Title: Cold Water
Author: nikki_ntm
Beta reader: DancingwithDestiny
Artist: TheoriesonTales at LJ
Word count:~58k
Chapters: 13
Pairings: Lea/Isa, Axel/Saïx
Genre: Drama/Angst/Surrealism/Romance/AU-esque inverse
Warnings: Mental illness, surrealism, descriptions of depression-like symptoms, surrealistic description of suicide that doesn't lead to conventional death, sex, violence.

The spell is a slightly altered version of "Gone" from "Snow White and the Huntsman" OST.

Written for Kingdom Hearts Big Bang 2013.

x

Cold Water

A bunny lived on the moon. It gazed down onto the inhabitants of the spinning rock through space, and every once in a while it climbed down the stars in the sky to roam the world it observed.

The moon didn't like it. The world was a dangerous place, filled to the brim with greedy people. The bunny was an extension of the moon's power, or so the legends said, and so, when the bunny climbed down, the moon would peek through a thin gash in the sky to keep a watchful eye on the careless bunny.

To think that it wouldn't be a greedy man that captured the bunny one fateful night, but a child whose cries could be heard through the thick forest outside a lonely cottage on a field of flowers.

The child had been partially wrapped in a white blanket that had been splattered with crimson. It had been an innocent sight for the careless bunny that night. The moon had barely drawn a gasp when the crying child reached his small wounded hands up to the sky, droplets of blood falling upon the bunny's shiny coat.

A door to a million worlds creaked open at the brink of the child's mind. The bunny turned to look at the moon, its home, fearful of what the unintentional blood pact could mean, but the moon smiled and hummed through the winds; the child is mine.

Days and nights, months and years passed before the child was fetched by its likes in the small cottage where he lived on a field of flowers. He didn't fear their intentions, he didn't mind the horror in their eyes, he didn't even fight when he was told to leave his blanket behind.

He simply looked up where the moon peeked through a gash in the sky and smiled.

"Worry not, child. Bunny will bring your blanket and hide."

And Bunny did hide. Bunny hid so well that the child couldn't find the blanket or convince the men in white coats that the moon was his mother and that she had sent Bunny to care for him in her stead.

Isa propped his head onto his hands and exhaled onto the window right in front of him with a resigned look on his face.

The story of the moon and the bunny was his. He was the child who had been rescued and raised by Bunny Moon until a grim world pushed through the door that the moon's power had granted him.

Bunny had been gone for years and the moon had left to search for her beloved companion through infinity. Isa was kept by the men in white coats who gave him candy that had turned his world a transparent blue.

He watched his world through the only window in his room, accompanied by the prickly cactus that had found a home on Isa's windowsill where it kept a lookout for the Whale. The shining spheres in pretty colors that lay in a glass container on the other side of the windowsill caught Isa's attention for a brief moment. He didn't know what they were, only that their place was there.

The window was on the third floor. One above the Land of Dragons and two above the Flowered Gates. Isa's room faced a fenced garden where the flowers had long since stopped singing. Isa couldn't blame them. There was no reason to sing if there was no one around to listen.

The flowers, whose heads had been hanging low, suddenly turned upward when a multitude of upset bubbles rose from the ground. Isa inched closer to the window with a gasp of awe at the majestic howl that made the flowers in the garden sway gently.

The bubbles danced through the glass of the window and Isa got out of his chair and followed them around his small home. He climbed up on his bed when the bubbles disappeared into his old wooden closet and hurried back out.

The life of a bubble was unpredictable. The rules of space and time didn't apply to them. They weren't bound to any world, and they made good use of that.

Isa looked after them when they disappeared through the wall, envious of those who were born to this world as bubbles.

The second howl had him hurry back to the windowsill and just as he got back to his spot, the majestic Whale swam past his window, and for a brief moment, Isa got to look the beast in the eye. Its look told a thousand stories and Isa wanted to reach through the window with a small plea on his lips; take me with you.

The Whale's tail-fin lifted yet another multitude of bubbles that seemed to have hidden by the bushes, and though Isa was sad that yet another day had gone by, along with his chance to speak with the beautiful creature, he put his feelings aside when the bubbles found their way into his room and sang him a song Bunny used to sing to him on his birthday.

~o~

The brain was a world of its own, a strange world, a world of wires and light. The men in white coats had told Isa that his brain was sick, which was why he thought that he had been raised by a bunny. It explained his distorted reality. They claimed that his nurse wasn't a serpent and that bubbles couldn't go through walls. But Isa had traveled through his brain. He had seen his thoughts swoosh from one place to another. It had only been for a second though, because God didn't like it when someone peeked behind the curtains.

The men in white coats weren't fond of Isa's explanation. His reality was still subpar and in need of fixing. They refused to believe that all the candy did was switch the colors of his world, and they refused to believe that that was the only thing upsetting Isa when they changed his daily jelly beans. They didn't know that the Whale only swam past his window on blue days.

Red days were the worst. Isa couldn't bring himself to look out the window when it seemed like everything lay in a sea of blood. He would pull the curtains over his window and take his cactus with him into his old wooden closet where they would both hide until the last of the red faded from their sight.

His habit disrupted his time schedule.

Isa had learned early on that the time schedule was holy to his handlers, but only on red days was he able to see how holy it was.

The men in white coats were impatient men. They didn't wait for Isa to come out on his own accord. They couldn't wait until Isa heard the Whale's howl in the distance to know that the red had been replaced with the blue because in their reality there were no color shifts.

When Isa heard the Serpent crawl down the hallway, followed by a multitude of steps, he would curl up in a corner, holding the pot close to his chest until he could hear the cactus whisper; I'll stop them.

And every time Isa would believe the cactus. He forgot that once the cactus jumped out and hit a man in a white coat, it would be powerless. It would lay limp on the floor with a pot in a million pieces while the rest of the men in white coats bodily hurled Isa out of the closet.

Isa would kick and scream once the light from outside registered with him. the Whale would groan in pain in the far off distance as the red tainted the blue and Isa would apologize profusely through the lump in his throat, knowing that he had hurt a friend that could so easily leave.

Sometimes Isa wondered if the men in white coats didn't see the red after all, why else would they give him the liquid candy that neutralized the color of his world into a monochrome scheme?

"Sepia..." Isa mumbled as he was taken to a room where the walls turned into cream and candy canes.

A large man in a white coat would walk into the room and seat himself in an armchair across from Isa. He always held a notepad and a perpetual stub of a pencil that he used to write down everything Isa said.

"How are you feeling today?"

Isa mouthed the question after the large man in the white coat and replied in a murmur that the doctor received with a nonchalant mm-hmm. Isa did the same with the second, third and fourth question.

This was routine. It was the same thing every other week on the same day at the same time for nearly six years. Their conclusion was still the same, and it would remain the same until the end of time if this day kept repeating itself over and over again.

And so, Isa decided to find out what was wrong with him.

At the end of the road from Isa's house lay an abandoned library where everyone's secrets and faults lay stored. The door was bright red, an equally red X marked on the window of the door to keep outsiders from entering. It was said that one of the dragons from down below had found a home there and roasted anyone who dared to come near. It was a sad fate that Isa's neighbor Lucio had met one night when he came near the dragon from down below.

One night, when the Serpent's replacement forgot to lock the door to Isa's house, Isa sneaked out with his newly potted cactus in a firm grip. Getting into the abandoned library wasn't nearly as tricky as he had heard it would be, but every creak he heard made him freeze in hope that the dragon couldn't detect his movements.

He flipped through the files in hope to see what faults the men in the white coats had found in him. Six years had surely earned him a thick file, he thought, but once he found it he was brought to naught to see how thin it was.

Incomplete.

"I am?"

Half a person. Seeks comfort in illusions and imaginary friends.

Isa turned slowly to look at his cactus who was his only friend in his immediate vicinity. Would it still move if it didn't know that Isa was looking at it? The cactus looked back up at him with a questioning tilt of its head.

"Are you an illusion, cactus?" Isa asked in a whisper, afraid that the dragon would hear.

The cactus shook its head.

Isa sighed in relief. Of course it wasn't an illusion, Isa thought. If the cactus was an illusion, it would talk, would it not?

Isa put his file back carefully. The men in white coats didn't know what illusions were, they were blind to millions of worlds that intersected with this one.

It wasn't the claim that he sought comfort that had struck a cord with Isa. He was half a person and the men in white coats could see it as clearly as he felt it. There was a void in his existence, a place that was off limits for his consciousness. Most days he ignored it, but having seen it written in a place outside of his head made him wonder if there was something he needed to find to mend that void.

~o~

The moon's power that ran through Isa's veins gave him the ability to sense things from the future. It wasn't a consistent power. It came and went as it pleased, and most times it could be written off as nothing but a gut feeling. He could be right about something, but he could also be very wrong.

Today his gut feeling was right. There was no mistaking the light sensation in his chest that most certainly bubbled from his gut. The chills the foreign feeling caused him made his blueish world fizzy.

At midday, he calmly sat down on the side of his bed and looked at the door patiently.

Three, two, one.

The door at the end of the long road outside was pushed open, followed by the snaking sound of the Serpent making her way forward. It wasn't candy time nor was it lunch time. This was something else, and Isa could smell it from where he sat and he inhaled deeply, holding in the scent for a second or two.

Autumn.

How long had it been since he felt the scent of a season? Isa hurried up onto his bed with an excited laugh that he hid behind both his hands.

"Isa, stay back or you'll be in trouble!" The Serpent called from behind the door that wobbled until it completely vanished in her hands.

Isa's eyes widened at the sight of the light-container that the Serpent and a man in a white coat pushed forward into the room. A small mass of light was shown into Isa's home, shapeless and flickering. It seemed to be trying to gain a shape, but every attempt ended up in a short-circuit that its two handlers completely ignored.

The light was taken out of its container and put on the bed that had been invisible to Isa up until the moment the light made contact with it.

"Let's do a check up in two hours?" the man in the white coat said to the Serpent who gave him a quick nod for an answer before she snaked her way up to Isa, her divided tongue sticking out every now and then.

"Stay on your side of the room, Isa. Do you understand?"

Isa felt another chill that made bubbles pour in from the outside and he found himself mesmerized by one particular bubble that disappeared into the Serpent's eye before she managed to blink. He would have answered if the same bubble hadn't sneaked out through one of the Serpent's nostrils, but it was all the same, his silence had been enough of an answer. The Serpent and the man in the white coat hurried out of Isa's home, making the door materialize as they left.

The door out at the end of the road outside had barely slammed shut before Isa skipped out of bed and sat down by the weakening light that had sent him vibes of happiness from the future.

"What are you?" Isa asked and tilted his head to his right in hope that the new angle would reveal the light's identity, but he had no such luck.

Instead he inhaled again, the lovely scent of autumn that nearly had him giggle. His heart suddenly skipped a beat and then it beat harder to make up for the one it had missed, and a grid of light lit up in the room, crossing through everything in an electric blue color.

Isa stared in awe at what was revealed to him. The pillars of his reality, the light that created his time and space, an unrightful glimpse behind the curtains that could have angered God himself if it hadn't been Isa's heart that had revealed the structure to him.

"Do you need help? I can help you..." Isa trailed off and looked around quickly, just for a moment to gather his thoughts. The weak light needed to be nurtured to gain a shape. It needed a foundation strong and big enough to grow.

Isa's heart pounded hard again and the room lit up even stronger this time, shaking Isa out of his fragile trail of thoughts.

There was a void inside of him. Isa was half a person, longing to be whole. He wanted to be complete even if it was by illusion and even if it was for a short period of time. What harm could it possibly do to let someone in, if only for a moment?

"None," Isa breathed and smiled.

He reached for a string of light holding his reality together, and with a gentle tug he pulled it from the rest of the grid. It made a sizzling sound and quickly curved around Isa's index finger in an instinctive search for a connection.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you."

The grid bent around the weak light the second the string made contact with it until small and thin strings of light were born in a different color, barely changing the structure of the grid.

Isa looked at the weak light expectantly, hoping that the transformation would be immediate, but the grid only flickered and disappeared. As soon as it had faded, a violent wind blew in through the roof, burying itself underneath the floor panels, and tossing them into the air fervently. It ripped the walls apart and sucked everything in before it spat everything up to the sky. Everything except the window, the windowsill and the cactus.

Isa's home had been replaced by a vast meadow in colors he hadn't seen in years. He stood up slowly, watching the light green grass sway in the gentle breeze. In the horizon, the green met with a vibrant blue where fluffy specks of white moved across it.

The wind had left Isa and the weak light underneath a gigantic oak tree in the middle of the vast meadow.

Isa looked up to see if he could see patches of the sky between the densely growing branches, but the branches reached up through infinity. The leaves lived through each season within seconds. They grew, blossomed and died at the rhythm of Isa's breathing.

The light beside Isa took to flickering again, but this time it seemed like its attempts of gaining a shape were paying off. Every flicker gave the light a resemblance of a person until Isa was faced with a pale-looking boy with sad eyes.

The boy sat up with a frightened gasp that revived his hair into orange flames of fire.

"Where am I?"

"I don't know. You must have opened a door when you came to. Don't worry, we'll find our way back."

"I can't be here," the boy said and got up.

"Why not?" Isa asked.

"Because I can't. I...I was looking for someone..."

The boy seemed distressed and anxious, almost close to tears, and Isa knew that he should be paying attention, but there, by the horizon, he saw an old friend leisurely swim the blue skies, and he couldn't help but to smile at seeing the Whale.

It was during the distraction that the boy decided to run.

"Wait!"

Isa hurried after the boy, running through the meadow of high grass with such a beautiful shade of green that he had to remind himself to remember the feeling of the straws against the palms of his hands.

Though he tried to make the best of the situation, he still knew that he had to worry for the boy with the flames for hair. Isa lived in a world of water. If the boy opened the wrong door, his flames would be put out, and Isa was afraid of what that would entail.

The fluffy white specks on the sky had suddenly decided to come together and turn into a thunderous storm cloud, covering the pretty blue of the sky. Isa reached his hands out forward, knowing that the strings of his light still had to be in a dimension where he could touch them even if he couldn't see them. He pulled his spacetime closer and managed to get within reach for the boy's hand.

"We have to hurry out of here before it starts raining," Isa said to the frightened boy who was given no choice but to follow Isa through the meadow until they were overcome by a large shadow.

The Whale moved its fins calmly. When one of its fins came down low enough for Isa to reach it, he grabbed on to it, telling the boy to do the same. They were flung up into the sky. Isa held onto the boy as they flew up, and the Whale's fin-flap downwards created bubbles that Isa pushed into for a safe haven just in time before the storm broke loose.

Giant fire-flakes rained from the dark storm clouds. They slammed down onto the meadow, conspiring with each other to surround the giant oak tree that pulled its roots from the ground to escape the flames engulfing the meadow.

Isa watched the strangely beautiful scene as they drifted away into the sky. The meadow became smaller and smaller until the fire that had it engulfed was the only thing that could be seen from the increasingly darker sky.

The bubble rocked suddenly and Isa slid down from his knees onto his stomach when the water that had been filling the bubble squelched at the movement. Isa quickly sat up at seeing the water, and he shivered as he looked up at the boy who sat with his knees against his chin, sobbing quietly, each tear bringing them closer to a most unfortunate death.

"Why are you crying?" Isa asked, concerned by how quickly the water was filling the bubble.

"I want to go home," the boy said with a hiccup. "I'm lost and I can't find my way home."

"Maybe you haven't looked hard enough?" Isa offered, but it only made the boy cry harder. Isa moved in closer and put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder reluctantly. "I don't know how to get you home, but I know a spell that'll take your sadness away."

"Really?" the boy rubbed his eyes and looked back at Isa expectantly. "Can you do it on me?"

"Sure, but you'll have to close your eyes first."

Isa reached for a pen in his pocket, a pen that the Serpent had dropped in his home a few days prior. He glanced at it quickly before he pulled the plastic cap from the top to reveal the purple pen nib.

"Ready?" he asked, and the boy nodded. Isa put the pen nib against the boy's left cheek and drew a small, triangular tear on it as he chanted the words of an old spell.

Dark the oceans Dark the sky

Hush the whales and the ocean tide

Tell the salt march
And beat on your drum

Gone their moon Gone their sun

The boy waited for Isa to sit back before his eyes fluttered open. The water in the bubble was gone and the only trace of his sadness were the purple tears on his cheeks, which he inspected eagerly in his reflection.

"What's your name?" the boy asked with a grin once he turned to face Isa.

"I'm Isa, and you?"

"I'm Lea!"

In that moment, everything changed. The name of the boy that had been taken in to live in the void, resonated through every string of light in Isa's reality. The name was absorbed and made part of Isa's foundation, and for the first time in his life, Isa was petrified.

Lea was a visitor who came by leaving. If his mere name had this kind of effect on his grid, Isa feared to think about the day Lea decided that he no longer needed to share timespace to sustain himself.

~o~

Cuts to certain parts of the body were lethal. A cut to the jugular usually meant certain death, five to ten minutes for years of life to just come to an end. A cut on a wrist was much more uncertain, it wasn't necessarily lethal, but it left scars, reminders of failure and hurt.

Isa didn't want to know these things, but Lea could on odd occasions obsess about it as if those facts mattered. It left Isa with the unpleasant sensation of feeling his own blood rush through his veins, and he was made aware of the inevitable fact that he was kept together by thin membrane that could easily be cut open.

Isa pulled his covers up and curled against the wall. Ten minutes later, the buzzing sound from the lights outside stopped, and Isa held his breath, listening for the tossing and turning from the bed on the other side of his very small home. The sound came without fail. Lea snuck through the distance between them and lifted Isa's covers to curl up beside him.

Lea wasn't a small boy anymore, neither of them were.

They had grown and become young men who were constantly scolded for acting like children. The scolds soon turned into threats with the pretension that it was to make them better. It had been decided that they weren't good for each other. Isa had made no progress in the years that had passed, and Lea's condition had, according to the Serpent, deteriorated in Isa's company. What that condition was, Isa still didn't know. Lea claimed that there wasn't anything wrong with him, much like Isa did, and it made Isa wonder; could there be something fundamentally wrong with himself after all?

"Isa, are you awake?" Lea asked in a whisper as he inched closer to Isa's back until Isa could feel Lea's breath against his neck.

"Yeah."

"I don't want to leave. You think they'll make me?"

"Yeah..."

"You are asleep," Lea said with a soft laugh at Isa's unengaged answers.

"I'm not...I just don't know what to say..."

"Dive with me, Isa." Lea ran his arms around Isa and pulled him closer. Personal space had never been an option with Lea, at least not after Lea got comfortable enough to start claiming space that hadn't been his to begin with.

Isa froze and stared intently at the wall, letting the silence speak for him. He had heard of diving before. Divers were the main characters of the horror stories told in the land below, where the dragons fed the famished ants. Diving was how Isa's neighbor Lucio had died.

"Why do you want to dive? It's dangerous. There'll be Shadows everywhere."

"Don't worry, I'll protect you," Lea said. "There's someone I need to find. We'll just be gone for a second."

"What makes you think you'll find anything there?"

"I dreamt it."

"You dreamt that diving was a good thing?" Isa frowned and hoped that Lea hadn't heard him gulp. "It takes a lot of items to dive, Lea. Some are impossible to find."

"But you'd come with me if I had them?"

"...Sure. If you had them."

Two days later they both found out that a handful of the smallest of the blue candy mints were plenty to reach the edge from which they had to jump to make a dive. They just hadn't counted on how long they had before the Serpent burst into their home and had the men in the white coats drag them away from the edge.

What's worse, in Isa's opinion, was that they hadn't counted on the small blue candy mints being as hurtful as a sharp knife against thin membrane, and that the failure stung just as much.