Rescue Me

Leon is back, with his FF8 fanfiction, as you may well have already noticed. There will be warnings at the start of the chapters if there is need of them, and I can't for the life of me think of anything else to say so I'll stop stalling and let you read.

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Rescue Me
Chapter 1
End of the Road

Life had lost its meaning. Nothing appealed to him anymore. He had nothing to look forward to.

Two months had passed since the fateful Ultimecia battle, and in those two months, his life fell to pieces around him.

Upon return to Balamb Garden, he felt none of the joviality that claimed his companions at the celebratory ceremony when he was officially declared commander of the establishment and rewarded for his successful completion of the mission against all odds, but that was nothing entirely new. He wanted to spend some time with Rinoa, show her that he did indeed feel something for her; only to her did he show any positive emotion and that certainly was new.

He felt no pride at having defeated the sorceress of the future, he’d only done as he was ordered, following out his orders with military precision and determination to see it through to the end...except the minor incidents involving Rinoa, though he now blamed his irrational behaviour on a lack of clarity at the time, even though he knew that he had only himself to blame for letting her get close to him.

Rinoa.

Quite literally, she had broken him.

Broken his heart and soul.

It had taken her a month to find someone else, find someone more responsive to her affections, someone who was more willing than the brunette had ever been to return the feelings.

He had finally begun to step out of his self-induced solitude, warming up to meet the new challenge of becoming closer to the raven-haired female, but she had grown impatient, not wanting to wait for the brunette to come to terms with his new feelings, she wanted more from him than he had been able to give and because of this, she just left. No goodbye, no note, no call.

For all he knew after she left, she could have been dead, and these days, the thought was not entirely unwelcome.

He had thawed the prison of ice that encased his heart only for it to be torn to shreds by her callous dismissal of him. He was open, vulnerable without his walls to hide behind and she’d taken advantage of that to break him before she disappeared from his life completely.


“Please! Can’t you spare a few hours to take me out for lunch?”

“I can’t Rinoa, I need to get these reports done by this evening and I won’t get them finished if I take you out. Can’t you wait just a little longer?

“But I hardly see you anymore! You’re always cooped up in your office doing paperwork! Is that what you’d rather be doing rather than spending time with me?”

“Rinoa, you have to understand that my job is important to me too...”

“Oh, so you’re choosing a stack of papers over me?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that-”

“Yes you did, I know you did.”

A tense and uncomfortable silence settled upon the pair, the Commander ceasing his written work to gaze at the woman he thought he loved, his beautiful blue/grey eyes betraying the hurt he felt at her words.

“I need some time to think, I’ll be back in a few days.”

She left his office without looking back, the brunette male staring after her, trying to find out why she took so much offence at his dedication to his job.


She had returned as she said she would, but the Commander had been away on business in Esthar and had no way of getting back to Balamb in time to meet with her. She’d obviously taken it as a rejection and disappeared, leaving the distraught male sat beside the phone in his dorm for hours on end in the hopes of receiving a call.

The call never came.

And the Ice Prince had returned.

He found out about her moving on by way of the Timber newspaper, the front cover displaying a picture of the new couple smiling happily as they stood before Caraway’s Mansion in Deling city, the headline reading:

‘MANSION PASSED ON TO LOVING COUPLE’

She was wearing an engagement ring.

It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and the brunette Commander had retreated into himself for protection. All the hard work everyone had done to coax the lion from his den of ice had been thrown away because one person had betrayed him.

He often felt that he’d only been setting himself up for a fall by allowing his cold exterior to be breached and frequently berated himself for being foolish enough to place his trust in another. He questioned his previous allowance of the ‘Orphanage Gang’ to get close to him, gradually tearing down his defences and making him see the world around him as if for the first time, without the barrier of insensitivity to shield him.

Over those two months, everything had gotten progressively worse until he could take it no longer. He’d neglected his duties as Commander, pushed his friends away and locked himself in his dorm, trying to escape his insecurities. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling these emotions; he should never have changed from the heartless SeeD he once was. Now he was more than that, Commander of the entire Garden, and no-one around him would let him return to his old life, always telling him that it would get better.

But it hadn’t.

And that was how he’d wound up in his current position, sat on his bed, the sparsely decorated room offering no comfort or protection, the plain grey walls and soft pale blue carpet seeming more hostile than welcoming. In his right hand was a small serrated blade, that he kept with him at all times, usually for self defence but this time, he had another use for it, his escape.

He stared at the blade for a considerably long time, watching a shaft of light that filtered through the gap in his curtains glint off the deadly weapon clutched tightly in a pale and slender yet calloused hand. He hadn’t eaten for days, nor slept, thus reducing his chance of survival should he be found, though he hadn’t talked at all to any of the ‘Orphanage Gang’ for days, the last thing he had said was:

“Leave me alone, it’s no business of yours any longer.”

A polite way of dismissing them as being no longer important to him, they had become insignificant in the tangle of hurt and inability to cope that had consumed their once fearless leader.

With any luck they wouldn’t come searching for him, hadn’t done since he said those cold and cruel words that so easily passed his lips.

The chocolate tresses that framed his delicate features were lank and held no shine, falling limply over eyes the colour of a stormy sky, though they too were dulled and no longer glowed with life as they used to, no longer held the depth they once did, the windows to his soul were concealed by a barrier that hid his emotions from view. Deep shadows rested beneath his haunting orbs as undeniable evidence that sleep did not come either easily or at all for the teenager. His unnaturally pale skin stood out starkly from his unchanged fashion sense of dark and brooding clothing and his already slender frame had further diminished due to his malnutrition and neglect of his body.

He reflected on the past week, his friends voicing their concern for him, only to be carelessly shunted by his bitterness. His rejection of the help they were more than willing to offer. His steady deterioration into suicidal depression.

Holding his left wrist firmly out before him, he positioned the sharp implement, poised above the veins that stood so clearly from his pallid skin. He would miss nothing of his life, and if those he once called ‘friends’ would miss him, then tough, they could befriend the next cold-hearted SeeD that came along for all he cared, as long as they left him alone.

The hand holding the knife shook with his anxiety as he questioned his actions again, but the line that marked his wrist was clean and straight, the lethal blade cutting easily into his tender flesh. Switching hands, the knife ate greedily into his skin a second time, spilling bright liquid life in a slow but steady stream onto the sheets surrounding him. The feel of the sharp metal blade scoring his wrists would be forever imprinted on his mind should he have the misfortune to survive his attempted suicide.

Dropping the bloodied knife to the floor, the broken male rested his head against the wall he was propped against and sighed, watching his life run from his wrists with a morbid kind of fascination. His body was so fragile, the candle of life so easily snuffed out that he couldn’t help but marvel at how pointless it was to try and stave off the inevitability that was death.

Darkness began to creep upon the edges of his vision as he continued to gaze at the seemingly incessant river of crimson that flowed from his wounds unrestricted but he forced his eyes to remain open, to observe the way his life just drained away.

A gentle breeze ruffled the curtains from his partly open window and a single solitary feather drifted in through the break of the drapes, floating above him, tracing unseen patterns through the air as it slowly drifted loser, descending to eye-level before him.

Wanting to reach up and close his fingers around the delicate object, he willed his arm to rise and extend towards the elusively drifting feather, but his body betrayed him, his arm remaining motionless at his side.

Glaring at the offensive limb, he felt his whole body becoming as heavy and weighted down as his the aforementioned arm, his eyelids drooping as the darkness threatened to completely envelop him, swathe him in its comforting offer to allow the brunette to release his grip on consciousness and slip further from his ‘companions’ than they could reach to bring him back.

This was what had become of the once proud and mighty lion, reduced to seeking a cowardly escape from the shattered remains of a once successful life. A life that had steadily deteriorated over a relatively short period of time due to innumerable problems and struggles that he no longer wished to face.

Squall Leonhart wanted to die; and if the crimson rivulets on his sheets and body and the silence within the corridor outside were anything to go by, it seemed as though he would get what he wished. It was the end of the road for him, a road he had seen no purpose in travelling to begin with.

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Me again! Please please please leave me some reviews, the more there are, the more likely I'll be to update as reader feedback really gives me a boost and if any questions need to be answered I shall do so at the start of the chapter following the review. And if anyone has any suggestions, then feel free to voice them. ^-^