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million_points_of_light2012-04-02 02:45 am
got_it_memorized) wrote in million_points_of_light2012-04-02 02:45 am
KH3D fic thing that is all Ana's fault.
It had been like a bad dream. Frankly, at all kind of felt like a bad dream at this point--had any of it been real? Had a single truthful thing met his ears since he'd joined the Organization? He had believed in them once, believed that they could complete Kingdom Hearts, get their hearts back, go on their merry ways; believed that he and Isa would go back to being best friends, like they'd always been.
He had been naïve--so naïve.
The imagery wouldn't stop playing through his mind. The figure in the throne, the way it leapt at him, the familiar shape of the weapon it manifested... The way the hood fell back to reveal that shock of blue hair he knew so well. The dead look in those gold eyes. He had known--Lea had known Isa had been lost. Saïx had nearly killed him, that day on the beaches of Twilight Town; he had never really expected to get him back after that. It wasn't until his breath had caught in his throat and he'd felt like he was going to throw up right then and there on that throne in the Round Room that he realized he'd still sort of hoped he would get him back.
It had been so easy, once upon a time. They hadn't had hearts, so they didn't have to acknowledge feelings. Everything they thought they felt were just memories! Nothing was real anymore! Nothing had consequences, least of all moral ones. It had been awful and simple, and something in him had relished in the candor and clean lines of it all. Walking down those familiar old streets in Radiant Garden, though, Lea was still reeling from the idea that it had all been a lie.
He should have known, really. He had always suspected Xemnas had some other agenda, that they were nothing but pawns to him. Really Saïx was the only reason he'd stuck around, kept his nose clean, and when Roxas and--and? What 'and'? There had only been Roxas, right? When Roxas had entered the picture, well... by then he'd been at it so long he wasn't even sure when he was lying anymore.
Seven Lights and Thirteen Darknesses, huh?
Lea frowned down at his hand, sort of flexing his fingers. If someone had told him even a year ago that one day he would have a Keyblade of his own, he probably would have laughed hysterically. He was no hero; he couldn't even keep his friends safe, right? But there it had been: curved and spiny and all bright reds and oranges and prickly sharp edges... Somehow it suited him. Even now he was almost afraid to try and call it to his hand, as if it would suddenly refuse to manifest, rejecting him. He still wasn't sure what he'd even done to deserve such a thing, but he supposed if he was 'destined' to be one of those Seven Lights, well... he could live with that. Not everything was set in stone, of course, but this was a sort of kismet he could deal with. Maybe being one of the good guys was worth more than he'd been giving it credit for, right?
It certainly beat being one of the bad guys. Somehow he had a feeling he was going to have a lot of explaining to do to Kairi, though. She had a Keyblade too, right? She was probably going to embed it in his skull.
Rounding a corner, Lea gasped and staggered backward as he collided with another figure. Idiot, he thought, watch where you're going--!
Catching himself on the side of the building, Lea glanced up and started to mutter a begrudging apology, and then coughed halfway through as everything behind his ribs seized up painfully. She was broadly built, with strong shoulders and capable hands, and her hair was long and straight, tumbling in a powder-blue cascade down her back.
No way. It couldn't be...
"I'm so sorry," the woman said in a rush, dropping to her knees to pick up her scattered groceries. "I wasn't paying attention at all; that was entirely my fault. You're not hurt are y--" She lifted her eyes and her words died on her lips as she regarded Lea a moment. Her green eyes narrowed and she tilted her head to one side a bit. "... Have we met?" she asked carefully.
Lea snapped out of his stupor and quickly took to a knee, collecting the rest of the groceries and placing them back in her bag for her. "Ah... maybe," he said vaguely. "I've been out of town for a while."
She picked up the bag and rose to her feet as he did, her eyes never leaving his, and then she made a soft 'hmm' sound.
"You look a lot like someone I used to know," she said, and Lea rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
Somehow he had never expected to run into the people he'd known long ago, even though logically he knew they would still be here. Most of the people who had been lost to darkness when the world fell had been restored, but of all the people he could have run into, the idea of encountering Isa's mother had never once entered his mind.
"I've just got, ah, one of those faces," he hedged, stooping to retrieve a wayward can of soup and dropping it carefully into her bag.
His eyes skirted past hers--he couldn't quite handle her stare. Isa had always resembled her more than he'd resembled his father, Lea had thought, but somehow the similarities were even more apparent now. She had that same dubious look on her face that Isa had worn so often, and he couldn't meet her eyes.
Clearing his throat awkwardly, Lea moved quickly past her, waving a hand over his shoulder in valediction. "Take care around those corners," he called, and hurried down the street, ducking his head, his hands in his coat pockets. Maybe coming here hadn't been such a good idea.
Lea's first stop had been the castle: ground zero. He wasn't sure why he wanted to go back and look at it now, but as he stood there at the bottom of the stairs that led up to those great blue doors that had seemed so much bigger eleven years ago, he thought that nothing really made much sense anymore. There he was, standing at the foot of the place where this whole messy business had started now that everything had come full circle, and he felt... nothing. He felt absolutely nothing. He had expected anger, resentment, indignation, hatred, for that teetery old tower that had been the birthplace of all of his problems, but he just didn't feel anything.
Certainly he'd been there when he'd woken up, been there in the basements talking with the others; it wasn't like this was the first time he'd been back. It was, however, the first time in eleven years he had looked on the great rusted old structure with the eyes of someone whole. Not just someone human, not just someone with a heart, but someone with a purpose. Maybe he hadn't been so empty before anyway, but now that he knew for sure his heart was there, that his feelings were real, and that his existence wasn't so meaningless after all, he had somehow expected the castle to evoke some kind of emotion. When it didn't, Lea just shrugged and shoved his hands back into his pockets and headed back into town.
He hadn't even climbed the steps.
His old house looked just the way he remembered it. It was a little older now, a little more run-down, but the house hadn't really changed. It was tall and narrow; two floors, like the other ones alongside it, smashed into nice neat rows down the sidestreet. He remembered thinking their house was the best on the block because it was the only blue one. Blue had always been his favorite color.
Lea's gaze slid to the unit beside his, and all those feelings of regret and morose nostalgia he had been expecting to bubble up into his blood at the sight of the castle instead boiled beneath his skin as he traced the lines of the white shutters on the grey house.
'What're you doing in my yard?'
'It's not your yard, your yard starts at that bush over there.'
'But that isn't evenly divided!'
'... Well, I guess I can give you 'til this flowerbed here, if you really want it. But only 'cuz you're new here.'
'Thanks... I think.'
'You just moved in yesterday, didn't you?'
'Yeah. My name's Isa; what's yours?'
'Lea! If we're gonna be neighbors, you better commit it to memory.'
He could still hear it like it had been yesterday instead of two lifetimes ago. Isa's house still looked the same, too, with its pearl-grey siding and stark white window edges. The grey looked darker than he remembered, shaded and stained with age, but Isa's mother had been very meticulous; she couldn't stand it when the windows looked dingy. The creeping ivy had grown exponentially over the years, its dark green fingers actually snaking over onto Lea's old house here and there. Somehow that made his gut squelch, as if even Isa's house had somehow been trying to hold onto what they'd had in the past, unwilling to fall into shadow alone.
Lea's eyes swung up to one of the windows on the second floor, and he frowned a bit. Isa's old bedroom--he wondered if it still looked the same. What had their parents done, he wondered, when they woke up after the town had been restored (in a manner of speaking) only to find that... some people hadn't come back? Had they even realized any time had passed? Did they just wake up one morning to find that their children were gone? That the people whose hearts hadn't been saved had just vanished into thin air? Had there been an investigation, or had they simply been... forgotten, only to seep to the surface at specific stimuli?
Now he really did wonder if Isa's room was the same. Had his parents gotten rid of his things, wondering why they had a room set up for a child they didn't have?
Glancing over his shoulder to make sure there was no one in the immediate area, Lea swiped a hand through the air to summon a corridor of darkness and stepped through, emerging into the doorway of the room where he had spent so much of his childhood.
The carpet was a nondescript beige, the walls plain white, without posters but dotted with shelves lined with books. There was a bed tucked neatly in the corner and a desk opposite, with a stack of notebooks and a can of perfectly sharpened pencils atop it. It looked... exactly the same as the last time he'd seen it, standing in that doorway eleven years ago, scolding Isa for being so slow putting his shoes on. He hesitated in the doorway a moment, then stepped inside, flinching as if expecting to be struck or ejected from the room somehow. When nothing happened, he moved to the bedside and leaned over to pick something up from the night table.
It was a tiny wooden birdhouse. He and Isa had each made one and painted it when they were about eleven years old. Isa's was a clean white with a dark blue roof and a bright red door, but Lea's had been obnoxious orange and blue and yellow. A bitter chuckle escaped his lips. Isa had said it was hideous, but insisted that they keep each other's instead of keeping their own. The neon blue roof on the orange-and-yellow spotted house was pretty hideous; why the hell had Isa kept it?
Setting the birdhouse down Lea turned his eyes to the bookshelves then, walking across the room to reach for one of the books with a thick tan spine. It was an old photo album; he remembered how excited he had been after getting a roll of film developed. He and Isa had spent the entire afternoon labeling the backs of the pictures and putting them into the book.
He held the album in his hands a moment, almost afraid to open it, like the memories would escape and evaporate if he did. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he flipped open the cover. A sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff tore from his throat then as the album fell open to a page about in the middle. He was wearing a big floppy hat that was about four sizes too big for his head and trying to shove a corndog in Isa's mouth. They had been at the fair that day, and despite wearing that stupid hat all day he had gotten ridiculously sunburned. Isa had yelled at him, something about what an idiot he was for forgetting to wear sunscreen.
Lea closed the book and shoved it back in its place quickly, something aching suddenly in his throat. He squeezed his fingers around the spine of the album until they ached.
Where the hell had he gone wrong? How had Xemnas--no, Xehanort--broken Isa so badly? Isa had always been the smart one, the logical one, the one with a plan and a strategy and a direction. Lea had been the one who was all over the place, with no rhyme or reason or worry for the consequences of his actions; why had Isa been the one to fall? Why not him? Why not the reckless one? Why not the careless fool who was only interested in making the biggest possible spectacle so he was remembered forever? Was it because he hadn't tried hard enough to save him? Was it because he hadn't pressed him hard enough after they'd joined the Organization? Because he just turned a blind eye to the fact that Saïx was so different instead of demanding to know what happened to cause it?
I ought to be able to share all this with Saïx, but I just don't feel like it anymore. It's strange, but I'm content with just missing what's gone.
I'm not the one who changed. You did.
Was it his fault? Was it Lea's fault?
With a cry, he tore the book from its shelf again and hurled it across the room. The album bounced and the pages slapped together angrily, knocking a few of the pictures loose from their corner sleeves and spewing them out onto the carpet. His hands closed in tight fists, Lea glared at the photos, like maybe he could scare them into giving his friend back, and then he dropped to one knee to pick one up from the floor.
They were about fifteen in this one, eating ice cream in the square. That nutsy old duck with the funny accent had taken their picture after they became his 100th and 101st customers. That had been three days before Garden had fallen.
That was the last picture they'd taken together.
"I thought that was you."
Lea was so startled by the sound of a voice in the doorway that he actually let out an unbecoming yelp and pitched backward onto his rump. Eyes wide, he stared at the figure in the shadows of the entry, then looked away when Isa's mother reached inside to turn on the overhead light.
"It is you, isn't it?" she asked, not moving from the doorway but taking a moment to really look at him now under the scrutiny of the light in the ceiling. "No one else ever had hair that red; not even your mother," she said, and her voice was somehow an acquittal rather than damnation as she concluded, "Lea..."
He flinched anyway. Everything in him, every fiber of his being, was screaming at him to run, to open a corridor and just get out of there, to flee before he had to explain himself, but he just couldn't move. There, sprawled awkwardly on the floor of his old best friend's room in the town he'd grown up in, Lea found himself completely and utterly defenseless and rooted to the spot, all because a woman he had once loved like his own mother had called his name.
"Still have that temper," she said with a click of her tongue, breezing into the room and taking to one knee to pick up the fallen photo album, collecting the photos that had been tossed about. Sitting on her knees she carefully replaced each one as Lea looked on in silent incredulity, as if he couldn't believe he was just sitting here watching this happen. It was like he was somewhere else outside his body looking on--he just couldn't wrap his brain around why he couldn't move.
She reached the last page and noticed one more picture was missing, and looked over at him. Her eyes were so green, he mused inanely. The same shade Isa's had been once. She extended her hand and Lea flinched again, squeezing his eyes closed. Suddenly he felt like he was fifteen all over again and had just been caught sneaking out late.
She just huffed. "Oh for crying out loud, I just wanted the photo," she said stiffly, putting her hands on her hips. "I'm not going to hit you. You're an adult now, aren't you?"
Was he?
Lifting his eyes Lea met her gaze briefly, then found himself looking everywhere but at her. There were no words for what he had done, no words he could give her to explain. There was no way to apologize for this--how did you tell a mother that you had just let her son slip through your fingers because you were too busy to pay attention?
There was a long, heavy silence, and Lea found himself watching the orange light of sunset draw long rectangles across the carpet until Isa's mother spoke again.
"We thought you were dead," she said, and Lea made a choking sound, turning to look at her once more. She had the faintest hint of a smile on her face, but her eyes were melancholy. "I still don't know everything that happened--I didn't want to," she admitted, closing the photo album and setting it aside. "All I know is... we spent a long time dreaming, and then when we woke up, some of us weren't here anymore." Her eyes fell to her lap, where her hands were threaded together. "You and Isa... weren't here anymore."
"Ma'am, I--"
She laughed brightly, cutting him off, and Lea could swear there was a grain of anguish somewhere in the sound. "Oh please, Lea, you're not fifteen anymore," she said; "you can call me Rina."
His mouth hanging slightly ajar at the mere idea of this, Lea just shook his head slowly. "I can't," was all he said, and she sighed. She sighed the way Isa had always sighed when he was being thick.
There was another protracted length of silence, and the golden rectangles on the floor faded to silver lines on the ceiling from the streetlights outside.
"Is he dead?"
Her voice felt like a punch in the throat.
"You don't have to tell me how or when," Rina said, wringing her hands, "but... I've wondered for so long, you know? That's the worst part, is the not knowing." She inhaled haltingly, then continued, "I told myself that maybe he just got lost coming back. If we all vanished into nothingness and came back, maybe he's just late." She attempted to chuckle but it came out more like a sob, and Lea clenched his jaw. "I wondered if maybe you got lost, actually," she added, lifting her eyes to him again, "and... maybe Isa had to go after you, and that's... that's why he was so late. Why both of you were so late coming home."
"Heh, that's... the ironic part," Lea said suddenly, shaking his head: "I'm... not the one who got lost."
Rina fell silent. Lea shifted where he sat, folding his legs up and planting his palms on his ankles. He stared at his heels, unable to meet her eyes.
"He's not dead," Lea assured her, still staring at his heels, "but he's definitely lost." He chuckled bitterly and then cleared his throat. "He's... he's real lost."
"I see." Rina was wringing her hands again. Lea impulsively reached out and closed one long hand over her fingers then, and Rina jumped, snapping her chin up and meeting his eyes.
"I'm... gonna find him, though," Lea said, and Rina's lips parted in something amid surprise and uncertainty. "After everything he..." He shook his head. "All those times Isa pulled me out of trouble before I drowned, all those times he came after me when I was about to do something really stupid... if I bail on him now then I never had any right to call him my friend at all, did I?"
Rina glanced down at Lea's hand over hers, then looked back up at him, her eyes haunted. Lea pulled his hand away and braced a palm on his thigh, pushing himself to his feet. Reaching down, he offered to pull Rina up.
She peered owlishly up at him a moment--"Goodness, you've gotten tall."--and then she took his hand tightly. He'd almost forgotten how firm a handshake she'd always had.
Tugging her upright, he gave her a determined look. "I'm not sure what I came here for," he admitted haltingly. "I told myself I wasn't ever going home until I'd fixed everything I'd screwed up, but I'm starting to wonder if that's even possible." Xion and Roxas were still locked away in Sora's heart, Isa was so far gone Lea wasn't even sure he could save him... Despite having joined a team, Lea had really never felt so alone before. "I guess I just wanted to see this place one last time."
"I'm glad you did," she said. "At least I know now. I know he'll be all right."
Lea exhaled in a whuff. "I think you're putting a little too much faith in me," he admitted, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.
"If anybody can find him while he's lost, I think you can," Rina said honestly then, and Lea glanced down at her, surprised. Her smile didn't look so hollow anymore. "You always knew how to get through to him, even when no one else knew what was going on in that head of his."
"I'm not so sure about all that," he said, sort of flapping his arms helplessly at his sides, "but... I think I owe it to him to try."
He lowered his eyes again, catching a glimpse of that photo still on the floor by his feet. Crouching to retrieve it, he rubbed a gloved thumb over the edge of it, then rose to hand it back to Rina.
"Keep it," she said, and his eyebrows shot up.
"Ma'am?"
She laughed a fragile laugh and he guess she figured old habits would always die hard. Waving her hands then, she shook her head. "I have the rest of the book," she said; "so... you keep that one. Just in case you need a reminder of what you're looking for."
Lea gawped at her a moment, then tore his eyes away when they started to sting. Dammit, he wasn't sentimental, what the hell was going on? With a sharp, audible exhale, he slid the photo into the pocket of his coat and squeezed his eyes closed a moment, a very distinctive crinkle between his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose as he took a moment to compose himself. He wasn't sure what he'd come here for, but he thought maybe he'd found it, whatever it was.
Smearing his hands down his face, Lea tugged at his chin with one hand and then awkwardly scratched the crown of his head.
"I should go," he said suddenly, and Rina nodded. He looked apprehensive then. "Ah... don't..." He hesitated, then glanced over his shoulder as if the house next door might hear him. "I mean, my folks..." Light, were they even still alive?
"I won't tell them," Rina said, and his shoulders sagged a bit in unvoiced relief. It wasn't 'I can't tell them', and that was enough. Rina squared her shoulders and pointed at Lea then, mustering a stern look. "But you'd better bring my son home, Lea. I'm counting on you."
Lea hesitated for a moment. Usually he shied from responsibility for fear of disappointing people. He wanted to be remembered forever, but not for being a failure. It was better to surprise people with success, than to disappoint them with a job poorly done. If there was one thing Lea had learned, however, after everything that had happened over the past several years, it was that there was one thing he was always ready to risk everything for.
"I will," he said, straightening his back a bit and lifting his chin. "No matter where he winds up, I'll bring him back." A nod, and his eyes were severe. "I promise."
It was what he did best, after all.
Rina smiled then, nodding in return, and turned toward the door. She paused in the doorway and cast a disapproving frown toward him. "You should stay for dinner," she said; "you're still too skinny."
Lea couldn't help himself and just laughed, a hand over his face. For all he had spent those years in the Organization clinging to the memories of what family had felt like, nothing was quite as powerful as being reminded, and if he didn't laugh he wasn't sure he wouldn't weep, and that just wasn't an option. Still covering one eye with his palm, Lea shook his head.
"Tell you what," he said; "when I find Isa and get his head screwed back on straight, we'll both stay for dinner."
"You've got yourself a deal."
And with that, Rina vanished into the hallway, and Lea sank slowly onto Isa's bed, just sitting there a moment with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He stared at the floor between his feet a moment, then took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled.
Get going, he told himself then, and got to his feet. Summoning a corridor of darkness, he watched the black and indigo smoke whorl in the center of Isa's room, a smear of shadow beneath the light in the ceiling, and frowned. Did he still belong in that darkness? He had a Keyblade now... didn't those two things counteract each other? Could he really have both? Could he wield light and darkness at the same time? Would he lose that light if he kept dabbling in shadow? Would he fall the way Isa had?
A grin cracked his features then. If that Riku slacker could handle both, surely he could, right? He didn't have to be afraid of losing his way anymore. He knew where he was going now; Isa was depending on him, whether he realized it or not. He patted the photograph in his pocket and stepped through the corridor, leaving little more than a whisper behind in that old bedroom.
More important than being remembered, maybe, was the knowledge your friends could depend on you. He would always be there to bring them back, no matter how dark the road or how far they strayed. That was his mission now, and Axel had never once blown a mission.
Lea wasn't about to start.
so. fun fact. "Isa" isn't an actual name i could find anywhere, but it could easily be a variation on "Isaiah", which is an extremely Hebrew name. so Isa is now Jewish forever in my headcanon. thus i poked through some other Hebrew names to find a name for his ma; settled on Rina, as it kind of fit a pattern. KH tends to have short names that are unusual but don't sound weird, so it seemed like a good choice. it means 'joy'.
He had been naïve--so naïve.
The imagery wouldn't stop playing through his mind. The figure in the throne, the way it leapt at him, the familiar shape of the weapon it manifested... The way the hood fell back to reveal that shock of blue hair he knew so well. The dead look in those gold eyes. He had known--Lea had known Isa had been lost. Saïx had nearly killed him, that day on the beaches of Twilight Town; he had never really expected to get him back after that. It wasn't until his breath had caught in his throat and he'd felt like he was going to throw up right then and there on that throne in the Round Room that he realized he'd still sort of hoped he would get him back.
It had been so easy, once upon a time. They hadn't had hearts, so they didn't have to acknowledge feelings. Everything they thought they felt were just memories! Nothing was real anymore! Nothing had consequences, least of all moral ones. It had been awful and simple, and something in him had relished in the candor and clean lines of it all. Walking down those familiar old streets in Radiant Garden, though, Lea was still reeling from the idea that it had all been a lie.
He should have known, really. He had always suspected Xemnas had some other agenda, that they were nothing but pawns to him. Really Saïx was the only reason he'd stuck around, kept his nose clean, and when Roxas and--and? What 'and'? There had only been Roxas, right? When Roxas had entered the picture, well... by then he'd been at it so long he wasn't even sure when he was lying anymore.
Seven Lights and Thirteen Darknesses, huh?
Lea frowned down at his hand, sort of flexing his fingers. If someone had told him even a year ago that one day he would have a Keyblade of his own, he probably would have laughed hysterically. He was no hero; he couldn't even keep his friends safe, right? But there it had been: curved and spiny and all bright reds and oranges and prickly sharp edges... Somehow it suited him. Even now he was almost afraid to try and call it to his hand, as if it would suddenly refuse to manifest, rejecting him. He still wasn't sure what he'd even done to deserve such a thing, but he supposed if he was 'destined' to be one of those Seven Lights, well... he could live with that. Not everything was set in stone, of course, but this was a sort of kismet he could deal with. Maybe being one of the good guys was worth more than he'd been giving it credit for, right?
It certainly beat being one of the bad guys. Somehow he had a feeling he was going to have a lot of explaining to do to Kairi, though. She had a Keyblade too, right? She was probably going to embed it in his skull.
Rounding a corner, Lea gasped and staggered backward as he collided with another figure. Idiot, he thought, watch where you're going--!
Catching himself on the side of the building, Lea glanced up and started to mutter a begrudging apology, and then coughed halfway through as everything behind his ribs seized up painfully. She was broadly built, with strong shoulders and capable hands, and her hair was long and straight, tumbling in a powder-blue cascade down her back.
No way. It couldn't be...
"I'm so sorry," the woman said in a rush, dropping to her knees to pick up her scattered groceries. "I wasn't paying attention at all; that was entirely my fault. You're not hurt are y--" She lifted her eyes and her words died on her lips as she regarded Lea a moment. Her green eyes narrowed and she tilted her head to one side a bit. "... Have we met?" she asked carefully.
Lea snapped out of his stupor and quickly took to a knee, collecting the rest of the groceries and placing them back in her bag for her. "Ah... maybe," he said vaguely. "I've been out of town for a while."
She picked up the bag and rose to her feet as he did, her eyes never leaving his, and then she made a soft 'hmm' sound.
"You look a lot like someone I used to know," she said, and Lea rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
Somehow he had never expected to run into the people he'd known long ago, even though logically he knew they would still be here. Most of the people who had been lost to darkness when the world fell had been restored, but of all the people he could have run into, the idea of encountering Isa's mother had never once entered his mind.
"I've just got, ah, one of those faces," he hedged, stooping to retrieve a wayward can of soup and dropping it carefully into her bag.
His eyes skirted past hers--he couldn't quite handle her stare. Isa had always resembled her more than he'd resembled his father, Lea had thought, but somehow the similarities were even more apparent now. She had that same dubious look on her face that Isa had worn so often, and he couldn't meet her eyes.
Clearing his throat awkwardly, Lea moved quickly past her, waving a hand over his shoulder in valediction. "Take care around those corners," he called, and hurried down the street, ducking his head, his hands in his coat pockets. Maybe coming here hadn't been such a good idea.
Lea's first stop had been the castle: ground zero. He wasn't sure why he wanted to go back and look at it now, but as he stood there at the bottom of the stairs that led up to those great blue doors that had seemed so much bigger eleven years ago, he thought that nothing really made much sense anymore. There he was, standing at the foot of the place where this whole messy business had started now that everything had come full circle, and he felt... nothing. He felt absolutely nothing. He had expected anger, resentment, indignation, hatred, for that teetery old tower that had been the birthplace of all of his problems, but he just didn't feel anything.
Certainly he'd been there when he'd woken up, been there in the basements talking with the others; it wasn't like this was the first time he'd been back. It was, however, the first time in eleven years he had looked on the great rusted old structure with the eyes of someone whole. Not just someone human, not just someone with a heart, but someone with a purpose. Maybe he hadn't been so empty before anyway, but now that he knew for sure his heart was there, that his feelings were real, and that his existence wasn't so meaningless after all, he had somehow expected the castle to evoke some kind of emotion. When it didn't, Lea just shrugged and shoved his hands back into his pockets and headed back into town.
He hadn't even climbed the steps.
His old house looked just the way he remembered it. It was a little older now, a little more run-down, but the house hadn't really changed. It was tall and narrow; two floors, like the other ones alongside it, smashed into nice neat rows down the sidestreet. He remembered thinking their house was the best on the block because it was the only blue one. Blue had always been his favorite color.
Lea's gaze slid to the unit beside his, and all those feelings of regret and morose nostalgia he had been expecting to bubble up into his blood at the sight of the castle instead boiled beneath his skin as he traced the lines of the white shutters on the grey house.
'What're you doing in my yard?'
'It's not your yard, your yard starts at that bush over there.'
'But that isn't evenly divided!'
'... Well, I guess I can give you 'til this flowerbed here, if you really want it. But only 'cuz you're new here.'
'Thanks... I think.'
'You just moved in yesterday, didn't you?'
'Yeah. My name's Isa; what's yours?'
'Lea! If we're gonna be neighbors, you better commit it to memory.'
He could still hear it like it had been yesterday instead of two lifetimes ago. Isa's house still looked the same, too, with its pearl-grey siding and stark white window edges. The grey looked darker than he remembered, shaded and stained with age, but Isa's mother had been very meticulous; she couldn't stand it when the windows looked dingy. The creeping ivy had grown exponentially over the years, its dark green fingers actually snaking over onto Lea's old house here and there. Somehow that made his gut squelch, as if even Isa's house had somehow been trying to hold onto what they'd had in the past, unwilling to fall into shadow alone.
Lea's eyes swung up to one of the windows on the second floor, and he frowned a bit. Isa's old bedroom--he wondered if it still looked the same. What had their parents done, he wondered, when they woke up after the town had been restored (in a manner of speaking) only to find that... some people hadn't come back? Had they even realized any time had passed? Did they just wake up one morning to find that their children were gone? That the people whose hearts hadn't been saved had just vanished into thin air? Had there been an investigation, or had they simply been... forgotten, only to seep to the surface at specific stimuli?
Now he really did wonder if Isa's room was the same. Had his parents gotten rid of his things, wondering why they had a room set up for a child they didn't have?
Glancing over his shoulder to make sure there was no one in the immediate area, Lea swiped a hand through the air to summon a corridor of darkness and stepped through, emerging into the doorway of the room where he had spent so much of his childhood.
The carpet was a nondescript beige, the walls plain white, without posters but dotted with shelves lined with books. There was a bed tucked neatly in the corner and a desk opposite, with a stack of notebooks and a can of perfectly sharpened pencils atop it. It looked... exactly the same as the last time he'd seen it, standing in that doorway eleven years ago, scolding Isa for being so slow putting his shoes on. He hesitated in the doorway a moment, then stepped inside, flinching as if expecting to be struck or ejected from the room somehow. When nothing happened, he moved to the bedside and leaned over to pick something up from the night table.
It was a tiny wooden birdhouse. He and Isa had each made one and painted it when they were about eleven years old. Isa's was a clean white with a dark blue roof and a bright red door, but Lea's had been obnoxious orange and blue and yellow. A bitter chuckle escaped his lips. Isa had said it was hideous, but insisted that they keep each other's instead of keeping their own. The neon blue roof on the orange-and-yellow spotted house was pretty hideous; why the hell had Isa kept it?
Setting the birdhouse down Lea turned his eyes to the bookshelves then, walking across the room to reach for one of the books with a thick tan spine. It was an old photo album; he remembered how excited he had been after getting a roll of film developed. He and Isa had spent the entire afternoon labeling the backs of the pictures and putting them into the book.
He held the album in his hands a moment, almost afraid to open it, like the memories would escape and evaporate if he did. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he flipped open the cover. A sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff tore from his throat then as the album fell open to a page about in the middle. He was wearing a big floppy hat that was about four sizes too big for his head and trying to shove a corndog in Isa's mouth. They had been at the fair that day, and despite wearing that stupid hat all day he had gotten ridiculously sunburned. Isa had yelled at him, something about what an idiot he was for forgetting to wear sunscreen.
Lea closed the book and shoved it back in its place quickly, something aching suddenly in his throat. He squeezed his fingers around the spine of the album until they ached.
Where the hell had he gone wrong? How had Xemnas--no, Xehanort--broken Isa so badly? Isa had always been the smart one, the logical one, the one with a plan and a strategy and a direction. Lea had been the one who was all over the place, with no rhyme or reason or worry for the consequences of his actions; why had Isa been the one to fall? Why not him? Why not the reckless one? Why not the careless fool who was only interested in making the biggest possible spectacle so he was remembered forever? Was it because he hadn't tried hard enough to save him? Was it because he hadn't pressed him hard enough after they'd joined the Organization? Because he just turned a blind eye to the fact that Saïx was so different instead of demanding to know what happened to cause it?
I ought to be able to share all this with Saïx, but I just don't feel like it anymore. It's strange, but I'm content with just missing what's gone.
I'm not the one who changed. You did.
Was it his fault? Was it Lea's fault?
With a cry, he tore the book from its shelf again and hurled it across the room. The album bounced and the pages slapped together angrily, knocking a few of the pictures loose from their corner sleeves and spewing them out onto the carpet. His hands closed in tight fists, Lea glared at the photos, like maybe he could scare them into giving his friend back, and then he dropped to one knee to pick one up from the floor.
They were about fifteen in this one, eating ice cream in the square. That nutsy old duck with the funny accent had taken their picture after they became his 100th and 101st customers. That had been three days before Garden had fallen.
That was the last picture they'd taken together.
"I thought that was you."
Lea was so startled by the sound of a voice in the doorway that he actually let out an unbecoming yelp and pitched backward onto his rump. Eyes wide, he stared at the figure in the shadows of the entry, then looked away when Isa's mother reached inside to turn on the overhead light.
"It is you, isn't it?" she asked, not moving from the doorway but taking a moment to really look at him now under the scrutiny of the light in the ceiling. "No one else ever had hair that red; not even your mother," she said, and her voice was somehow an acquittal rather than damnation as she concluded, "Lea..."
He flinched anyway. Everything in him, every fiber of his being, was screaming at him to run, to open a corridor and just get out of there, to flee before he had to explain himself, but he just couldn't move. There, sprawled awkwardly on the floor of his old best friend's room in the town he'd grown up in, Lea found himself completely and utterly defenseless and rooted to the spot, all because a woman he had once loved like his own mother had called his name.
"Still have that temper," she said with a click of her tongue, breezing into the room and taking to one knee to pick up the fallen photo album, collecting the photos that had been tossed about. Sitting on her knees she carefully replaced each one as Lea looked on in silent incredulity, as if he couldn't believe he was just sitting here watching this happen. It was like he was somewhere else outside his body looking on--he just couldn't wrap his brain around why he couldn't move.
She reached the last page and noticed one more picture was missing, and looked over at him. Her eyes were so green, he mused inanely. The same shade Isa's had been once. She extended her hand and Lea flinched again, squeezing his eyes closed. Suddenly he felt like he was fifteen all over again and had just been caught sneaking out late.
She just huffed. "Oh for crying out loud, I just wanted the photo," she said stiffly, putting her hands on her hips. "I'm not going to hit you. You're an adult now, aren't you?"
Was he?
Lifting his eyes Lea met her gaze briefly, then found himself looking everywhere but at her. There were no words for what he had done, no words he could give her to explain. There was no way to apologize for this--how did you tell a mother that you had just let her son slip through your fingers because you were too busy to pay attention?
There was a long, heavy silence, and Lea found himself watching the orange light of sunset draw long rectangles across the carpet until Isa's mother spoke again.
"We thought you were dead," she said, and Lea made a choking sound, turning to look at her once more. She had the faintest hint of a smile on her face, but her eyes were melancholy. "I still don't know everything that happened--I didn't want to," she admitted, closing the photo album and setting it aside. "All I know is... we spent a long time dreaming, and then when we woke up, some of us weren't here anymore." Her eyes fell to her lap, where her hands were threaded together. "You and Isa... weren't here anymore."
"Ma'am, I--"
She laughed brightly, cutting him off, and Lea could swear there was a grain of anguish somewhere in the sound. "Oh please, Lea, you're not fifteen anymore," she said; "you can call me Rina."
His mouth hanging slightly ajar at the mere idea of this, Lea just shook his head slowly. "I can't," was all he said, and she sighed. She sighed the way Isa had always sighed when he was being thick.
There was another protracted length of silence, and the golden rectangles on the floor faded to silver lines on the ceiling from the streetlights outside.
"Is he dead?"
Her voice felt like a punch in the throat.
"You don't have to tell me how or when," Rina said, wringing her hands, "but... I've wondered for so long, you know? That's the worst part, is the not knowing." She inhaled haltingly, then continued, "I told myself that maybe he just got lost coming back. If we all vanished into nothingness and came back, maybe he's just late." She attempted to chuckle but it came out more like a sob, and Lea clenched his jaw. "I wondered if maybe you got lost, actually," she added, lifting her eyes to him again, "and... maybe Isa had to go after you, and that's... that's why he was so late. Why both of you were so late coming home."
"Heh, that's... the ironic part," Lea said suddenly, shaking his head: "I'm... not the one who got lost."
Rina fell silent. Lea shifted where he sat, folding his legs up and planting his palms on his ankles. He stared at his heels, unable to meet her eyes.
"He's not dead," Lea assured her, still staring at his heels, "but he's definitely lost." He chuckled bitterly and then cleared his throat. "He's... he's real lost."
"I see." Rina was wringing her hands again. Lea impulsively reached out and closed one long hand over her fingers then, and Rina jumped, snapping her chin up and meeting his eyes.
"I'm... gonna find him, though," Lea said, and Rina's lips parted in something amid surprise and uncertainty. "After everything he..." He shook his head. "All those times Isa pulled me out of trouble before I drowned, all those times he came after me when I was about to do something really stupid... if I bail on him now then I never had any right to call him my friend at all, did I?"
Rina glanced down at Lea's hand over hers, then looked back up at him, her eyes haunted. Lea pulled his hand away and braced a palm on his thigh, pushing himself to his feet. Reaching down, he offered to pull Rina up.
She peered owlishly up at him a moment--"Goodness, you've gotten tall."--and then she took his hand tightly. He'd almost forgotten how firm a handshake she'd always had.
Tugging her upright, he gave her a determined look. "I'm not sure what I came here for," he admitted haltingly. "I told myself I wasn't ever going home until I'd fixed everything I'd screwed up, but I'm starting to wonder if that's even possible." Xion and Roxas were still locked away in Sora's heart, Isa was so far gone Lea wasn't even sure he could save him... Despite having joined a team, Lea had really never felt so alone before. "I guess I just wanted to see this place one last time."
"I'm glad you did," she said. "At least I know now. I know he'll be all right."
Lea exhaled in a whuff. "I think you're putting a little too much faith in me," he admitted, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.
"If anybody can find him while he's lost, I think you can," Rina said honestly then, and Lea glanced down at her, surprised. Her smile didn't look so hollow anymore. "You always knew how to get through to him, even when no one else knew what was going on in that head of his."
"I'm not so sure about all that," he said, sort of flapping his arms helplessly at his sides, "but... I think I owe it to him to try."
He lowered his eyes again, catching a glimpse of that photo still on the floor by his feet. Crouching to retrieve it, he rubbed a gloved thumb over the edge of it, then rose to hand it back to Rina.
"Keep it," she said, and his eyebrows shot up.
"Ma'am?"
She laughed a fragile laugh and he guess she figured old habits would always die hard. Waving her hands then, she shook her head. "I have the rest of the book," she said; "so... you keep that one. Just in case you need a reminder of what you're looking for."
Lea gawped at her a moment, then tore his eyes away when they started to sting. Dammit, he wasn't sentimental, what the hell was going on? With a sharp, audible exhale, he slid the photo into the pocket of his coat and squeezed his eyes closed a moment, a very distinctive crinkle between his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose as he took a moment to compose himself. He wasn't sure what he'd come here for, but he thought maybe he'd found it, whatever it was.
Smearing his hands down his face, Lea tugged at his chin with one hand and then awkwardly scratched the crown of his head.
"I should go," he said suddenly, and Rina nodded. He looked apprehensive then. "Ah... don't..." He hesitated, then glanced over his shoulder as if the house next door might hear him. "I mean, my folks..." Light, were they even still alive?
"I won't tell them," Rina said, and his shoulders sagged a bit in unvoiced relief. It wasn't 'I can't tell them', and that was enough. Rina squared her shoulders and pointed at Lea then, mustering a stern look. "But you'd better bring my son home, Lea. I'm counting on you."
Lea hesitated for a moment. Usually he shied from responsibility for fear of disappointing people. He wanted to be remembered forever, but not for being a failure. It was better to surprise people with success, than to disappoint them with a job poorly done. If there was one thing Lea had learned, however, after everything that had happened over the past several years, it was that there was one thing he was always ready to risk everything for.
"I will," he said, straightening his back a bit and lifting his chin. "No matter where he winds up, I'll bring him back." A nod, and his eyes were severe. "I promise."
It was what he did best, after all.
Rina smiled then, nodding in return, and turned toward the door. She paused in the doorway and cast a disapproving frown toward him. "You should stay for dinner," she said; "you're still too skinny."
Lea couldn't help himself and just laughed, a hand over his face. For all he had spent those years in the Organization clinging to the memories of what family had felt like, nothing was quite as powerful as being reminded, and if he didn't laugh he wasn't sure he wouldn't weep, and that just wasn't an option. Still covering one eye with his palm, Lea shook his head.
"Tell you what," he said; "when I find Isa and get his head screwed back on straight, we'll both stay for dinner."
"You've got yourself a deal."
And with that, Rina vanished into the hallway, and Lea sank slowly onto Isa's bed, just sitting there a moment with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He stared at the floor between his feet a moment, then took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled.
Get going, he told himself then, and got to his feet. Summoning a corridor of darkness, he watched the black and indigo smoke whorl in the center of Isa's room, a smear of shadow beneath the light in the ceiling, and frowned. Did he still belong in that darkness? He had a Keyblade now... didn't those two things counteract each other? Could he really have both? Could he wield light and darkness at the same time? Would he lose that light if he kept dabbling in shadow? Would he fall the way Isa had?
A grin cracked his features then. If that Riku slacker could handle both, surely he could, right? He didn't have to be afraid of losing his way anymore. He knew where he was going now; Isa was depending on him, whether he realized it or not. He patted the photograph in his pocket and stepped through the corridor, leaving little more than a whisper behind in that old bedroom.
More important than being remembered, maybe, was the knowledge your friends could depend on you. He would always be there to bring them back, no matter how dark the road or how far they strayed. That was his mission now, and Axel had never once blown a mission.
Lea wasn't about to start.
so. fun fact. "Isa" isn't an actual name i could find anywhere, but it could easily be a variation on "Isaiah", which is an extremely Hebrew name. so Isa is now Jewish forever in my headcanon. thus i poked through some other Hebrew names to find a name for his ma; settled on Rina, as it kind of fit a pattern. KH tends to have short names that are unusual but don't sound weird, so it seemed like a good choice. it means 'joy'.