Challenge 200

[darklight90.livejournal.com]

Challenge: #200 All You Did Was Save My Life
Title: Of Things Intangible
Word Count: 541

All Leon has to do is close his eyes.

He falls, is suspended, and then flies through the air, ricocheting off stone walls, floors and ceilings. Superhuman is what he feels like. Mortal dread is what really fills him. He thinks he hears drums close to him, maybe the cavalry managed to arrive in the nick of time…

Then he realizes it’s his own heartbeat.

And then he walks, casually, as if it’s commonplace to wander about after an explosion (or is it implosion?) of sorts. He doesn’t feel pain, doesn’t feel the blood drying to form a crusted halo around his scalp. He wanders slowly, methodically, thinks he sees Yuffie in a flash before he blinks again. He could be dreaming, he reasons. That could be why he experiences but doesn’t feel. It’s a dream, he concludes, not an unfamiliar one either. This has happened before many a time when the pangs of solitude finally get to him.

Home seems a long way off yet he can still tug at the strings that tie him there. He’s not far but he is.

Leon wanders on, vision blurred and head cleared. He knows this place, has walked this path and anticipates what happens next like a punishment dealt to him so often that it doesn’t hurt as much as it should. The intangible can’t cut you in, he assumes and walks.

Apathetic, he runs ahead, impatient to meet his penance.

He knows he’s arrived at the sound of stillness, so fragile that his breath might shatter it. Dead silence, common among porcelain dolls and tea-cups left ignored in musty old sideboards. Dust gathers on the surface of the ground and rises as glowing static. He imagines that he sees her form in the haze, lifeless and unrelenting in her gaze. She is intangible, cannot be kissed goodbye or brought back to the living by force.

Leon doesn’t bother talking anymore. It’s enough that she can see his heart, half organ and half stone. He doesn’t bother with tears anymore, knowing that she can’t feel warmth any less than she can feel the cold confines of a makeshift grave. He sees eyes, lifeless but not dead eyes. He wants Aerith and her calm words of comfort, he wants Cloud and his physical aura of stillness, and he wants Yuffie and her pointless chatter. He knows he will get none until he awakes because this must be a dream, is it?

He doesn’t remember blood because she hadn’t any to be spilt.

He doesn’t remember a cry of pain because she couldn’t have felt any…

He wonders if he’s getting used to these nights when the silence hums so loud that his head aches to the point of surreal clarity. He wonders if Tifa will ever tire of him invading her eternal slumber as he wanders in on these nights when she is a mere shell of something as transient and make-believe as Light. Easy to find, as always. Too easy.

“All you did was save my life.”

His, not Cloud’s. Easy for her to make the wrong choice in the end.

With that, Leon tries his best for her to repent.

An alarm clock rings and the static clears from his eyes.

 

Comments

[iki-teru.livejournal.com]

This was so heartbreakingly sad. Like, really, it gave me chills. Your descriptions were gorgeous, and I can't even begin to pick out my favorite line because then I'd have like...90% of your drabble as "favorite lines".
and and and ;.; nope. I'm still rendered incoherent because of this.

<3 <3 <3

[darklight90.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks! That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me today :D.