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You are Leon.
You remember forgetting, life is funny like that, isn’t it?
Well, that and the fact that something is missing. You’re not quite sure what, but something is missing in Traverse Town. Your name, for one, you know it’s not really Leon.
But you know that you don’t remember your real name.
Aerith and Yuffie got to remember theirs.
It’s not fair, but, you’re certain you aren’t the type to whine about stuff like that. Or maybe you were. You aren’t now.
Now you’re the type to focus on the absence of something integral to you. You don’t know what it is. You know it’s gone, though. It’s gone and it’s absence aches like a rotted tooth every time you hold a gunblade, your gunblade.
Her name is Lion Heart.
And you decide her name is Lion Heart as you so easily wield her against a training dummy fashioned of logs of wood. It’s like scratching an itch, the way the wood chips apart under the aggression of each slash. You hate it.
Leon isn’t a fighter.
Leon is an idyllic quiet boy from a quiet town. Someone that protects people by helping them, not by hurting those who wronged them. Leon doesn’t fight.
Leon, which is who you are, left it all behind out of respect. Tried to sever it all from his brain the same way that Ifrit and Shiva and Leviathan did all those years ago. Shed all of it. Pluck it out of your psyche. Leave nothing behind but the basics.
You are not anything but Leon now.
You drop the gunblade at the door and ignore the way you feel light you’ve been robbed of something at the emptiness in your hands. Like you’ve lost a limb.
A weapon shouldn’t be so attached to Leon, so inseparable to him.
-/-/-/-
The autonomy that Traverse Town gifts you is suffocating.
What are you meant to do with it?
There is nothing here for you but peace, sorrow, and all the time in the world to let go.
-/-/-/-
You miss Zell.
You miss Irvine.
You miss Selphie.
You miss Quistis.
You miss Rinoa.
Fuck, you even miss Seifer, damn that bastard but you miss him. What you’d give to fight him one more time. Steel on steel, revelling in the adrenaline rush.
You roll over onto your side, away from the wall.
She is gleaming in the moonlight. As beautiful as the day you got her. Still perfectly weighted to match your own physical capabilities. Or maybe you’ve gone soft since Traverse Town, since becoming Leon, since you left him behind.
She calls to you like a sirens song.
How are you meant to deny her? Deny the last remnant of home? Deny Lion Heart?
Really, you aren’t.
And the second her leather handle is in your grip, you shiver with anticipation. Home is stored in her power, her strength, her violence. That is home. All the things you shouldn’t associate with home, you do.
It’s all stored in her.
Quistis, Seifer, Rinoa— oh, Lion Heart holds them for you. Their hearts helped sharpen the blade over the years spent with them. They helped sharpen you, too. Crack you open and leave you gasping for breath as soon as you could never have them back. You miss them.
Your steps are quieter than Yuffie’s as you sneak out to your hidden spot.
The only thing quieter than a ninja is its weapon, after all.
And you, Squall, are simply a weapon.
-/-/-/-
There is an orchard at the edge of the world. Full of apple trees and berry bushes. The only people who know of it are you and the animals, its been long since abandoned by the rest.
Everything is ripe when you show up. It perpetually is. You wonder if the grief of Traverse Town affects that, leeches into the ground, forces the planet to try and make people happy again by giving all it can offer. There’s probably someone who knows what you don’t, there always is.
Like the Sorceress Eda, your dear Matron.
You slash through the bush.
Bright bursts of red rush onto the blade like a wave to the sand. Striking against the cool silver tone, euphoric. Bits of leaves and branches cling to the sticky carnage of the the orchard as it all comes down under your pent up energy.
When Aerith seeks you out, she looks at you like you’re a rabid dog— like you’re exactly what you are.
Breathing heavy, body hunched, grinning euphorically as you tighten your grasp on her. It’s what you’re meant to be doing, meant to be. Blood and violence and there is no purpose for you outside of it, is there?
You still feel nothing but a rush of guilt at the fear on Aerith’s face.
What are you doing?
-/-/-/-
You are Leon, you remember leaving it all behind again. Purposefully locking it up. Asking Aerith to throw away the key for you.
Your hands yearn for violence, almost twice as much as your instincts.
But Aerith looks at you so softly and you know you can’t hurt her like Cloud did. You can’t leave her, or Yuffie, or any of Traverse Town, really, for the sake of your own indulgence. You would be no better than Seifer if you did.
You shouldn’t even think of his name.
Leon did not know Seifer.
Squall did. Squall knew Seifer and Rinoa and Quistis and Selphie and Zell and Eda. Squall knew you better than you ever will.
You are not Squall.
You are a simple townsman, idyllic and happy with a static life. Working on letting go and moving on. Reaching for the throat of instinct trained into you and digging in your claws until it stops breathing.
-/-/-/-
You’re in the orchard again.
Lion Heart in your hands. She’s perfect, you understand why you clung to her so deeply when everything else refused to stay alive in your memory. Why she is what remained in spite of it all.
She is covered in red.
Your face is covered in red.
Sweet and sticky and pleasant.
It stimulates a horrible part of your brain, one you should’ve killed.
You are Squall Leonhart, you are free only for tonight before Leon puts the collar back on.