Fandom: Kingdom Hearts [Final Fantasy VII + VIII]
Rating: PG-13, 15-ish
Status: One-shot
Pairing(s): Leon [Squall] + Cloud, Riku + Sora if you squint hard enough
Warnings: This fiction depicts male/male relationships in addition to slightly adult themes. You've been warned.
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and all related locations and characters do not belong to me. Seriously, if they did, I would have died of happiness by now. The only thing I lay claim to is the plotbunny that entered this world confused and disoriented, but eventually found its purpose by being overfed pellets and greens. *snuggles plotbunny*
Notes: Originally written and published in 2003, now with minor grammatical fixes.

A Matter of Time

"I thought I'd find you here."

He didn't need to turn around to know who the voice belonged to; though long years had passed, the familiar inflection in speech and the sound of quiet, even breathing remained so unchanged that it was really quite startling.

For a moment he simply stood, frozen in place beneath the bright flashing of neon lights, feeling as though the only thing still anchoring him to reality was the firm solidity of the pavement beneath his feet. Even then it would be so easy to attribute this entire scenario to a dream or even a hallucination of sorts, to pretend that the bitter wind that stung his cheek was merely a play of his unconscious mind, that the hairs prickling along the back of his neck were the product of feverish night sweats.

Still, the sound of footsteps approaching steadily closer from behind made said "hallucination" feel that much more real, that much more tangible, and he couldn't help but think that it wouldn't hurt to play along in this twisted trick of his mind and heart. Passing his tongue over dry lips, he managed to find his voice through breathlessness and spoke.

"How did you know I would be here?"

A stretch of silence followed those words, which had returned to his own ears thick with suppressed emotion and a feeling he could not yet identify. It sent an uncomfortable thrill down the column of his spine, to know that the mere proximity of this ghost from his past could wrench so much from within the layers of carefully constructed indifference and apathy. Unsettled, he shrugged closer into the warmed leather of his jacket and waited for the response that he was half-certain would never come.

"Word travels quickly by way of mouth… especially if that mouth happens to belong to certain childish Keyblade Masters."

He almost chuckled at this, the faintest trace of a smile quirking lips that were accustomed to the downward pull of a frown and the sideways tug of a sneer. It should have been obvious that, hallucination or no, that boy would have had something to do with this; after all, one didn't travel between worlds by way of Gummi technology without reporting the findings to inhabitants of other worlds. Still… questions bubbled up inside of him, questions that would more than likely remain either unasked or unanswered, questions that seemed insignificant in light of the fact this might not be a play of the mind after all. Slowly, with much deliberation, he finally spoke.

"You know him, then? Sora?"

The wind that stung at his cheek bit more harshly as the sound of footsteps moved even closer, almost as though the presence of this unexpected visitor caused an immediate drop in the temperature surrounding them. Strange, how the one that he remembered as being so skilled at igniting a burning heat in him could now cause the very air around him to chill in such stark contrast…

"He's difficult to miss. If that bubbly energy doesn't give him away, those two misfits he travels with do a fine job."

He closed his eyes then, wondering if he would ever find the strength to turn and face his other, or if it was actually strength that he was displaying simply by refusing to turn at all. Absently, he wondered whether or not the warm, calloused hands that he remembered so well would grasp his shoulders, or the back of his neck, coaxing him into facing pale blue eyes infused with an eerie gleam.

"They're the King's envoys, I'm sure you know." The words left his lips absently, automatically, never once belying the thoughts racing through his mind. "Apparently he has gone missing recently… for reasons he hasn't bothered to mention to anyone."

How they were able to maintain such a casual, off-hand conversation was entirely beyond him, as he had always pictured their meeting to be… less relaxed, more driven by emotions and memories of a time that seemed so far away. It was unsettling in its own way, the cool indifference in his own voice, the equal calm in the other's. He wanted to shake some feeling into that voice, force away the calm and embrace the storm, remind himself why he had been waiting for so long for this man, for this living ghost of his past.

The response came from a point just beyond his left shoulder, that familiar voice falling towards him almost wordlessly so that he could only really make out the sound of it, the rise and fall of the tone, the soft breath that hissed out from between lips to make those words possible. Whatever was said no longer mattered as much as the proximity at which it was uttered.

"I faced them at the Coliseum not long ago. The envoys… they make fine protectors, but the boy… he has true potential. It might have only been the power of the Keyblade channeling itself through him, but… he must have had an excellent teacher either way."

An excellent teacher, indeed, judging from the boy's frantic search for those he had lost. He could not be sure, but there was a certain air about the young Keyblade Master, an invisible aura of loss and desperation, the fierce determination of one seeking the only home he had ever known, within another person. He himself could relate to that desperate search, but secretly hoped that perhaps Sora would have the strength to not give up, to not cast off his lost one as a fragment of a forgotten past.

A fragment that would undoubtedly find its way back after years of haunting…

"He told you, then?"

He hadn't meant to jump to the question so quickly, but it had been burning on the tip of his tongue for quite some time now, begging to be let out into the open, a spark of his old curiosity returning. He had been in love with the idea of knowledge, once upon a time, flying through volumes and manuscripts as though they were nothing. Since that fateful day nine years ago, however… such knowledge had proven worthless, doing little to teach him how to cleanse his soul of its sin-stains or his mind of its haunting memories…

"He said to me…" And now there was actually a spark of… something making its presence known from underneath that calm exterior, an audible emotion somewhere between amusement and genuine fondness in the visitor's voice, " 'I've never faced anyone before who could give me such a run for my money… Well… maybe just one other person. But you probably don't know him, anyway… Leon doesn't seem like the type to have any friends outside of Traverse Town.' "

A slow, icy trail of guilt began its descent into the pit of his stomach at those words, guilt at not having looked hard enough when his other had obviously still been alive, guilt at having pronounced him dead even when, in the darkest innermost chambers of himself, he had still felt a connection to the man that had coiled around his heart and set fire to his entire world with a simple of brush of skin.

"How did you know it was me?"

Because I still felt you, somewhere inside. Because I never stopped looking for you. Because I had hoped that you had never stopped looking for me. Because nine years and six degrees of separation isn't forever.

Instead, the response he received was a simple, yet profound, "I trust what I feel, and I felt that it was you." The warmth of another's body heat emanated from an even shorter distance away, setting his skin alive with prickles and goosebumps that would not die down as the other continued, " 'Leon', is it now? Why did you do it? You were always so sure of yourself, so confident…"

Leon would have winced at those words had he not had that mask of indifference painted across his expression so expertly, yet the statement stung almost as harshly as the wind did, fresh shame rising from a dark place he had not let himself wander into for a long time. "Squall failed me," was the only answer his mouth could work into, an answer that would never convey enough, yet would convey everything he was willing - able - to say at that moment.

Squall failed me in failing you. He couldn't save you from the destruction, and he could not find you again after the smoke had cleared. In time he wanted to forget you, to erase your face from his mind and your existence from his memory… I am no longer that man. I can no longer be Squall Leonhart…

A long moment of silence, stretched into an abyss of wordlessness, until finally, "Is he dead, then?"

It was an unfair question, Leon decided in that moment. How dare he? How dare this specter of his past suddenly appear after nearly a decade of dormancy? How dare this man, who had been considered nothing short of dead or eternally missing, come back to prod at old wounds and tear them open to bleed freely again? How dare he question the feelings of a past life, of a past identity, of a man that Leon no longer knew how to be…?

It was fury that forced Leon's frozen limbs into motion, cold, blazing fury that caused him to spin around in place, stormy blue eyes burning a tumultuous gray at the sheer nerve of this…

…of this beautiful man who had not aged a day, whose impossibly cerulean eyes had not dulled save for the faint dwindling of their unnatural gleam, whose golden hair, silken to the touch, remained as unruly and as alive as the fire of determination that had always lain in wait just beneath the surface.

The image literally stole Leon's breath from him, whatever biting words he had been meaning to say falling dead from his lips as his eyes took in the familiar and yet foreign vision, fingers aching to reach out and thread through locks of silver-gold, to press against pale cheeks, to simply feel the reality of what he was seeing. It was not enough, would never be enough to simply see when it came to Cloud Strife; the distant otherworldliness about him left so strong an impression that he never seemed as though he quite existed.

"Nine years," found its way to Leon's lips when at long last he could breathe again, two words declaring a lifetime's worth of sorrow and emptiness, an eternity's worth of lonely nights and meaningless days. He had forgotten how to love since then – if ever he had loved at all – but the surge of warmth that flooded his very being and froze him with its intensity made him acutely aware of the fact that everything he had ever felt was connected to this man, to Cloud and his distant eyes, cerulean orbs that held the world within.

"Nine years," Cloud echoed, and his eyes, with the intensity of a cloudless sky set ablaze by the sun, seemed to drink in the sight of him, recognizing every familiar crease of skin and memorizing every new line added by the passage of time, searching for the traces of the man he had once known, of the man he had shared blood and sweat and small pieces of eternity with.

Overwhelmed by the desperation with which the other searched his face and burned into his eyes, Leon shifted his gaze to a point beyond Cloud's armored shoulder, keeping the image of his blurred figure within the edge of his vision without fully focusing on it; old wounds were already casting aside their stitches, bleeding fresh anew, and it was only with the utmost of strength that Leon was able to keep from showing how heavy a toll nine years of separation had taken on him.

"You won't look at me," Cloud murmured at last, voice threaded with a pained conviction that did not seem his own, and yet Leon could not bring himself to fully face him, uncertainty as strong within him as the guilt had been only minutes before. It had been far too long… too long without one another, and something inside of Leon made him want to turn and walk away, bury this one shred of his past in its rightful place once and for all and force himself to sever all ties with his painful history.

Their world was in ruins, their faith and hopes having been crushed and devoured by the Heartless… and yet here stood a reminder of that time, a living, breathing reminder of a time when he had not been afraid to feel, and had been punished for his brashness by experiencing the very depths of pain. It would be so much easier if he could simply turn and walk away… Cloud would not call for him, he was sure of it, because it simply was not in his nature to trace the steps of one who had willingly left his side.

And yet… and yet, even when Leon had buried his memory and lit candles of his passing within his mind, Cloud had traced his steps, had followed him through worlds and into the present. Cloud, who would never have called out to him in the past had he turned away from him, had traveled from light years away simply to confirm what his thoughts had pieced together: that Leon was alive, that Leon was well, that Leon may still have been looking for him as well.

Cloud still had faith in him.

"I can't look at you," was the breathless whisper that escaped Leon's lips at last, a simple declaration of his own overwhelmed emotions, of a man who no longer remembered what such emotions could feel like. It had been so, so long since he had felt anything at all that was not tied to the heat of the battle or the stagnant silence of solitude, so long since chilling heat had permeated the layers of indifference and coldness.

He thought he felt the almost nonexistent brush of Cloud's mouth against his then, the faintest whisper of a touch that, even with its soft simplicity, sent his blood racing and his heartbeat pounding. How could he ever have forgotten this…? Gloved hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, until at last there was a world and a half between them again waiting to be crossed, and suddenly his fingers threaded forcefully within silver-gold strands was not enough, kissing blindly into oblivion was not enough, feeling hands on his waist, against his back, lost in his thick brown hair was not enough… nothing was enough, and yet it was everything he could have ever hoped for, everything he could still remember, everything he had forced himself to forget.

There was an urgency with which Cloud kissed him that he had never felt with anyone before, a desperation in his fingertips that heated whatever spots of skin he touched, branding himself silently, invisibly onto Leon, every piece of their embrace seeming slow and everlasting for all of the uncontrollable urgency that was poured into it. It was a painful sort of bliss, to know that at any moment it would be over, and when next they looked into each other's eyes, they would be mere strangers again, twisted and held apart by the years that had separated them.

And so it was Leon that broke the embrace first, even though the hands in his hair were clenched possessively, and his own were, in turn, still clinging firmly to the waist of the other, enough to leave behind hints of bruises across the skin beneath clothing. He had meant to draw away completely in that instant, to untangle himself from this web of familiarity, to save himself before he could fall even farther in, but his body seemed to remember this warmth, this intensity, and did not seem to want to give it up.

They stood then, silver-gold and deep, rich brown illuminated beneath the shimmer and flicker of artificial neon lights, wild pinks and fluorescent indigos reflecting off of armor and belt loops and eyes, painting a picture of the past with their glow. It felt dreamlike, Leon thought, listening to the eerie silence of twilight and a pattern of breathing he had all but memorized. And yet…

And yet the time simply wasn't right. There was still so much that was wrong, not only with the world that they stood in now, but also with those that lay long distances away, so many battles left to fight and wring triumphs from, revenge waiting to manifest itself onto a leader that had betrayed their trust and had destroyed the only home they had ever known. As much as Leon would have wanted to simply stand this way for all of eternity, he knew deep within that the time was not right. Not when there was still so much left to do… He wanted to be able to face this man again, on the day when sunlight would finally break through the everlasting twilight of Traverse, on the day when he could rid himself of his anger and of his need for vengeance, on the day when he could once more reclaim his name and his identity without shame.

That day would still be many moons away.

"Cloud…"

The slow slip of fingers from within his hair made Leon cringe and want to take them into his own hands, just to keep that electric contact alive in one way or another. Common sense, however, stilled his own fingers, which clenched briefly, possessively, before falling away from that cloth-covered waist. So they had reached the same conclusion… it never ceased to amaze Leon just how in tune he was with his other, despite everything that continued to stand between them.

Cloud was looking at him now, studying the expression on his face as though to etch it into his mind for safekeeping, and he found himself doing the same, memorizing lines and traces, the glimmer of starlight against the dip of that beautiful face, the fluorescence of neon lighting reflected back at him through glowing blue eyes. He would hold this image with him until the day when things were made right again and he could face this man without fear of being haunted by his past… and if that day were to never come… well, he would at least hold this image until it faded with sorrow and age.

"I'll come back." It was a softly spoken declaration, one which Leon could have sworn he had imagined if not for the shadow of a smile passing Cloud's face and settling somewhere in his eyes. An understanding. An affirmation. A promise.

I'll come back… but only if you wait for me.

It was difficult to look at him suddenly, difficult to convince himself that this was not a dream, that Cloud was here in the flesh, when in no time at all he would be gone again, not by choice, not by force, but by circumstance. Leon opened his mouth, wanting to say something, wanting to hold Cloud to his promise, or hold Cloud to him, but the words had already failed him, falling dead from his lips.

Surprisingly enough, that hint of a smile never left Cloud's eyes, intensifying instead as though he knew Leon's answer without needing to hear it; that he would wait, that he would remain where he was, that he wouldn't give up on him again. That the next time he returned to him would be for good.

He found, moments later, that he wanted to say something even though Cloud could read him simply by looking into his eyes. He wanted to say something meaningful, something that would stay with the other man for a long time to come, something that he had never said before. Something real.

Again it was Cloud who took the initiative, tossing back his wine-colored cloak so that it fell across one shoulder and shielded his left side from the biting wind of twilight. "Take care of them." It was a simple, genuine request, one which made Leon acutely aware of the fact that the responsibility he had given himself those nine years ago was now being handed to him by the one person he had not been able to protect. It was a twisted sort of irony in hearing those words spoken by that voice, and again Leon felt that he could no longer look into that face, into those eyes.

His voice, however, decided that moment would be best to betray him. "I will." At last Cloud nodded, shifting the nape of the cloak so that it now covered the lower portion of his face, leaving only those haunting eyes and few inches beneath them visible. It almost seemed as though he were withdrawing into himself through that simple action, as though he was already slipping further away without having even moved a step back…

"I won't tell them you were here," Leon found himself stating as though it were important; some tiny part of him knew that they had reached that silent agreement upon first laying eyes on each other that night. Again Cloud nodded, and with a detached sort of fascination Leon watched as his other withdrew a twisted, metal claw from within the folds of his worn uniform, affixing it with an expression of utter blankness onto his left hand. When he opened his mouth to question him on it, Cloud seemed to sense the oncoming inquiry, because he glanced up briefly and spoke, his voice tight with strained emotion, "You weren't the only one that died nine years ago, Squall."

Leon could do no more than stare as the blonde turned slowly away from him, having suddenly become a completely different person in the space of a few moments. The warmth of his body heat had completely dissipated, replaced instead by the cold, unforgiving aura of a warrior, and there was a grim determination etched into his movements, as though upon his shoulders rested a permanent burden that he had all but accepted through time. It pained Leon to see him this way, and though his mouth burned to call to Cloud's retreating back and his legs begged him to give chase, his mind would allow no such thing.

The images that rose unbidden into his mind's eye kept him anchored to the ground upon which he stood: a girl with bright brown eyes and short, unkempt hair spilling over her forehead and into her face, a gruff, older man with lines of experience etched into his features and the mischievous twinkle of youth still lingering in his eyes, a woman with eyes carved of deep jade and the voice of an angel… these kept him where he stood, living, breathing reminders of his responsibility here.

He would stay, for them, because he could not afford to lose anyone else… and because he had made a promise, a promise which now bound him to a man whose retreating form he could no longer see. He would stay, and he would wait, wait for the day when things would be made right again. Someday… but certainly not today.

With a tiny exhalation of air that froze his breath in silver mist, Leon finally turned away from the spot where his sole reminder of the past had stood, letting his instincts lead him past neon lights and cracked stone steps to the place he now called 'home'. When he did finally reach that small house, with its warm, cheery windows and its tiny, welcoming doorway, he would not mention the vision of haunting blue eyes and silken gold hair still dancing in his mind. He would not let those happy, blissfully unaware faces, nor their light, idle chatter, force him to remember the somber expression of one who spoke far less but evoked infinitely more emotion. He would simply remind himself that, after enduring nine years of separation, another short eternity would not be impossible to tolerate.

It was only a matter of time.

END.