A/N: Although I have another collection going, this is for the Live Journal community 50 Flavors. So, same style as before, and I hope you enjoy them. This one came to me rather suddenly so I went with it.
Remembering Rebirth
Theme #17 – A Dark Heart, Beating
Summary: At one time or another, there is a rebirth – a respite for even the darkest of creatures.
He was a man who the fates mocked and laughed – stealing the wide-eyed-ness of youth and leaving a jaded young man whose spirit seemed too old and too tired to continue on, but only did as a habitual arbitrary action. Living was just a punishment and while diplomatic means were more quiet means, combat offered the relief from the apathy from within. It gave way to a realm filled with the shadows of darkness and burning laces of gossamer crimson.
It was emotion, raw emotion with which he wielded his gunblade. Hatred, spite, anger. He would show them all. The fates would not control him – could not control him – and he would rise above them all, unrivaled. Not their better, but the destroyer of their preconceived notions about him. He would push himself to those ends, progress forward and not think, not look back.
If he kept moving, the nightmares would not be able to reach him, he thought. The haunted would stop being the Devil's hunted, and he, in turn, would be a dark-side raider.
Ignore the pain, ignore the emotion and he would reach the pinnacle, seeking his meaning, and finding he meant nothing alone.
He was a rogue, hell-bound solider.
As far as he was concerned, he was dark-death-bound – to the soul – from the day life had whelped him into existence.
But he was wrong. He was so very wrong.
He never reached the pinnacle. He'd faltered.
His breath caught short and eddies of the past rushed up to meet him as never before. It was too much – what he was, his truest form, his absolute destiny, he had sensed long before then – and he fell, plummeted down the ranks of opaque-eyed gods who had forced him that way from the day when he had stood on the porch of the orphanage and realized he was on his own.
The void was wrapping around him like a specter's long-awaited kiss and he had almost welcomed it when angel wings passed over him – pure light within the listless darkness. Kismet took hold at the first feather-brush, revealing a self that had lived long-dormant within.
His heart beat - a rebirth without parallel the nightmares now a dark heart's prophecy. The dark-side raider had become a dark knight.
And that was how Squall remembered meeting Rinoa Heartilly.