spiffingly
in
khyaoi
Smile from a Veil [[FIC-Leon/Cloud 1/7?]]
Title: Smile from a Veil
Chapter: 1 / 7 (subject to change)
Status: In Progress
Pairing: Leon/Cloud
Rating: PG-13/T, varies by chapter
Warnings: Does not strictly follow Kingdom Hearts canon. Contains spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and VIII. Hopefully this can stand as a KH fic alone, but I can't promise. If you are not familiar with Raine and Laguna in Final Fantasy VIII, there may be some confusion. May be considered crossover, I suppose, I'm honestly not sure.
Description: They're after the same thing, whether they know it or not. What cost will be paid to attain it?
"So you're finally awake."
The only thing Cloud knew for sure when his eyes finally gained focus was that he did not know the man hovering over him. Beyond light age lines and graying temples, there was something familiar in the concerned eyes, but he had definitely never met the man before.
"Awake, huh?" The blond's voice was a choked grunt through a raw throat, vocal chords remembering how to produce noise again. Confusion was an understatement; Awake was something he had never quite expected to be again after that last battle.
It was with this vague recollection that memories began pouring in, vivid and fresh and burning, searing in his mind. His hand edged along the side of his hip, then up his chest. There was no intentional hesitation to his movements, but his muscles seemed reluctant to obey. Clumsy and stiff, his fingers sprawled over his chest, only to find mounds of scabbing and flakes of dried blood where gaping wounds should have marked his end.
"You took some hell of a beating." The older man seemed friendly enough, but Cloud took nothing at face value, gaze darting from aged eyes to the stone ceiling, then back to the far more pleasant eyes. He knew this place, and far too well at that. This was the Underworld- Hades' personal domain. He was in hell, yet again.
"Seems that way." Cloud grunted, planted the heels of his hands firmly into rock on either side, then heaved himself up. The intense pain he expected with the sudden movement never hit, though when he tried to suck in a steeling breath, he found that his lungs did nothing at all. A moment of panic hit; A sudden and intense confusion when air refused to work its way through his body and, after a moment's struggle, he realized he did not need it to. Despite the effort, a slight tremble in his hands to show for it, no heart fluttered between ribs in response. His hand went to wounded chest yet again to confirm this worrying fact.
"This seems like it's gonna be uncomfortable to explain." The long-haired man hoisted himself from his seat next to Cloud with these words and paced the small, plain den. The room was round and cold, a harsh wind seemed to rustle through from time to time, and the chill always remained. The color scheme was a magnificently dull shade of gray, and decor nothing but rocks of varying relief and the occasional blue-flamed torch, flickering just enough to ensure a feeling of unease.
"I'm dead." Cloud did the awkward work for the stranger, this time keeping eyes averted. He'd rarely considered what the afterlife might hold for him, and being back in Underworld with only his memories and an unknown roommate had never been one of the visions he conjured. It didn't take a genius to figure out his status, though. He could all but feel the ungodly sting of steel in his chest, the twisting, wrenching agony. That was it- Sephiroth had finally killed him.
"Oh...well, guess that makes it easier on me." There was a smile on the stranger's face when Cloud glanced up, further accentuating well-marked lines. The blond nodded once, not bothering to return the expression.
"I'm Laguna, by the way." Cloud stared at the hand extended to him then nodded his own greeting. Basic logic told him this guy was either in the same hopeless boat he was, or, worse yet, one of Hades' new pawns. Regardless of which he might have been, Cloud knew better than to bestow even the simplest trust.
"Cloud." Even the admission of his name was probably more than was certifiably safe. The older man, though, had a familiar presence that somehow put him at ease, or at least as much as one could be when faced with a stranger in hell.
"You were out for a while there." Laguna didn't seem to take offense to Cloud's introductory rejection. He had expected it, really, and was delighted to be given even a name. This was a man who, from the looks of it, was recently murdered. Socializing may not have been high on his priorities.
"I think you were, at least. Hard to keep track of time around here." he went on when the blond didn't speak, still pacing the room, "So...did you go to see someone?"
Laguna could guess, by means of Cloud's confused expression, that they had not shared their introductory experiences.
"See someone?" Cloud repeated, voice still thick in his throat, "Everything after....the end..." he was struggling with his words, though no longer to say them so much as to select, "it's just a blur." There were flashes of memories now, vague and hazy, more a hallucination than a visit as he began to recall. Certainly not reality.
"Maybe it's different." Laguna conceded, sitting himself as comfortably as he could across the small room from Cloud. "Before I woke up, I saw my wife." with his explanation, Cloud's eyes traveled of their own accord to survey a plain silver ring on his finger. He almost smiled- his first impression of the man somehow didn't include thoughts of a wife.
"She's here?" Cloud asked lowly, not at all sure why he had a sudden interest in the man's story. He chalked it up to his own memories piquing at Laguna's words and did away with the curiosity when the man began to speak again.
"Here? No." His smile turned sad, eyes downcast. Slowly, he shook his head and looked up at that awful, dripping ceiling, "She's been gone for years. Really, and truly gone. Not like us." With these words, Cloud sat up, watching with far more interest.
"Like us?" he repeated, still attempting to work out this whole puzzle in his brain, "What, exactly, does 'like us' even mean?" The man smiled again, that impossibly sad expression still in his eyes.
"We're cursed, so to speak. Raine, she was able to accept her fate. She left in peace and was given rest. Guys like us, though, we're different. Maybe it was time for us to go, but we were still holding on too hard." Laguna paused to survey Cloud's expression; It consisted of uncertainty and a tentative acceptance, again more than Laguna had hoped for to start.
"So we're left like this. Definitely not living, but not quite dead either. We're just stuck like this, without rest or peace or any of those things they promise you'll get once you finish the whole life ordeal." He finished the thought with a small shrug.
"You mean, like ghosts?" Cloud suggested.
"Something like that." Laguna agreed with a nod, "Stuck to roam the worlds until we can clean up our unfinished business." Put that way, it sounded like idiocy even to Laguna, dubbed king of all idiots more times than once.
"Unfinished business." Cloud repeated, the words not at all foreign on his tongue. Even death wouldn't erase the score he needed to settle. "I have to kill Sephiroth to break the curse." He was speaking to himself, of course, and gave no explanation to the nature of this new duty.
"Unlikely." Laguna interrupted the one-man conversation, standing once more. "Vengeance is all well and good, and certainly a vice worthy of curse." he explained, "but it's not strong enough to leave you as we are."
The blond did not respond vocally. He cocked an eyebrow at the aged man, waiting for him to explain. Killing Sephiroth was the only solution that fit. What other attachment could he have to any world, strong enough to keep him from death?
"Before I woke up, I saw Raine. She gave me my cure on a golden platter." his voice sunk when he spoke of the woman, and he unconsciously twirled the wedding ring on his finger, "I have to come clean, to my son." Another slight jolt to Cloud's system with this explanation. He still couldn't decide why it seemed so unbelievable that the man had a family.
"You lied to your son?" he asked quietly, mind racing. Personal baggage was something he had a hell of a lot of, and if he had to clear that closet before he could rest, he may have found the secret to eternal unlife.
"My son does not know he's my son." Laguna enlightened, eyes fixated on the silver band around his finger, "It's not a secret I meant to keep. His mother died, not long after he was born." he mumbled, eyes glimmering in the flickering blue light, "I had been away at the time. I always thought, so long as I made it home once the baby was there, it'd be okay. Except I wasn't...and she wasn't."
Cloud watched in silence as the man confessed his guilt. He wouldn't push him, or point out the fact that abandoning his pregnant wife may have gotten him to hell in the first place. This Laguna knew something, a lot of somethings from the sounds of it all, and he needed access to that knowledge. So he nodded and he let the man regain his composure before urging him to go on.
"It wasn't as hard to find him as I expected." he had lifted his head again, though still fiddling with the ring, "but I could never seem to approach him. I was a coward. I spent time near where he lived, and I watched him. But I could see her in him, in every bit of him, and I couldn't bring myself within a yard of him."
Cloud winced inwardly. The man was a coward, he decided this much quite quickly, and a weakling. He didn't bother to consider how he himself might have reacted had he been faced with the same situation. It was always easier to judge first, ask questions never.
"So, in order to die, you have to introduce yourself to your son?" Cloud repeated. It seemed sadistic, to say the least, and he would expect no less of Hades.
"That's the short of it, yeah." Laguna looked Cloud over again, eyes still hazy from tears he refused to shed, "So what about you? Don't you remember anything you saw? It might give you a hint, as to what you need to do?"
Cloud stared at him another moment before he screwed his eyes shut. His mind was filling in the final blanks, and he was not at all pleased to see what they were. His mission, if the death vision truly was indicative, was not so far from Laguna's. He, too, had secrets that he was too much a coward ever to reveal.
"You're not really going to fight him again."
Cloud glanced up at his companion and his lips tugged into a tiny smirk. Leon stood in his doorway, arms folded across a bare and damp chest, soaked towel draped over his shoulders. He was leaning into the frame at his right shoulder, his left hip leaning the opposite direction, leather pants stretched across just before things got too interesting.
"I'm not?" the blond's attention had returned to the blade he had already finished sharpening and was now hard at work polishing. He caught Leon's reflection in the blade, and his smirk threatened to evolve into a smile. What his house mate might think if he knew what Cloud was thinking.
"You're in no condition." He scolded Cloud as he crossed the room, "and there really is no point. He's only doing this to torment you. He wants to see you suffer." He sat at Cloud's desk chair and ran the towel over his head with proper fervor, "He won't be happy until you're dead."
Cloud grunted, propping the blade against the footboard and tossing the ratty wife beater he had been using to clean it aside. "I'm not doing it for fun. I'm doing it because I have to. What do you want to see me do?"
"Act like an adult and let this go." Leon groaned in response, "You don't have to do a damn thing about it!" Easy enough to say, when you weren't the one with a score to settle.
"He threatened the people I care about." Cloud admitted, pushing his irritation aside for a moment of honesty. Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie, they were all in undue danger simply by living at his side. While their safety was a must, Cloud had to admit, even they were not his first priority. A threat against the very man scolding his protective duties had coaxed Cloud back to the brink of battle.
It was a well-guarded secret that he loved Squall Leonhart. His first step was to rationalize it as pure animal attraction, a simple infatuation. The man was attractive; Masculine and still graceful, with a sharp mind and a strong body. He was the perfect portrait of a man, and the closest friend Cloud could ever claim to have.
There was a deeper connection, something more meaningful than a subconscious spark when their eyes met, or a desire to drive him into a mattress when he stood in his doorway just like that, half naked with water dripping from his hair and his hip curving just so.
He could live on Leon's words. The smooth voice, and everything it had to say, coming from equally perfect lips. He couldn't number the hours they'd spent at each others' sides, in or out of battle, and the synergy they'd attained was palpable.
He was most certainly in love with Leon, as he insisted to be called, and Cloud would not let Sephiroth lay a finger on this most precious person.
"People you care about?" Leon laughed at him, letting the towel drape around his neck again. "Like who, Cloud? If you cared about a damn person but yourself, you wouldn't be doing something this stupid. So tell me, who the hell is so important that you're going to go on some stupid suicide mission to save?" He stood, hips swaying just a bit as he retreated to the door. He waited for a moment in the frame again for an answer that did not come until he stepped out of it.
"You."
"Do you remember?" Laguna repeated his question, shaking Cloud from his reverie, "What you saw?"
"Just a stupid memory." The blond responded as his head hung low, "A fight with a friend." His eyes told the story better than his guarded words.
"Someone you love." His new-found companion pointed out. It wasn't a question, and Cloud didn't bother to deny it, though his shoulders slumped until his nose nearly touched his knees. This was the worst possible outcome, he had decided.
"Someone I meant to protect." he clarified, hopeful. If he could convince himself of a mission that required no confession, no words to the man who seemed to hold exactly the opposite feelings as he did, then he could do it. He could complete whatever it was that would lift this curse, and he could be free. "I need to protect him."
He wasn't convinced, and neither was Laguna, but the man seemed willing to give him the benefit of doubt. The elder stood, put on his most determined face, and pumped a fist in the air.
"In that case, we'd better get the hell out of here."
Chapter: 1 / 7 (subject to change)
Status: In Progress
Pairing: Leon/Cloud
Rating: PG-13/T, varies by chapter
Warnings: Does not strictly follow Kingdom Hearts canon. Contains spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and VIII. Hopefully this can stand as a KH fic alone, but I can't promise. If you are not familiar with Raine and Laguna in Final Fantasy VIII, there may be some confusion. May be considered crossover, I suppose, I'm honestly not sure.
Description: They're after the same thing, whether they know it or not. What cost will be paid to attain it?
"So you're finally awake."
The only thing Cloud knew for sure when his eyes finally gained focus was that he did not know the man hovering over him. Beyond light age lines and graying temples, there was something familiar in the concerned eyes, but he had definitely never met the man before.
"Awake, huh?" The blond's voice was a choked grunt through a raw throat, vocal chords remembering how to produce noise again. Confusion was an understatement; Awake was something he had never quite expected to be again after that last battle.
It was with this vague recollection that memories began pouring in, vivid and fresh and burning, searing in his mind. His hand edged along the side of his hip, then up his chest. There was no intentional hesitation to his movements, but his muscles seemed reluctant to obey. Clumsy and stiff, his fingers sprawled over his chest, only to find mounds of scabbing and flakes of dried blood where gaping wounds should have marked his end.
"You took some hell of a beating." The older man seemed friendly enough, but Cloud took nothing at face value, gaze darting from aged eyes to the stone ceiling, then back to the far more pleasant eyes. He knew this place, and far too well at that. This was the Underworld- Hades' personal domain. He was in hell, yet again.
"Seems that way." Cloud grunted, planted the heels of his hands firmly into rock on either side, then heaved himself up. The intense pain he expected with the sudden movement never hit, though when he tried to suck in a steeling breath, he found that his lungs did nothing at all. A moment of panic hit; A sudden and intense confusion when air refused to work its way through his body and, after a moment's struggle, he realized he did not need it to. Despite the effort, a slight tremble in his hands to show for it, no heart fluttered between ribs in response. His hand went to wounded chest yet again to confirm this worrying fact.
"This seems like it's gonna be uncomfortable to explain." The long-haired man hoisted himself from his seat next to Cloud with these words and paced the small, plain den. The room was round and cold, a harsh wind seemed to rustle through from time to time, and the chill always remained. The color scheme was a magnificently dull shade of gray, and decor nothing but rocks of varying relief and the occasional blue-flamed torch, flickering just enough to ensure a feeling of unease.
"I'm dead." Cloud did the awkward work for the stranger, this time keeping eyes averted. He'd rarely considered what the afterlife might hold for him, and being back in Underworld with only his memories and an unknown roommate had never been one of the visions he conjured. It didn't take a genius to figure out his status, though. He could all but feel the ungodly sting of steel in his chest, the twisting, wrenching agony. That was it- Sephiroth had finally killed him.
"Oh...well, guess that makes it easier on me." There was a smile on the stranger's face when Cloud glanced up, further accentuating well-marked lines. The blond nodded once, not bothering to return the expression.
"I'm Laguna, by the way." Cloud stared at the hand extended to him then nodded his own greeting. Basic logic told him this guy was either in the same hopeless boat he was, or, worse yet, one of Hades' new pawns. Regardless of which he might have been, Cloud knew better than to bestow even the simplest trust.
"Cloud." Even the admission of his name was probably more than was certifiably safe. The older man, though, had a familiar presence that somehow put him at ease, or at least as much as one could be when faced with a stranger in hell.
"You were out for a while there." Laguna didn't seem to take offense to Cloud's introductory rejection. He had expected it, really, and was delighted to be given even a name. This was a man who, from the looks of it, was recently murdered. Socializing may not have been high on his priorities.
"I think you were, at least. Hard to keep track of time around here." he went on when the blond didn't speak, still pacing the room, "So...did you go to see someone?"
Laguna could guess, by means of Cloud's confused expression, that they had not shared their introductory experiences.
"See someone?" Cloud repeated, voice still thick in his throat, "Everything after....the end..." he was struggling with his words, though no longer to say them so much as to select, "it's just a blur." There were flashes of memories now, vague and hazy, more a hallucination than a visit as he began to recall. Certainly not reality.
"Maybe it's different." Laguna conceded, sitting himself as comfortably as he could across the small room from Cloud. "Before I woke up, I saw my wife." with his explanation, Cloud's eyes traveled of their own accord to survey a plain silver ring on his finger. He almost smiled- his first impression of the man somehow didn't include thoughts of a wife.
"She's here?" Cloud asked lowly, not at all sure why he had a sudden interest in the man's story. He chalked it up to his own memories piquing at Laguna's words and did away with the curiosity when the man began to speak again.
"Here? No." His smile turned sad, eyes downcast. Slowly, he shook his head and looked up at that awful, dripping ceiling, "She's been gone for years. Really, and truly gone. Not like us." With these words, Cloud sat up, watching with far more interest.
"Like us?" he repeated, still attempting to work out this whole puzzle in his brain, "What, exactly, does 'like us' even mean?" The man smiled again, that impossibly sad expression still in his eyes.
"We're cursed, so to speak. Raine, she was able to accept her fate. She left in peace and was given rest. Guys like us, though, we're different. Maybe it was time for us to go, but we were still holding on too hard." Laguna paused to survey Cloud's expression; It consisted of uncertainty and a tentative acceptance, again more than Laguna had hoped for to start.
"So we're left like this. Definitely not living, but not quite dead either. We're just stuck like this, without rest or peace or any of those things they promise you'll get once you finish the whole life ordeal." He finished the thought with a small shrug.
"You mean, like ghosts?" Cloud suggested.
"Something like that." Laguna agreed with a nod, "Stuck to roam the worlds until we can clean up our unfinished business." Put that way, it sounded like idiocy even to Laguna, dubbed king of all idiots more times than once.
"Unfinished business." Cloud repeated, the words not at all foreign on his tongue. Even death wouldn't erase the score he needed to settle. "I have to kill Sephiroth to break the curse." He was speaking to himself, of course, and gave no explanation to the nature of this new duty.
"Unlikely." Laguna interrupted the one-man conversation, standing once more. "Vengeance is all well and good, and certainly a vice worthy of curse." he explained, "but it's not strong enough to leave you as we are."
The blond did not respond vocally. He cocked an eyebrow at the aged man, waiting for him to explain. Killing Sephiroth was the only solution that fit. What other attachment could he have to any world, strong enough to keep him from death?
"Before I woke up, I saw Raine. She gave me my cure on a golden platter." his voice sunk when he spoke of the woman, and he unconsciously twirled the wedding ring on his finger, "I have to come clean, to my son." Another slight jolt to Cloud's system with this explanation. He still couldn't decide why it seemed so unbelievable that the man had a family.
"You lied to your son?" he asked quietly, mind racing. Personal baggage was something he had a hell of a lot of, and if he had to clear that closet before he could rest, he may have found the secret to eternal unlife.
"My son does not know he's my son." Laguna enlightened, eyes fixated on the silver band around his finger, "It's not a secret I meant to keep. His mother died, not long after he was born." he mumbled, eyes glimmering in the flickering blue light, "I had been away at the time. I always thought, so long as I made it home once the baby was there, it'd be okay. Except I wasn't...and she wasn't."
Cloud watched in silence as the man confessed his guilt. He wouldn't push him, or point out the fact that abandoning his pregnant wife may have gotten him to hell in the first place. This Laguna knew something, a lot of somethings from the sounds of it all, and he needed access to that knowledge. So he nodded and he let the man regain his composure before urging him to go on.
"It wasn't as hard to find him as I expected." he had lifted his head again, though still fiddling with the ring, "but I could never seem to approach him. I was a coward. I spent time near where he lived, and I watched him. But I could see her in him, in every bit of him, and I couldn't bring myself within a yard of him."
Cloud winced inwardly. The man was a coward, he decided this much quite quickly, and a weakling. He didn't bother to consider how he himself might have reacted had he been faced with the same situation. It was always easier to judge first, ask questions never.
"So, in order to die, you have to introduce yourself to your son?" Cloud repeated. It seemed sadistic, to say the least, and he would expect no less of Hades.
"That's the short of it, yeah." Laguna looked Cloud over again, eyes still hazy from tears he refused to shed, "So what about you? Don't you remember anything you saw? It might give you a hint, as to what you need to do?"
Cloud stared at him another moment before he screwed his eyes shut. His mind was filling in the final blanks, and he was not at all pleased to see what they were. His mission, if the death vision truly was indicative, was not so far from Laguna's. He, too, had secrets that he was too much a coward ever to reveal.
"You're not really going to fight him again."
Cloud glanced up at his companion and his lips tugged into a tiny smirk. Leon stood in his doorway, arms folded across a bare and damp chest, soaked towel draped over his shoulders. He was leaning into the frame at his right shoulder, his left hip leaning the opposite direction, leather pants stretched across just before things got too interesting.
"I'm not?" the blond's attention had returned to the blade he had already finished sharpening and was now hard at work polishing. He caught Leon's reflection in the blade, and his smirk threatened to evolve into a smile. What his house mate might think if he knew what Cloud was thinking.
"You're in no condition." He scolded Cloud as he crossed the room, "and there really is no point. He's only doing this to torment you. He wants to see you suffer." He sat at Cloud's desk chair and ran the towel over his head with proper fervor, "He won't be happy until you're dead."
Cloud grunted, propping the blade against the footboard and tossing the ratty wife beater he had been using to clean it aside. "I'm not doing it for fun. I'm doing it because I have to. What do you want to see me do?"
"Act like an adult and let this go." Leon groaned in response, "You don't have to do a damn thing about it!" Easy enough to say, when you weren't the one with a score to settle.
"He threatened the people I care about." Cloud admitted, pushing his irritation aside for a moment of honesty. Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie, they were all in undue danger simply by living at his side. While their safety was a must, Cloud had to admit, even they were not his first priority. A threat against the very man scolding his protective duties had coaxed Cloud back to the brink of battle.
It was a well-guarded secret that he loved Squall Leonhart. His first step was to rationalize it as pure animal attraction, a simple infatuation. The man was attractive; Masculine and still graceful, with a sharp mind and a strong body. He was the perfect portrait of a man, and the closest friend Cloud could ever claim to have.
There was a deeper connection, something more meaningful than a subconscious spark when their eyes met, or a desire to drive him into a mattress when he stood in his doorway just like that, half naked with water dripping from his hair and his hip curving just so.
He could live on Leon's words. The smooth voice, and everything it had to say, coming from equally perfect lips. He couldn't number the hours they'd spent at each others' sides, in or out of battle, and the synergy they'd attained was palpable.
He was most certainly in love with Leon, as he insisted to be called, and Cloud would not let Sephiroth lay a finger on this most precious person.
"People you care about?" Leon laughed at him, letting the towel drape around his neck again. "Like who, Cloud? If you cared about a damn person but yourself, you wouldn't be doing something this stupid. So tell me, who the hell is so important that you're going to go on some stupid suicide mission to save?" He stood, hips swaying just a bit as he retreated to the door. He waited for a moment in the frame again for an answer that did not come until he stepped out of it.
"You."
"Do you remember?" Laguna repeated his question, shaking Cloud from his reverie, "What you saw?"
"Just a stupid memory." The blond responded as his head hung low, "A fight with a friend." His eyes told the story better than his guarded words.
"Someone you love." His new-found companion pointed out. It wasn't a question, and Cloud didn't bother to deny it, though his shoulders slumped until his nose nearly touched his knees. This was the worst possible outcome, he had decided.
"Someone I meant to protect." he clarified, hopeful. If he could convince himself of a mission that required no confession, no words to the man who seemed to hold exactly the opposite feelings as he did, then he could do it. He could complete whatever it was that would lift this curse, and he could be free. "I need to protect him."
He wasn't convinced, and neither was Laguna, but the man seemed willing to give him the benefit of doubt. The elder stood, put on his most determined face, and pumped a fist in the air.
"In that case, we'd better get the hell out of here."