It was imperfect unison the girls observed, but somehow a dance nonetheless. A side-step, a nod, accord but with an undercurrent of tension. Tifa would just shake her head and sigh, and Aerith smiled her mysterious smile. Yuffie asked questions loudly and perhaps that made it worse, but who was to know?

Because the dance carried on when they were alone, too, a furious tumult during sparring and something quietly awkward in between. Because they knew each other and it should have been only that.

At least, that was what Cloud thought.

He found himself leading because following made him stumble, but it was reckless nonetheless and that was why it was beautiful. Cloud himself had not been beautiful until he was broken, a decadent kind of beauty that haunted his eyes and his stance and the blood that was drawn sometimes.

But Leon was beautiful because he was whole. At least, that was what Cloud thought, and it frightened him.

So Leon was never allowed to catch up. Darkness, darkness, until it became an excuse and not a reason why Cloud would not meet his eyes or disappeared for weeks on end, returning bloody and exhausted. Until bloody and exhausted he was tired of leading and ready to end it but blue eyes were always watching him with something like pity. He didn’t want pity, but it was as if those eyes could think of nothing else to give.

Anger was better, it hurt like a clean wound that made him forget it could fester worse than pity ever would. Words like “trust” and “friends” cast down on the floor between them to be subject to merciless scrutiny; stepping around them was part of the dance, as were the heated words and cold silences.

Cloud thought the anger kept him safe. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

That gaze still burned him, the sound of heavy breathing over the clash of their blades made him shudder with a strange euphoria, and he did not understand how to close the distance between them if they were not meeting in violence.

Leon did.

Yet Leon knew distance too well, thought he liked it a little too much and felt the dull ache it caused was better than throwing yourself down defenseless at another person’s feet. He had decided that long ago with a scar and a name. He put his all into protecting, and that became all he knew.

Leon didn’t know how to dance anymore; he was out of his league.

But he was no fool, and he could see that it came down to a matter of wearing down the other’s patience. It was a battle he could fight. It was a battle he was so damn sick of fighting.

I’m the end of the line, Strife.

It was an answer to what am I searching for, and what is there to come home to, why shouldn’t I leave and what am I waiting for. Cloud could feel that like a blow to the stomach, an attack that broke his guard and sent him reeling, made him misstep. But Leon was right.

Cloud hated being defenseless more than anything; he had to close his eyes so as not to see the killing blow, fully expecting his own retort to be flung wild and leave him wide open.

So what the hell do you want!?

It did. Shredded him to pieces through the agonizing silence that followed.

You.

Stripped of all defenses, he realized how blind a single person could be.

And lowering the hand that shielded his face, he saw for the first time how much blue eyes spoke, an expression known as anger betrayed as so much more by what they said. Because things were never simple and maybe, just maybe there was something worth salvaging in the man who stood before him, the tale of his life written in the set of his jaw and everything he wanted in those eyes.

…me.

Still Cloud could not keep the disbelief from his voice; it was all too sudden for something he had known for what seemed like forever. And in a split second that expression softened, or maybe he only imagined it, wanted to be trusted for once with pain other than his own. Then blue eyes closed, as if to say enough, but for one more soft confirmation.

You. Madly.