Disclaimer: I do not own Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts, nor am I making any money off this fanfiction.

For Mimi

Radiant

Chapter Two

Forsaken

Leon

“I don’t like it, Leon.” Tifa’s knife sliced clean through the lemon and hit the cutting board with a sharp thud. She raised her eyes to glare at me. “How long is he going to hide away at your house? How long are you going to let him?”

I sighed. What did she want me to say? If I knew the answers, I’d tell her. But I didn’t, even though I’d asked myself those same questions time and time again.

“What do you want me to do? Kick him out?”

“Maybe!”

She sighed after her angry outburst and shook her head. Swiping her wrist over her forehead to push her bangs back out of her eyes, she resumed her preparations for the day. Lemons and limes had to be cut and put in their cups next to the olives and cherries. After this, she’d check on the order for food I’d placed and make her way back into the kitchen.

“I don’t know what I want you to do, Leon. But really… He can’t hide away forever.”

You think I don’t know that?

I dragged a hand through my hair. “He’s probably afraid to upset you.”

“Why?” Again, the knife hit the board with a wet thunk, and again, she aimed a baleful glare in my direction. “Because he’s going to disappear again?”

“More than likely.”

She pursed her lips and grabbed a juicy mass of lemons before depositing them in their cup. She’d taken off her gloves for this, but I knew they’d be back on once she was finished. The gloves were for fighting. They also protected her hands when she twisted the tops off beer bottles for eager customers. I’d seen her hand after a day of working without them. It had basically looked like hamburger meat, and after Aerith had tended to it with a soft cure spell on her lips, we’d convinced her to wear the gloves while working, too.

“But I’ll tear through them all!”

“We’ll get you new ones.”

I sat back on the stool and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Tifa, I know… that you’re upset, but—”

“I’m more than upset!” Tifa cried, and her hands slammed down on the bar that separated us. “I’m way past that! Do you know what I think every time he disappears again?!”

I looked at her.

Her eyes were welling with frustrated tears, and she brushed them away as easily as she had her bangs moments before. She wiped her fingers over her shorts, I assume to rid them of the sticky juice from the fruit. “I think that the next time, he won’t be coming back,” she said, her voice unusually soft. Not quite a whisper, but not a murmur, either. She sounded as if she’d been broken too many times and couldn’t be fixed anymore.

I looked away, uncomfortable suddenly. Though I wanted to comfort her, I was bad at that sort of thing. The only reason Cloud even camped out at my house was probably because I left him the hell alone and didn’t ask him too many questions. The girls only had his best interests at heart, but they tended to coddle him and coo over him and turn into a weepy mess of happy relief. I’d probably want to escape that, too, but the only difference is that I wouldn’t.

Cloud had hurt the girls time and time again. Not purposefully, I’m sure, but he had. His rejection of them in the times he came back to Radiant Garden to recover from whatever wounds he sustained on his “outings” was hard for them to swallow. Especially Tifa, his light. He spoke with Aerith on the rare occasion, and though he tended to avoid Yuffie, he’d spared a few words with her in his time here.

But Tifa…

Not a glance, nothing.

A bell suddenly sounded from within the kitchen, and I heard Tifa sniffle and mumble to me that my food was ready and she’d be right back.

I sighed and leaned down until my forehead met the bar’s surface. I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before, what with Cloud showing up again.

I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

Cloud, you’re putting me into the position where I have to start siding either with you or with the girls. There isn’t any neutral ground for me to stand on. Everyone’s taken it away from me. They want me to make a decision that I’m not ready to. To make you open up to them, even though you run away every time they try.

And now I look like the bad guy because I “let” you.

I’m tired of watching the girls get hurt. But I understand where you’re coming from, too. Maybe… I think…

I don’t know.

I don’t even know if I wanna know.

I wish things could go back to the normal… even if it’s selfish of me.

But when do I get to be selfish for once?

When do I get to say what I want?

But I don’t even know what I want…

I was thinking about this too hard again. But what else was I supposed to do? I had no one to talk to about it, at least, not really. And when I tried speaking to the responsible parties involved in this mess, neither one of them wanted to give ground. Or see the other side. Two years was a long time… long enough to build up an intolerance.

The scales weren’t weighed in my favor anymore. It was just Cloud and me on one end—and everyone else on the other.

Not good odds, Leonhart.

Not good odds.

We all wondered why Cloud thought he could defeat Sephiroth. He had been battling the man for nearly fifteen years, and if there had been any leverage on Cloud’s side, it had since faded. Sephiroth’s darkness suffused Cloud to the core these days. If Cloud wasn’t silent and staring off into space while his wounds recovered, he was bitter, temperamental, likely to claw somebody’s face off if they got too near.

The one time I’d try to get some information out of him—with a bit of insistence from Tifa—I’d nearly lost some vital parts. To be fair, Cloud had told me to drop it more than enough times before he’d lost his temper, but… the point was, he shouldn’t have been driven to such a state of rage in the first place. He’d left shortly afterward, and I hadn’t heard from him for the next three months. When he’d returned, I’d been surprised. I’d thought that I, too, had finally pushed him away.

But no. Cloud had been perched on my doorstep much as he was every time he needed a place to stay for recovery. And if it wasn’t my doorstep, he came crashing through my guest bedroom’s window with enough noise that I’d almost accidentally killed him more than a handful of times.

Cloud shouldn’t have to have been beat up in order to come see us. Cloud should have wanted to come see us on his own—without being near death when he reached me.

I worried for him even when I didn’t want to. He still struggled with that inner light of his, and he refused to see Tifa to do anything about it. I don’t know why. I don’t pretend to know why. I just know that he was damn stupid at times. The more he fought with Sephiroth, the more he succumbed to darkness. Every time he came back, he was worse. His temper grew shorter—his patience became frayed ends.

He yelled at me in my own home. I could bring a tray with food, and he’d just as quick smash it out of my hands as he would accept it. The former because he wasn’t hungry and the smell of food sickened him, and he’d snarl at me. The latter when he had a rare appetite and would settle long enough to eat.

He wasn’t grateful for anything. The second he was patched up, he was usually gone again, depending on the severity of the wounds he’d acquired.

If I brought up Sephiroth, he’d leave. Just like that, he’d use the darkness to take off from Radiant Garden to who knew where. Sometimes he’d shoot me a look that was so wild with anger that I’d take a step back despite myself. Most times, he’d turn his face away from me so I couldn’t see what he was thinking.

The girls would worry when he was gone. They’d fret, and they’d cry, and they’d beat themselves up over wondering about what it was that they had done. When it was nothing. It wasn’t wrong to care for somebody. It wasn’t wrong to wish them well, to pray that they came home safely.

What was wrong was when Cloud got their hopes up. When he showed up, and the news of his return was eventually wrangled out of me, and despite my warnings, they wouldn’t listen. They’d talk as if he was back to stay. Or, at least, that used to be how it was. Nowadays… nowadays, hardly anyone could talk about Cloud without a hint of bitterness on their face. They’d almost given up on him.

If it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t let me give up on him, I probably would have, too. In fact, I know I would have been the first to. And despite how often I would stop my life to tend to Cloud whenever he staggered in from the battlefield of light and dark, I really had lost any… any hope, any interest in hoping that he was still alive in the future to come back to us. Because that was reality.

And the further reality of it was that Cloud would probably always fight until he couldn’t fight anymore. Coming here? To my place… Where the visits took longer and longer to occur… It was probably just the final chapters in Cloud’s war with himself. I’d long run out of things to say to him—the girls had long run out of things to say to him. Now everyone just stood back and watched and rode the storm while it was here.

Except for Tifa. Tifa… didn’t want to give up on him yet. Then again, Cloud was her light, and I couldn’t blame her for that. I dealt with Cloud because he was someone’s light. Because someone here that I cared for—like a sister, like a dear friend—was holding on because of him. Because she refused to give up.

But sometimes I wondered…

How much longer could I do this?

How long was I going to let this continue?

Was Cloud always going to hide here? Eventually those visits would stop…

But could I tell him?

Could I tell him I was tired of it?

That no matter who it was for, that I couldn’t do it anymore? That I couldn’t stand by and watch him do this to himself, to us?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know if I ever would.

Sometimes…

Sometimes we just have to do what feels right.

When I entered Cloud’s bedroom with a soft rap of my knuckles against his door, he didn’t look up. The curtains were drawn shut, and the only light in the room was what managed to creep in around the curtains. My eyes had to adjust to the shadows, and like always, it made me uneasy. But the one time I’d tried opening those curtains to let light into the room, Cloud had nearly taken off my hands.

Let it be known that he never came to me for help during daylight hours.

It wasn’t always like this. It was more a recent development than anything, but it still wasn’t a good sign. Cloud shunning his light—Tifa—was one thing when it came to how he handled the darkness inside of him. But all forms of light?

I wondered sometimes if I was ever going to have to kill him if it grew worse. But it wasn’t a train of thought I liked going down, so I cleared my throat despite how he knew I was already there, and I made my way into the room.

He was sitting up in bed. His sleeveless sweater and accompanying arm sleeve was being washed, leaving his torso bare. His bandages needed to be changed, and then I’d leave and close the door and leave him to it. What did he think about in times like this? Was he worried he’d lose? Certain he wouldn’t?

I set the tray I carried to the side. Cloud’s eyes darted from the wall to that silver tray, but he relaxed when he saw that it was only medical supplies. What did he think was there? Couldn’t have thought it was food—he would have smelled it.

But I asked anyway. “Hungry?”

“No.” His voice was soft, subdued.

“I got food from the bar. Spaghetti? Your favorite.” I don’t know why the hell I even bothered, to tell you the truth.

“I’m not hungry,” he said again, this time with more force to the words. His eyes flickered up to mine, glowing softly. His lips were a thin line on his face. He was daring me to bring it up again. And though if I was in a more adventurous mood, I would have—today I didn’t. I was too tired.

That tended to happen when people woke you up at three in the morning covered in blood and other things I didn’t care to think about.

“Well, if you want to late—”

“I won’t.”

I sighed and fixed him with a look. He looked back.

Cloud and I often had conversations like this—the silent ones that never came to any real conclusion unless one of us felt particularly stubborn or bloodthirsty.

You’re going to starve if you don’t eat.

I can’t think about food right now.

I know that it smells wrong, Cloud, but—

I don’t want to eat.

Cloud.

No.

Cloud, you—

No.

Well, you know where it’s at if you are hungry later.

His eyes slid away.

“Cloud, don’t you think… that maybe I’m getting tired of having to deal with this all the time?” I said when enough silence had passed.

Cloud’s eyes lifted back to me at that, and his voice was colored with annoyance despite how soft it still was, “I never said you had to help me.”

“Kind of hard to ignore you when I find you sitting on my doorstep,” I said, almost nonchalantly. I was busy cutting through the old bandages so that they could make way for the new. It took up most of my concentration after that. I wondered if he’d even say anything and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t.

I let quiet settle between us again. The whole day could probably go like this.

But it didn’t need to.

I had come in here with a purpose other than patching him up—and I needed to get it accomplished whether or not he was willing to sit through it. For the moment, he seemed to be tolerating my questions… Unfortunately, that didn’t mean such an attitude would last long. If I said one wrong thing, that would be the end of it. The words “tread carefully” flashed through my mind, and I heeded them.

“When are you going to give this up, Cloud?” I placed the dirtied bandages to the side and grabbed for a vile of potion I’d left on the tray. Though I was hardly a doctor, I had been in enough battles to know how to patch a man up. Potions usually took care of the rest. (And the one and only time it hadn’t, I’d taken him to Aerith’s.)

Cloud all but snatched the potion from my fingers, pushing the cork out with a flip of his thumb and then knocking it back with a grimace. When he was finished, he swiped the back of his hand over his mouth and tossed the discarded vial to the side.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said hoarsely.

I vaguely remembered a time when Cloud had been seven or eight, and the caretaker of our orphanage had to give him some sort of liquid medicine. He’d been held down, and his jaws had been forced open so that they could get him to swallow it. Cloud had kicked and flailed the entire time. If anyone hated taking medicine, it was Cloud. Even with herbal remedies and pill pallets. I don’t know if it was the texture, the taste… the concept?

It was nice to see that that hadn’t changed. At least some of the old Cloud was still in there… somewhere. It should have given me hope, but it only served to make me that much more wary for what I had to say next.

I tore a strip of tape off with my teeth, then held it against my thumb as I unwound fresh bandages from the roll I had. “Sephiroth. Running off all the time. Almost getting killed. Coming back so I can put up with you while I help you heal.” I began winding the bandage around Cloud’s arm and kept my eyes on the paleness of his skin and the light freckles that dotted it. When was the last time he’d seen the sun? Granted, he’d never been a tanner to start with…

Sighing, I placed the tape against the bandages to hold them together before I lifted my eyes to Cloud. He still wasn’t looking at me. “Then you’re gone again. Is any of this ringing a bell?”

Cloud said nothing.

I finished up my work in silence. If he wanted to play the silent game, that was fine. At least he was listening. At least he hadn’t taken off yet. Though I hated it, I worried when he wasn’t quite healed and disappeared for a while because he was mad at me. I didn’t want to have to be the one to send Cloud to his death because of something I’d said. No man deserved to die like that… wounded, enraged.

If I were to die… Well.

If I were to die, I’d like to die with my head held high—with those I cared about on my mind as I did what I could to defend them.

I think Cloud had started off that way, too, with the intention of protecting Tifa and the others. And then somewhere along the way, it became less about the girls and more about Sephiroth. Sephiroth had some kind of hold on him. To say it was unnatural would be an understatement. They were just… drawn to each other, in ways that none of us could really ever comprehend. I wasn’t even sure if we should, if we’d want to.

The thought of Sephiroth brought chills down my spine. He wasn’t like he used to be. Whatever had happened to him, he was taking Cloud along for the ride, a ride we couldn’t follow on. Try as we might to pull Cloud back from that dark precipice that was the phantom of some past he’d never told us—we couldn’t… The girls refused to admit to it, but I knew we’d probably already lost him.

What more could we say, could we do to make him stay? To make him quit the fight?

“There was something you told me a long time ago…” I began, setting my things to the side. He was patched up, and now it was time for him to rest. I had a few words I wanted to impart on him first.

“Forget it,” was his only retort.

Most days, I let things slide, I let them go. Today I didn’t. Today I cared. “I can’t do that.”

“Whatever it was—”

“You said that the true light still sleeps, deep within the darkness. You heard it from some woman, and you told all of us.”

“—Doesn’t matter, it’s not—”

“You also said that if we believe in the light, the darkness will never defeat us.”

“And it hasn’t!” Cloud’s hand abruptly slashed out—hit the tray on the edge of the bed—sent it flying across the room where it landed in the corner. The items that had been on it were strewn in places over the floor. We both knew I’d be the one to clean his mess up. But not now. Now, I needed to go somewhere. I needed to think.

I was nearly at the door when I had a second thought, and I stopped to look back at him.

He was staring at his hands.

“…The girls will cry, you know,” I murmured. “When you leave.”

His jaw set, and his fingers curled in toward his palms. “And since when do you care… Squall?” he said, his eyes lifting to find mine in the little light. He could probably see me better than I could get a real good look at him, I realized, rather belatedly. His vision had to have adapted with the lack of light he exposed himself to, but the thought brought me little comfort.

“Just get some rest,” I said.

When I closed the door behind me, it was slowly, and I didn’t release the knob for a few good moments. I hovered there in the hallway.

How long was I going to have to put up with this? Every time I intended to tell Cloud that he could make it on his own, because I was through with him, I thought of the girls. I thought of how all their hopes rested on me now. They hadn’t been able to get through to Cloud… And I was the only person Cloud came to when he needed help, even if he always took off again. I thought of how, if I told Cloud to stay out of my life, he wouldn’t be the only one to make the girls cry.

I gritted my teeth and shoved my fingers through my hair.

I care because you won’t.

And it shouldn’t have to be like that.

The postern was the best place for me to be able to think. I came out here often, sometimes not to fight, but just to feel the cool breezes from the crystal valley wash in against my face.

I propped my arms against the railing and rested my chin on them. I closed my eyes. It was nice here. Quiet. That wind could take away any anger I might be feeling—any anxiety. All the pressures and stress life gave me lately were lifted and carried away over the uncertain horizon.

I’d stay here for hours—sometimes, though, just for minutes. However long it took me to let peace of mind come to me.

My fingers played over the surface of my necklace. Griever’s sharp edges pressed against my palm as I squeezed the charm and then pulled it from around my neck. I let it dangle from my knuckles as I pressed a hand on the railing and tilted my head toward the night sky.

“And since when do you care… Squall?”

I knew, deep down, that Cloud cared, too. That Cloud felt guilty.

Cloud just… pushed it down, down and down and down until even he couldn’t reach it. All he wanted to do was kill Sephiroth. If he thought about his friends—no, all the family he had left—he’d falter. Whereas I kept the memory of those I loved burning strong, Cloud found it a weakness. He thought it would hinder his senses, drag him down in the fight. So he only thought about himself. He only thought about eliminating the past.

But the more he chased it… the more he lost himself.

And what would he do once Sephiroth was “dead”? What then? Once he destroyed all the faith and care in those that loved him… once they finally turned their backs on him because they were tired of being hurt and broken… who would he come home to?

Cloud was going about it all wrong.

Why was he throwing everything away?

Once Sephiroth was gone…

What would Cloud have left?

You had to depend on people.

Even if you didn’t want to. Even if it might have gotten you hurt in the end.

You depended on people to help carry you through. You couldn’t do everything on your own. You just couldn’t. It didn’t work that way.

You needed your friends beside you to help carry you through your battles.

When your moral and your strength and your pride was weakened… your loved ones were there to build it all back up again—to keep you on your feet—to remind you of why you were fighting in the first place.

To remind you that you weren’t alone…

Everyone needed someone.

You shouldn’t ever have to be alone.

What was worse?

Relying on those around you, and then in the end, it all fell through anyway?

Or starting off alone… and then realizing that you had no one to come home to.

No one to cheer you on.

No one to whisper in your ear that it’d be all right.

I just didn’t understand him.

…

I don’t think he understood himself.

“All right, Leon. He’s been there a week. Any progress?”

I shook my head and sighed before sliding my glass back across the bar. It was empty, the cubes already having started to melt together. There was a ring of water from where the soda had been sitting, and I watched as Tifa dumped the ice into the trash can beneath the bar and then swiped over the counter with a damp rag.

Contemplative silence followed my words. Tifa wouldn’t quite meet my gaze, but I could tell she was thinking of what to say.

Whatever it was, she didn’t get around to it. The bell tolled from the kitchen, and she sighed and threw the rag behind the counter. I watched her form retreat around the corner.

Sitting back in my stool, I drummed my fingers against the bar’s top. I’d left Cloud alone since early that morning. I’d had some construction to get around to in the northern district of the village. Cloud had been in and out of sleep for the last few days—had it really been a week already?—and I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with him when he was awake. He knew where the food was if he got up while I was still gone and was hungry.

Surely the man could at least partly take care of himself.

But if I really believed that, I wouldn’t have been at Tifa’s bar, Seventh Heaven, getting some to-go boxes so that I could force the food down Cloud’s lips if I had to. Though I hadn’t actually had to do that in the last two years, there was a first time for everything. Cloud needed to eat to regain his energy. Then again, maybe if he didn’t eat, he’d stay the hell put and not go running off to get his ass handed to him again.

I sighed and buried my face in my hands, my elbows on the counter.

We’d barely said two words to each other, and while normally I enjoyed the silence, this time it was different. I liked silences born of mutual respect for peace. The silence at my house was one born of tension and probably borderline aggression, where Cloud was concerned.

I thought about how I’d woken up two nights in a row to his screams, only to run into his room to find him eerily still again, as if he’d never stirred—as if he’d never stir again. A quick examination of his fluttering pulse had always revealed him alive, however.

Gritting my teeth, I scrubbed my hands over my face and then withdrew them. Tifa came out of the kitchen with the bag of food, and there was a grimness to her eyes as she handed the goods to me.

“I’m not doing this again, Leon.”

“Doing what?” I asked as I took the bags from her.

She placed her fists on her hips, pursed her lips. “Giving you guys free food. He can forget it till he talks to me again.”

I should have just told her Cloud wasn’t the one that wanted the food—that, in fact, he didn’t want any food. But why bother? That would just take away more hope that she barely clung onto anymore.

For a moment, I had an internal fight with myself. I could easily crush that hope. The light knew she’d find it much less difficult to move on if all the pieces kept crumbling around her. And if the girls no longer held out for Cloud, then it meant maybe the guy would finally learn his lesson and stay. That, or stop bothering me with the problems he refused to fix (his idea of “fixing” aside).

Then I looked at Tifa’s warm eyes and the way her teeth pressed into her lower lip, and I sighed and got up from the stool.

“Fine,” I said, even though I couldn’t cook worth shit and this would really be putting a hamper on my plans to keep Cloud at least somewhat healthy. “I’ve got to get back.”

She nodded, grabbed her rag and started scrubbing at the bar despite its already pristine shape. If she cleaned it anymore, it would really start to shine.

The walk home was uneventful. I half-expected someone to jump out at me and tell me there was something that needed to be repaired—was relieved when no one did. My back hurt. If I had to haul any more lumber today, or climb onto another roof to patch up where a leak had started, I was afraid it might finally give out on me. What I needed was rest. Maybe a few day’s worth.

I wondered if everyone would be okay if I just assigned myself to bed rest… The fatigue was killing me—my joints hurt on top of it—and I’d smashed the hell out of my hand a few hours ago—

I shook my head, and the notion of a small vacation along with it. I didn’t know who I was kidding. Two hours into lounging around the house all day, and I’d kill to be back outside involved in the action. Unhealthy, sure, but at least it was something to do.

These thoughts and more trickled lazily through my mind as I entered the front door to my house—and they all came to a screeching stop when a sudden sense of wrongness slammed into me.

I stayed where I was on the threshold, my empty hand out as my eyes roamed over my surroundings. It was dark in the foyer, which was not unexpected, just disconcerting. I hated it when I couldn’t see. I wanted to move to flip on a light, but first I needed to stay put and try and determine what had the hairs on my arms and neck sticking up.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

Cautiously, placing one foot in front of the other in a near direct line, I eased my way into the kitchen.

Shit, I couldn’t see anything.

Still being careful to be quiet, I edged over to where I knew the light pad was and flicked it on.

What I saw had me dropping the bag of food and rushing across the floor to kneel beside a fallen Cloud. He was half on his stomach, his face pressed into the crook of his arm. When I turned him over, I saw that his eyes were closed, his lips pale.

Panic surged inside of me so strongly that it surprised me—the last time I had felt like this was two years ago, when I’d first found Cloud curled up into a weak ball like this after a fight with Sephiroth.

At first, I didn’t know what was wrong. His bandages were still in place, and as far as I knew, he’d most likely been passed out all day. This morning he still hadn’t been fit to go anywhere because of the toll his wounds had taken on him. He hadn’t tried to leave again, had he? Had…?

Then I narrowed my eyes and took another good look at those bandages. Blood was seeping through them. I didn’t understand, because simply wandering around the house shouldn’t have reopened his cuts. But then, a second later, I realized in full what I was seeing—not only did he have bloodied bandages, but the man was back in the clothes I’d washed and set to the side. They were torn to boot, and new wounds had appeared on the parts of Cloud’s skin that weren’t covered in white gauze.

Some of that gauze had crusted along the edges—others were damp as I pressed my fingers against his neck and felt for a pulse.

It was there, fluttering weakly.

I closed my eyes, turned my face away.

Damn it, Cloud.

Why did you try to leave in that state?

I could have killed him for how reckless he was.

Damn it…

Bracing myself, I slipped my arms around Cloud and lifted.

I didn’t think I’d ever understand him.

I didn’t think I wanted to.

My lashes fluttered.

It took me a moment to garner my surroundings, and when I did, I sat up with an exhausted breath and placed my hand to my forehead. It was throbbing. I’d had a dream I couldn’t remember now. There’d been a long corridor, and someone whispering my name, and the smell of pine. And then it was gone.

I glanced over to the bed, only to find Cloud watching me. I wondered how long he’d been awake—decided it didn’t matter.

The chair I’d passed out in was uncomfortable as hell. I’d developed a crick in my neck sometime during the evening.

I didn’t move.

“You were nearly healed,” I murmured at last. The glow of his eyes brightened, but I couldn’t look away. I had to plow forward. “Why?”

He was the one to break the gaze first. His eyes flitted to the darkened window, and he said nothing, his lips a thin line.

Despite my intentions not to, my frustration bubbled over then. What more did Cloud what from me? I did everything I could for him, and I never received anything in return. This time, Cloud hadn’t even let himself completely heal before he’d gone off after his enemy. It was the stupidest thing he could have done—who fought battles when they could barely stand? Cloud, apparently.

He was just so ungrateful. Why should I have to spend the time taking care of him if he was just going to make all that effort such a waste?

Gripping the arms of the chair, I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m tired of this, Cloud.”

I felt like a broken record.

“I can’t keep doing this.”

Cloud’s voice was soft, serious, but somehow it pierced through to me as if his words were as sharp as a needle. “Then let me die.”

“Quit coming here, and maybe I will!” I snapped before I could stop myself.

Silence punctuated this. Cloud set his jaw, but he didn’t say anything. I knew I had several seconds to take it back—I knew I could say, “Forget it, never mind, just rest,”—but… I didn’t. I let the bitterness that had broken free from me hang suspended in the air between us until it felt like I couldn’t breathe and my lungs hurt. I was so angry, I could barely see straight. I wanted to march over to him and beat the shit out of him myself so that he’d stay the fuck put and not go anywhere, and if he tried to, I’d just do it again.

My fingers clenched into fists at my sides, and my teeth hurt as I gritted them and the muscles in my throat worked.

Cloud looked up at me at last, and his eyes bore straight into mine.

“Fine,” he said.

I waited a heartbeat, glaring back at him.

“Fine,” I said.

I left and slammed the door behind me before either of us could change our minds and get another word out.

“And since when do you care… Squall?”

I wouldn’t.

Not anymore.

Cloud could go bleed himself in an alleyway, for all I cared.

I don’t know why I felt so betrayed.