Disclaimer: Characters and settings are copyright to Square Enix and Disney.

Warning: This chapter contains one scene of graphic violence and emotional turmoil. There is also the running theme of sexual assault, bullying and humiliation, which may be disturbing and upsetting to some. Please only read on if you're comfortable with this.

A/N: Quick update this time round, mainly as Lea's chapter is strongly linked to the previous chapter. This chapter's a Lea special, so Axel is deliberately missing. It also marks the halfway point of this fic – woohoo! Thanks to anyone who has kept reading/following this fic.

BONE OF CONTENTION

LEA, THE BOY WHO'D DISAPPEAR

- five years before death -

I was battling a hole punch that wouldn't punch holes when my dad showed up at work with the rest of my family in tow.

"Lea, we're going," was all he said. He was in full court gear, but where there should have been court papers in his hand, there was a suitcase instead.

"What's going on?" I asked. A quick sweep of their faces told me they had already been enlightened by my dad. Elise and Lacey were in tears; my mum was busy consoling my grandparents; Elenar had her arms wrapped tight round herself and Lara was being canoodled by her creepy boyfriend Liam.

"The Castle officials have issued an evacuation warning," said my dad.

"Wouldn't the klaxons be going off for that?" I remarked. I folded more paper and fed them to the hole punch. "I dunno, Dad, I think you're overreacting a bit, and you're kinda undoing my efforts to be cool by showing up here."

My dad marched forwards and whacked the hole punch to the floor; the same strike collided with my arm. "Get moving, boy. You should be grateful you even got the evacuation message." He seized me by the back of my shirt and dragged me out the building.

People were still working, still shopping. It was midday and we looked ridiculous, rushing along the street with suitcases and faces of panic. It was classic Dad, using a giant hammer to obliterate even the smallest of kinks in our lives; he was all about making the correction memorable, and not the error. I wanted to complain, but my family seemed so distraught that I figured I'd only make matters worse. It was when we turned a corner that began a route to the beach that all of the pieces fell together to form the ugly, completed puzzle.

We joined a long line of people; they all had tidy suitcases of their own. I took one look and realised what we all had in common. That, coupled with my dad's earlier comment on the evacuation message, sent a wave of disgust to the back of my throat. "Dad," I said. I must have sounded strange, for even Lara detached herself from Liam to look at me. "…How come only rich people are queuing?"

My dad's lips thinned. "The successful are entitled to certain privileges, Lea."

My stomach turned at the faint triumph in his voice. I honestly thought I was going to be sick, just thinking how my family had enough time and audacity to pack their things when they could have been alerting everyone else. I swallowed, almost afraid to ask my next question. "Do the others know they need to evacuate?"

"They'll know soon enough."

"The Castle officials are being realistic," said Lacey, ever my dad's advocate. "In crises, a certain calibre of people are needed for the survival of a town. Besides, we haven't had a massive head start."

"Enough time to pack a suitcase," I pointed out. I glanced at my mum; she was still crying. Behind her, the sloping hill gave way to the stormy beach. I could see thin clouds of smoke towards the south of the Garden, and airships were trawling the sky before lining up on the shore. I kept catching snippets of conversation in the queue, of mothers gossiping and fathers formally agreeing with one another. Monsters, they kept saying, as well as something about the Garden 'tipping'. The longer I waited, the more I heard of their voices, and the more sense the horrific situation made: Radiant Garden had long started its collapse, and South Garden had been the first place to go.

I had stepped out of the queue before my brain caught onto what my body was doing.

"Lea, get back in the queue," my dad warned.

"I can't." I was shaking in my work shoes and clutching my bag against my chest like I needed it to breathe. "I'm not leaving without Isa. I have to get him; I can't lose him again."

"He's in South Garden! He never stood a chance; now get back here."

"He might have—" Lara started, but my dad shot her down with a shout for her to shut up. She winced and sank back into Liam's arms.

There was the rumble of distant thunder, but it sounded like footfalls more than clashing clouds. I ducked past Lacey as she tried to grab me, and Elise started to cry harder. I glanced back at my mum for the last time. Safe from my dad's glare, she managed a smile and nodded encouragingly. Go, she mouthed.

My dad's voice thundered after me, long after I had ran back up the road. "We won't be here when you're back, Lea! None of us will come back for you!"

-x-

The closest experience I could relate to, when the world was ending, was a day when I was six and Elenar had wandered off. I had been holding the bags for my mum while she was paying the stall vendor, and in the middle of idle chatter about the strawberry season, we both turned round and realised Elenar had disappeared. She hadn't gone far – she was only four, after all – but I never forgot how in the blink of an eye, Radiant Garden went from being a home to being a labyrinth.

My mum was in floods of tears, that day we searched the stalls and nearby park for Elenar. She was so upset that when people asked for a description of her daughter, the words simply wouldn't come and I had to do it instead. I remember running and screaming, "Elenar, answer me!" over and over, where ten or so people became an unbearable crowd and their kind voices were about as helpful as the roar of a storm.

It was strange to think how once a personal crisis hit, the very home you loved and grew up in could mutate into the ugly, reeking jaws of a monster. I had grown up on these streets, climbing over that half wall there to get to school; throwing frisbees into that fountain so that I had a reason to go paddling; standing at that corner there where the ice cream vendor used to be; ducking under that exact awning when it rained on your birthday; kissing you under that same darkening sky. Things changed, people changed – for better or worse – but the Garden was always the safety net that made sure no matter what leaps you took, your feet always found the ground afterwards to push in the footprint of a memory.

And now Radiant Garden was working against me, falling apart and threatening to take you with it.

Someone was blowing a whistle up ahead, yelling into a megaphone. I didn't know who he was, but he had clearly been tasked with the struggle to rescue the rest of the Garden, the ones who weren't prosecutors or the apparently important people of town, the ones like you. "I repeat, this is not a drill," he was shouting. "Form an orderly line and head for the shore. Steer clear of the Castle! No big bags or coats; we need to save space. Quickly, come on!"

The afternoon fog had mutated into a thick black cloud, which had dropped from the sky with the weight of its destructive vapour.

As the Garden crumbled before me, I felt a string had been pulled from my ribs and I too, was falling to pieces like the balled fists of debris that rolled under my feet. My eyes stung in the onslaught of smoke, and I tied my keffiyeh over my mouth to block the smell and the sting. I pushed past people, accidentally knocking children out of their parents' grip. "Please, I'm looking for someone." I was shouting – I had to be, for my throat was aching so much – but my voice was so quiet, so powerless against the clamour and the man with the megaphone. "Please, I need to find Isa. H-he's tall and has blue hair. He's important to me, please—"

"You there!" shouted someone, and then again with his megaphone. "I said you there! Boy with red hair!"

I ignored him, pushing through the strong current of panicking people to head back down the avenue. I had to get to South Garden; I didn't care how dangerous it was. "Look, son," said a voice by my ear, and there was a painful grip on my forearm. "You're going the wrong way. Those ships are leaving before they lose the ground to take off on, so you haven't got time to waste."

I garbled something, but he understood me.

"Everyone's being told to head to the beach, to the rescue ships. You have a better chance of seeing your friend there."

I almost relented, to the man with the megaphone and to the brutality of the Garden, when a desperate idea took hold of me. I pushed the man, so forcefully he lost his balance and smacked his bearded chin on my elbow.

I snatched the megaphone from his loose grip and swung it to my mouth. "Isa! Isa, answer me!"

"Son, you need to go to the shore—"

I wriggled free from his grasp. "Isa, it's me! Please, come here! Isa!" I managed to shout a few more times before the man wrenched the item away and hollered for the crowd to keep moving towards the beach. I clambered onto a jutting window ledge and gripped a skewed lamppost for balance. From this high point, I could see the smoke's origin – the very centre of the Garden, the giant doors to the Castle. I had half a mind to run back and slam it shut, as if that could rewind the events, as if doing such a simple thing could grant my also simple desire to find you.

"Lea!" a girl called. I turned to see a familiar face.

"Megan!" I bit hard on the inside of my mouth, because she wasn't glaring at me in recognition of our year-long fight. She looked the same – still large and spotty – but there was a certain change to her, something new and admirable that evoked a throbbing spike of shame behind my eyes. She was equipping frightened mothers and babies with small items that'd make their evacuation easier. Going by the activity and orderly pace, I could only assume she had been doing this as soon as the emergency procedures had kicked off.

"Have you seen him?"

I slid off the ledge and she hugged me, staining my front with dust. "I don't know where he is," she said.

I swore under my breath. "You have to come with me," I said. "I have to keep someone safe."

"No, don't worry about me," she replied, clearly reading the fear in my face. "We respect one other's choices at times like this."

Her words ached, partly because I knew our decisions couldn't be more different. She was helping anyone she could; I was struggling to save even one.

She gave me one last hug and resumed her work. I backed away, finally realising this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn't from horror of the falling Garden but disgust, at my own cowardice.

As I pushed through the evacuating crowd, calling for you, I had my first encounter with the shadowy monsters. They crawled along the smoking avenue, enticed by the sound of screaming; their feet kicked debris with them, large bricks and charred wood that I realised, with a twist of my stomach, could be what remained of South Garden.

I felt over my front for a weapon, for anything I could use to fight these monsters and get past them to South Garden. In the end, I swung my bag as hard as I could to knock one of the smaller ones out the way. My bag burst open and from its outer pocket, a few of my pens clattered across the pavement. My gaze followed them, and then I spotted a pair of small sandals poking out from behind a flowerbox.

"Hey!" I staggered towards them, and I grabbed a thin girl who reached out for me. "Hey, it's okay."

"They ate Yuffie's mum and dad, swallowed them whole." She was tiny; she couldn't be much older than Elise. I looked back at the monsters, saw them in a whole new light. I held the girl's hand and, after praying you had somehow escaped South Garden and I was making the right decision, I began to head back the way I came.

"It's okay; don't be scared."

"Yuffie's not scared," the girl said, indignant through her sobs. "Just…this is just sad tears, that's all. She told them, monsters are coming, but Mum and Dad wanted to go back for their treasure."

I lifted Yuffie onto my back, using her slow pace as an excuse to hold her close. "Surely they had their treasure right there with them."

-x-

Together, Yuffie and I returned to the centre of town, and we became a pair of rocks that wouldn't join the rushing flow of escape. We stayed on a window ledge, and I kept hollering your name until I thought my voice would go. I often visualised the ships taking off and leaving me behind, but that thought was nowhere near as terrifying as the prospect of losing you. Eventually, just when I thought I should just surrender myself to the creatures, I heard the faint cry of, "Lea!" amidst the shouts and hollers for other lost names.

I jumped down, and a thin, bony hand pushed between two crying girls. You stumbled out, sporting a clear limp. "Isa!" I breathed, laughing from shock and relief. "You're okay; thank god you're okay...!" I hugged you tight and kissed you fiercely. I thought I would never let go, until something wriggled between us. I jumped back to see a ball of fluff poke out from your jacket.

"…Please don't tell me you risked your life to double back for Bunnymoon."

You held her tighter against your chest, apparently expecting me to confiscate her. "I couldn't leave her."

"But now you've hurt your ankle from running that distance! And for what, some stupid rabbit?"

"It's just a sprain," you said, although your face betrayed your words and you were actually flinching. "And I couldn't leave her," you said again. You flushed as though I had just hit you. "It could easily have been me cooped up at home."

"Shh," I murmured, trying to steady both our nerves by cupping your face. "As if I'd ever leave you behind."

I drew back from you when a tall, black-haired man touched your shoulder. He had a gun and was covered in brick dust, which marked out desperate handprints on his navy suit. "Head down towards the beach now," he said. "No detours, no going back for anything else. Queue up at GS 1; that's the one Cid is piloting."

"What about you?" you asked. You seemed to know him.

"I have a few more things to do." He turned to look at me. I wasn't quite ready for the dark red eyes of an adult, which cut through my brave façade and went straight for the frightened coward. He made sure I was holding hands with you and Yuffie, before he gave a tiny nod of approval. "It's okay, Lea; you'll be safe once you get to the shore. Look after them."

-x-

The evacuation queues on the beach rather reminded me of a winter morning at school, when all of the pupils were forced out of class to attend a fire drill in the bitter frost. There were long lines of shivering people, huddled together in an attempt to seek comfort and reassurance. All the while, they were pushing forwards to up their chances of getting a spot on an airship.

The suited man from before had now taken up a position at the top of the shore, firing his gun and scaring the monsters each time they came close. He didn't seem afraid of them at all.

We arrived with a fair amount of struggling. Yuffie was tired and distressed, and you had seized up at the concrete steps that led to the beach. I took care of Yuffie first, lifting her down the stairs and into the sand as she sobbed against Bunnymoon.

"Stay right here; I'm just going to pick up Isa, okay?"

You were not openly upset like Yuffie. You had simply turned paler than usual and your body had stiffened, as though in the minute it had taken for me to carry Yuffie down, you had spent a day in a freezer. "Come on." I turned and beckoned for you to get on my back. I waited for your arms to loop round my neck, but you hadn't moved at all. "Isa, look." I straightened up. "We need to get in an airship queue, so I'm going to carry you down. Put your arms round me."

You didn't, and my heart thundered in my head. I couldn't believe your fear of stairs outweighed your instinct to survive. I manoeuvred you myself, hooking my arms round each of your knees and pulling you forwards to rest on me. I ran down the steps and nearly collided with Yuffie. She was still in tears.

You were gasping more than you were breathing, wincing from the pain in your sprained ankle. I wanted to shout at you, to tell you to calm down and focus on getting out safe, but somewhere along our journey to the shore, I had lost you. Your face went scarlet, and when I tried to hold hands with you, you jerked away and hissed. I had never seen such behaviour from you and was about to call you out on it, when I spotted a trio of teenage girls with my classmate Leroy. Despite the gravity of Radiant Garden's imminent destruction, they were tossing fleeting smiles between them, attempting to keep their spirits up through private jokes. I studied the group, the path of the gazes and the grin Leroy had to spare for me when our eyes locked. He mouthed something and pointed to his crotch.

"I don't like people like him." Yuffie's voice was still heavy with sleep. "I don't like people who smile when other people are sad."

The tall man with the gun jogged down the beach; he was starting to look worse for wear. "Isa, you and your friends come this way." He took your arm and directed us across a stretch of disturbed sand to a shorter queue. There was a large airship ahead, with GS 1 painted in bright yellow on its body.

I kept glancing behind me. Leroy was calling to us. "Hey, take us too," he was shouting. "Save us a seat on GS 1." He kicked the sand as we slipped out of his vision, but I heard one last thing. "Bastard. Isa, you were so happy to see us last time as well."

There was a horrible taste in my mouth as my adrenalin gave way to the common sense it had buried. You hadn't frozen up and refused contact because of the steps; something worse had been waiting for you. Even Yuffie had acknowledged that group before I had.

"Was it him?" I asked. I managed to put two fingers to the edge of your sleeve. "Was Leroy the one who hurt you?" My heart was hammering in my ears, beating with horrifyingly perfect opportunity. "You only need to nod."

And you did, a sharp and quick jerk of the head that nearly went unnoticed.

The world was dying and at the centre of it, three frightened boys. I realised the solution was beautiful.

We clambered into the airship. It was crowded, and we stumbled over loose seatbelts and weak armrests in order to get to our seats. I strapped Yuffie in first, then you, and for the third seat, I threw in my work bag.

"Lea, what—" you started. I trapped you by pushing my lips to yours and putting Bunnymoon on your lap.

"I think I saw Elise," I said. The lie was easy; it felt smooth against my tongue. "She was supposed to be with my parents but I'm sure I saw her by herself. She's got a red sun hat on; I'm certain it's her."

Like so many others, you mistook my abundance of words for the abundance of truth. "I'm going to go back and check," I said, and you reluctantly let me go. "Don't leave the ship, you understand?"

-x-

It felt like an eternity, sprinting back up the beach for Leroy. I wasn't sure what was going through my head at that point; I had no idea what I was going to do once I reached him, either. My mind kept hitching at a freeze frame of you on those steps, the expression you had worn, the way your body had stiffened at the mere sight of those cruel eyes again.

I kept my gaze on Leroy as I approached. The girls sank back a little, and Leroy cracked a smile at first. Then, when I was deemed too close, his eyes narrowed and he made to duck away from my arm. I seized him, letting out a guttural sound. "A word, if you don't mind."

"Hey!" Leroy cried. I half-dragged him up the steps, but no one was foolish enough to sacrifice their place in the queue to save him. I staggered, fell, trod on his hand, and then we burst though the door of the beach hut that overlooked the grim shore. Leroy lost his balance and we crashed into a stack of sun lounges.

"Lea, what the hell?!" Leroy shouted. He shook out of my grip, but that only meant my fists were free to punch him.

"Tell me what you did to him," I shouted back.

"Did to who?"

"Don't play dumb with me," I breathed. "Tell me what you did to Isa."

Leroy got up shakily, still hiding behind a smirk. "Seriously? You want to do this now? Shit, Lea, those airships aren't going to wait for us."

He made for the door, but I slammed it shut with a foot and stood in front of it. My body was burning all over, like I was in a furnace and not a ramshackle hut. It had been days since that event, but I had never stopped thinking about it. I wanted revenge, or at least something that would alleviate the poison of a guilty conscience. "Yes, we're doing this now." My voice was even, controlled, a soulless contradiction to the fraught turbulence behind my ribs.

"Lea," he started. "Look, we were just having a bit of fun—"

"Fun?" A long, decisive stride, and then my fists clamped round his collar again. "Do you have any idea what you've done, all for the sake of a sick laugh?"

Leroy's breaths were haggard, but he was determined to fight back. He scratched at my face; I retaliated by hooking a foot round his knee and sending him to the floor. I leapt onto him in a rage. There was a red tint in the circumference of my vision; it could have been my own anger or it might have just been sunset.

"Lea, we were just fooling around!" Leroy gasped. I straddled his chest and brought my fist down; it collided with something hard. Pain shot up my arm, and I welcomed it, landing another blow.

He writhed beneath me. "Bastard," he choked out. "You absolute bastard."

"That's new; gee, no one's called me a bastard before," I said. I was quite sure I laughed afterwards. "Oh, except it's what my dad calls me when he thinks I can't hear him. Let me tell you something, Leroy. You don't fool around with people like Isa; you fool around with people like me."

Another punch, another cry.

"You led a group. You rounded on Isa like a pack of wolves and tore him to shreds. You thought it'd be funny to single him out and make fun of the one thing he might actually have been proud of. You used girls to confuse him, bullied him into embarrassment and shame, forced your opinions on him and wrecked him in the process. I hope you got your fun. I hope that fun was bloody worth it, because there's not a chance in hell I'm letting you get on an airship after that."

Leroy's voice was just a garbled cry of strained syllables. Again and again, I hit the bloodied pulp of his face until his eyes rolled back and his nose disappeared, and when my arm grew tired, I shifted my weight to my knees and stretched across for the nearest sun lounger. I dragged Leroy by the scruff of his collar and his hair, and then I bashed the back of his head against the cold metal bend of the lounger's leg. His body flew into a violent spasm; I sat on his chest to stop it.

"You fucked up," I snarled. I smashed in his skull – a sharp ring of hollow metal for each blow – until his face drowned in blood and his hair grew red. "You completely fucked up. He hates you. He pretends he likes you but the truth is he had no choice but to settle, and he fucking hates you for it. He hates you, he hates you—"

"Oh my god." The door had swung open; the sunset cut a rectangle round me. A harsh intake of breath. A shadow slinked forwards, crawling up the body. "Lea, what the hell have you done?"

"Don't," I said, watching that shadow. "Don't yell at me."

My dad was taking slow steps into the hut. He opened his arms, stretched out his hands, but the gesture wasn't for me. He touched Leroy, fingers to his wrist. "How…how could you even do something like this?"

I turned round, seeing nothing of myself in his ashen, horrified face. He was shaking, his gaze sliding to my sticky hands because he couldn't stand my eyes. "How would you know?"

"What?" my dad breathed. His fingers trembled against Leroy's stiff arm and he stared at me. He couldn't work out what he was looking at.

"You don't know me." I stood up, tried to work my fingers against the drying blood. My dad had the sense to take a step backwards, towards the window. "I only existed when I did what you said, behaved the way you wanted. So when you ask me how I can do something like this, why are you surprised? You don't know me; you don't know what I'm capable of."

"And this is your answer?" His gaze fell to the bloodied mess between us. "This…this is sick, Lea. You're sick."

"I know I am. You've been in court, too busy caring about everyone else's lives to notice."

"Oh no, I'm not having you blame me for your perversions," he breathed. "You made yourself a murderer of your own accord."

"You wouldn't notice me." I staggered towards him, arms out. We slipped in the blood leaking from the back of Leroy's head. My soles printed zigzag ribbons onto the creaking wood. "You picked me up last, Dad. You went and collected Lara's fucking boyfriend before you even thought of me! Why?"

We stumbled into the light, boxed in the hut's only window. I scrabbled for his tie, his shirt, clawed at the foreign material. "No, don't come near—" my dad uttered, backing away and away. There was red on his shirt. His foot caught on the bend of a lounger and we toppled, through the open window.

I was sixteen and still growing; my dad was over forty. He hadn't, however, spent his childhood on climbing frames and running tracks. He hadn't bolstered his power with javelins, shot puts and hurdles; he had chosen affidavits and cross-examinations. The only occasion he had ever run anywhere was when he was late for meetings. When the world flipped over in its blood and survival sat on the back of physical strength, legal expertise meant nothing.

Everything above his knees was suspended in the air, held in place by my grip on his shirt. I was stretched across him, chest to chest, one of my calves on the sill. It was the closest we had ever been.

The sea had come in, lapping at the airships' undersides; I could hear seagulls and sirens. Above us, the dusty orange hue of sunset and world end, and below, just concrete.

"Lea," my dad managed against my grip. The concrete spun beneath us. My fingers slid up, past the thick collar to the nape of his neck.

"It's okay, Dad," I gasped, flinching at the ache of his weight pulling at my arms. But he writhed, choked. "Filth," he wheezed. "No filth in my family." He twisted free. "No sons in my family."

My red hands clenched air, and I watched as he dived.

You don't understand, I thought I said to the blood below. I was only trying to hug you.

A/N: Many thanks for reading. Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated!