yet become the accepted means of exchange, so a barter system was devised, and everyone provided what they could. But no one went hungry; it was an unwritten, unspoken, and uncontested rule.

Everything had gone quite smoothly for several years after that, right up until a few months back when both of the worlds they had been doing business with, along with a slew of other worlds, vanished overnight in a rash of disappearing worlds, leaving the town overrun with new refugees and its food supply gravely disrupted. Ships had been sent out to secure emergency provisions, but they had still suffered severe shortages for several weeks.

Leon would have been hard pressed to prepare even one meal for two from the meager supplies that remained, but Aerith had managed to feed the entire town for two weeks. It wasn't fresh ceviche from Balamb, but it had kept hungry bellies from growling and volatile tempers from flaring, averting a potentially disastrous situation. Leon had been genuinely impressed, and exceedingly grateful.

It was during that time that they first met King Mickey, who had shown up in a gummi ship, inquiring about something called a keyblade and its bearer. When he learned of the town's terrible plight, he offered to provide food and other supplies from his own world, which had an overabundance and was only a hop, skip and a gummi jump away. And it could all be done without meddling, since he and all of his trusted advisers were already aware of the existence of other worlds. After furnishing Leon with directions and a letter of introduction, the little mouse king had bid them farewell and flown off, beseeching them to please keep an eye out for the keyblade master.

Since then, the town's food supply had remained stable; Sora had turned up and started sealing keyholes, and Aerith had firmly ensconced herself in Leon's kitchen. He knew it gave her a sense of purpose, as well as something to do with her time, and he didn't have the heart to kick her out. Besides, everyone else seemed to love her hearty, down-home cooking. And even Leon had to admit she made a mean apple pie.

At any rate, Leon didn't know the first thing about Cloud's likes and dislikes, or the things that brought him comfort, so against his better judgment, he remained in the living room and left Aerith to her own devices. Sure enough, half an hour later, out she came with plates piled high with something that was breaded and fried, mashed potatoes loaded with butter, and everything smothered in gravy. It seemed she was determined to fatten Cloud up, all in one night.

۵۵۵۵۵

Leon and Yuffie had just finished clearing the table and were washing the dishes when there was a sharp rap on the door, followed by a blue flash of magic. Seconds later, to Cloud's surprise, a curious old man with a very long beard and a pointed hat popped into the room. Cloud glanced around to see if anyone else found it strange, but apparently, it wasn't an unusual occurrence. Aerith just smiled and waved at the peculiar little man, and Cid looked up from his paper and grunted. The man walked straight over to Cloud.

"Well, well, well. I see our young lad has awoken at last. I am Merlin," he said, with a bow of his head, "at your service, young Strife. I have heard a great deal about you, my boy, a great deal, and I assure you, we are all most pleased to have you with us."

Cloud blushed a very pale pink and mumbled his thanks, looking up to find Leon standing in the kitchen doorway, drying his hands with the dish towel and watching him with an odd little smile. Merlin followed Cloud's gaze and turned towards the door. "Leon, there you are."

"Merlin," Leon greeted the wizard. "Did you find anything?"

"Not a thing, I'm afraid, not a thing. There's nothing on these new Heartless in any of the record books. Perhaps Sora will know something about them when he returns. In the meantime, I've strengthened the wards on First District, as well as the one on this house. Hopefully, that will hold them off until we can figure something out.

"The waterway is also still protected, of course," he continued, "but I fear Second District is beyond control. I strongly advise against anyone setting foot in there alone – even you, Leon." And with another flash of light, he was gone, just as abruptly as he had come.

The rest of the evening passed peacefully with occasional bursts of conversation, but Cloud seemed little more disposed to speech than Leon, and his presence, Leon noted with satisfaction, seemed to have a calming effect on his friends. Cid and Yuffie didn't even argue – well, only once, and it was brief – and a sense of well-being settled over on the little house in Third District.

When it came time to retire at last, Cloud attempted to give Leon his bedroom back, but Leon refused to even discuss it. He insisted that Cloud still needed the bed far more than he, and Cloud was too tired to argue about it, which told him that Leon was probably right. So he bid the others good night and crawled into Leon's bed.

۵۵۵۵۵

Leon awoke sometime during the night, not as he usually did – robbed slowly of sleep by a throbbing headache – but with a start. Something was wrong and he quickly realized what: Cloud was having another nightmare.

He threw off the covers and hurried to the bedroom, finding Cloud in even worse shape than that afternoon. His hands were clenched at his sides as if bound by invisible chains, and his pretty face was distorted with pain. Soft whimpers turned to agonized moans, and his lithe body began to shake. Leon leaned over him and lightly shook his shoulders, quietly calling his name.

Cloud's eyes flew open in a wild panic, and his hands shot to Leon's face, clawing at him in blind fear, but Leon reacted quickly, pinning Cloud's hands to his chest and leaning into him with the weight of his heavier body. Once the blond had returned to his senses, gradually relaxing beneath him, Leon loosened his hold and withdrew his weight, still leaning over the younger man with a look of deep concern in his eyes and a long red scratch on his face.

"Leon," Cloud winced, reaching again for Leon's face, but gently this time to lightly caress the mark he had made. "I'm so–" he began, but at the touch of his fingers, Leon jerked away. Realizing he had overstepped his bounds, Cloud dropped his hand and averted his eyes. "You shouldn't wake me when I'm dreaming," he stated more distantly. "I sometimes get violent."

"Whatever," Leon snapped, which only compounded his irritation with himself – for overreacting to Cloud's harmless touch in the first place, and in the second place, for the fact that he was irritated by his overreaction. He couldn't help it if he didn't like for people to touch him, and he certainly didn't need to apologize for it, or feel bad about it; it was just an automatic reflex – a deeply ingrained automatic reflex. He didn't normally even care.

He pressed the heel of his hand to the spot between his brows and heaved a weary sigh, attempting to shrug off the unpleasant sensation gnawing at his stomach. Though he really couldn't say why, he took a stab at being more amiable . "So, now I know. If it happens again, I'll be prepared."

"Right ... if it happens again ..." Cloud mumbled under his breath.

Leon gave him a curious look but said nothing more, merely turned and left the room, leaving Cloud alone to wonder.

۵۵۵۵۵

He wondered about Leon and Aerith. Once he had started looking for it, he had noticed the way Aerith looked at Leon, had seen the way her eyes lit up. There was no doubt in Cloud's mind that Aerith had feelings for Leon. He was less certain, however, about Leon's feelings for Aerith.

He didn't appear to have any, but then, Leon didn't appear to have any feelings at all; he was very good at hiding his emotions. And Cloud had a hard enough time deciphering people's feelings even when they hit him over the head like a two ton brick.

Yet when Aerith had been holding him on the couch that afternoon, Leon had seemed upset, jealous even ... and they were living together, though they didn't seem to be sharing a bed.

Of course, perhaps that was just because Cloud was currently in it.

Then again, he and Tifa lived together too, so that didn't mean too much.

Nor had Cloud noticed any tender touches between them, but it was obvious, even to him, that Leon wasn't very comfortable with casual contact: the way he isolated himself, crossing his arms and his legs, closing himself off. And he certainly hadn't liked it when Cloud touched him earlier. Yet he had touched Cloud with a surprising warmth that left Cloud curious.

And that look, that spark buried deep in his eyes when he had lowered Cloud to the couch ... what had that been about? Cloud felt a pleasant flutter in his stomach at the thought.

Perhaps his touch had just caught Leon off guard, taken him by surprise. After all, touching someone was different than being touched, and if there was ever anyone who understood that, it was Cloud.

Why was he wasting his time thinking about this, anyway? It wasn't like it mattered. Sure, Leon was a very attractive man, but Cloud didn't know the first thing about him. He sure as hell didn't know if Leon liked men, and even if he did, it didn't mean he liked Cloud. He certainly didn't seem like the sort of guy to fall for a pretty face – not that Cloud thought he was particularly pretty, but other people seemed to think so, or so he'd been told.

No, whatever Cloud might have thought he had seen in Leon's eyes, and whatever he thought he had felt in Leon's touch were probably just the product of his own imagination, fueled by wishful thinking. He certainly couldn't trust his own perception of things; he had thought Zack liked him romantically, and boy, what a joke that had turned out to be. Yeah, he was still laughing over that one. Why was he even thinking about this; it was pointless.

He had made his life with Tifa, helping each other rebuild their broken lives and restore their damaged world. They all had their share of guilt; Meteor had only finished the job of destruction that they themselves had started. Blowing up reactors to save the planet had seemed like a good idea at the time, but none of them had understood how many innocent lives would be lost. Still, their ignorance and regret didn't bring those lives back.

Now they were all trying to do their part. Tifa was running the new Seventh Heaven they had recently opened in Edge, and Cloud was busy trying to establish a delivery service. Together, with the money they earned, they helped some of the many displaced children who had lost everything, and they also took care of Marlene while Barret was off searching for alternate energy sources. It wasn't enough to repay their debt, but it at least gave them enough purpose to get through the day.

It was only natural that he and Tifa had turned to each other after it was all over and Avalanche disbanded; neither of them had anyone else. And he did love Tifa, just not in the way she wanted him to. He had once thought he did, but that was a long time ago, and he wasn't the same person now.

Sometimes he wondered – if he hadn't left Nibelheim, if he had stayed there with Tifa. If he hadn't met Sephiroth, or Zack, if he hadn't– Well, what was the point of that?

The point was that he had left, and nothing had turned out the way he expected.

Still, life wasn't so bad. He was happy enough, he supposed. Happier than he deserved to be.

He still wasn't very comfortable – or competent – with social interaction, but it had gotten easier over time, and being with Avalanche had taught him that he needed other people. His odd little family of misfits had accepted him as he was, and the true Cloud, buried beneath years of physical, mental, and emotional abuse, had finally begun to shine through. He would never be as confident and upbeat as Zack – would never be Zack, however much he might like to be – but once he had remembered who he really was, his own, more subtle brand of cockiness had returned.

His trials had left him a stronger man, mentally as well as physically – strong enough to beat Sephiroth in both body and mind – and he had friends who believed in him. But most of all, he was beginning to believe in himself. He had finally found a place in his world where he felt like he belonged.

And he had finally gotten what he had wanted so badly all those years ago; he had gotten Tifa. It just hadn't been what he thought it would be. The closeness and companionship were comforting, but the passion simply wasn't there. He had tried to please her anyway, because he genuinely cared about her, and he knew it was what she wanted, although he couldn't imagine why.

Besides, it wasn't like there was anyone else in his life, anyone he loved like that.

He had kept up the pretense for as long as he could, but Tifa had seen through it; she had figured it out long before he finally admitted the truth. Of course she hadn't been happy about it, but she had asked him to stay anyway.

It wasn't like there was anyone else in her life, anyone she loved like that.

No, passionate love was for fairy tales; romance was only for dreams. Friendship was much more reliable for everyday life, and he and Tifa were friends – good friends. So he had moved a small bed into the room he used as an office, and their lives had gone on.

Cloud supposed Tifa's life hadn't really turned out the way she expected either.

Neither had Zack's. Nor Aerith's. Not even Sephiroth's, for that matter.

He wondered what Leon had expected from life. Somehow, he doubted that Leon's dreams for the future had included Traverse Tow–

And suddenly it all hit him, just like that, and his world came crashing down. He didn't have Tifa. He didn't even know if she was still alive. He didn't have Seventh Heaven, or Edge, or Marlene. He didn't even have Fenrir. And what of the others? What of Barret and Reeve and Nanaki? And what about Vincent? Where was Vincent?

And where in the hell had he gotten that damned wing?

۵۵۵۵۵

Leon stared at the ceiling and kicked at the covers. He couldn't go back to sleep.

His head hurt, his face hurt, and his stomach felt funny. His pajamas were all twisted around his body, and the blanket was all bunched up. The couch was too lumpy, the house was too stuffy, the clock too noisy, and Cloud ... Cloud was far too quiet. He had gone into the bathroom an hour ago, and he hadn't made a sound.

Leon might have been able to disregard the the tick-tock-ticking of the clock, and he probably could have ignored the drip-drip-dripping of the kitchen faucet, but there was no way in hell he could drown out the nagging voice in his head.

What if something was wrong?

God, he really hated looking like such a mother hen, but the thought of another failure on his hands made him feel even worse. He had sworn on the memory of those he had failed to protect that he would never lose anyone else on his watch, so in spite of the fact that Cloud was probably getting tired of his excessive concern, Leon swallowed his pride and got up to go check on him. Again.

He found the bathroom door ajar and Cloud just standing there with his shirt removed, staring in the mirror at the wing stretched out over his shoulder. Leon knocked very lightly, but Cloud was obviously deep in thought and still didn't realize that he was there. He knocked again, slightly harder, and quietly called out, "Cloud?"

Cloud's eyes darted from his wing to Leon's eyes in the mirror, meeting them briefly before looking away in shame. "Sorry," he mumbled, tucking his wing against his back and reaching for his shirt. "You need the bathroom?"

Leon pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the room. "No, I just ... Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Cloud lied, blond spikes springing back into place as he pulled the t-shirt over his head. "Did I keep you awake?"

"No," Leon lied in return. He couldn't very well tell Cloud the truth – that he couldn't stop worrying about him. "I often have trouble sleeping." There, at least that much was true.

Cloud nodded in understanding, still struggling to get his shirt back on, which in his haste, had gotten hopelessly hung up on the pointed tip of his wing. Leon reached over to help him get it untangled, gently easing the soft cotton over the leathery appendage, and at the brush of his fingers, a quiver rippled through the wing, causing it to flutter in a strangely seductive manner. Despite the temptation to do it again, Leon dropped his hands and took a step back to let Cloud pass.

Cloud murmured his thanks as he turned and hurriedly left the room, hanging his head to hide the flush he could feel spreading across his face – from the embarrassment of not even being able to dress himself without Leon's help, and from the heat of Leon's hands.

He returned to Leon's bed with the aftershocks of Leon's touch still racing through his body and the memory of Leon's breath on the back of his neck sending tremors down his spine. When he remembered the feeling of Leon's arms around him tightly, a deep, sweet ache swept over him like wildfire. It was a fire he hadn't felt in years.

Passion.