A/N: Merry Christmas, Lita. Have some Lea/Isa fluff from me. XD Yes, it's a day late, but hopefully it's not a dollar short.

Isa groaned slightly as he rolled out of bed. His scar was stinging and burning again. Great, just great. He tried to ignore the phantom pains from the old injury as he dressed for the day and combed out his hair, but the sharp jabs seemed to be concentrated right between his eyes, making them impossible to shove to the back of his mind.

He wandered into the kitchen, rubbing the offending scar lightly as he went, and found Lea seated at the table, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper.

"Morning, Isa." Lea said as he looked up, and then he frowned slightly. "Scar bothering you again?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Isa asked as he sat down opposite Lea, still trying to soothe away the feeling that someone was jabbing him repeatedly in the face with a sharp object. He didn't know why he bothered; it never helped, and the stinging would spread out through the entire scar before it turned into this constant burning that would finally fade after a few hours.

"Aren't you going to eat some breakfast?" Lea asked, and Isa suppressed a growl. Breakfast was the last thing on his mind. His main concern was getting through the next few hours without the phantom pains turning into a very real migraine. Only then would he think about food.

Pains from the scar had plagued Saïx, sometimes for days on end, and he had hoped that, once he had his heart back and was Isa again, the pains would stop. Sadly, though they had decreased in frequency, they still bothered him about once or twice a week, and Xavier had already informed him that they would likely never go completely away.

The pains were worse in the winter, due to the fact that while scar tissue did not stretch like normal skin, it did contract with the cold, which caused it to pull and tug on the surrounding skin as the skin and muscles of his face flexed and moved. He was almost tempted to see if a skin graft could be done there to get rid of it. Anything was better than living with the frequent pain.

"That's what I thought." Lea said, and the sound of his voice broke Isa from his thoughts. He let his hand drop to the table just as Lea stood up and walked around to him. "Come 'ere." He reached down, grabbed Isa's hands and began to pull him out of his chair.

"Lea, what-?"

"Just come with me."

"I am in no mood for you games."

"This isn't a game, now come on."

Isa sighed; he was too tired to argue. Instead he allowed Lea to drag him into their living room and over to the rug in front of the empty fireplace. It was mid summer, and the days and nights were pleasantly warm, (Something that Isa was very happy about.) and the fireplace hadn't been used in several weeks. So he was surprised when Lea sat them down on the rug in front of it.

"What are you doing, Lea?" Isa demanded as Lea sat cross legged on one end of the rug and tried to tug Isa into lying down with his head on his lap.

Lea sighed. "I'm trying to make you feel better, so just go with it, okay?"

"Nothing works when my scar hurts, and you know that, so -"

Lea sighed again, grabbed Isa by the shoulders, and yanked him down to the floor. Isa felt his heart skip a beat in a brief moment of panic as his head came down to rest on Lea's lap. Lying on the floor brought back memories that he'd rather not think about.

"It's all right." Lea said softly. "I'm here with you."
"You know I hate being on the floor."

"Well our loveseat isn't exactly long enough for this, and dragging you back to the bedroom would have been impossible, so this will have to do. Now, come on, on your back please."

Now it was Isa's turn to sigh; he didn't want to do whatever Lea had planned. He wanted to get up off the floor and get started on the day's work before he developed a headache, but he knew that dissuading Lea from whatever idea he had would only make that headache appear that much sooner, so he sighed again and rolled over onto his back, with his head on Lea's lap.

"Close your eyes." Lea said quietly, and Isa huffed and did so. A second later, he felt Lea's long, thin fingers come down to press gently on the center of his scar. One of those fingers began to run small circles across the bridge of Isa's nose, where the two legs of the x shaped scar crossed each other. Isa sighed again as Lea's other hand joined in, gently rubbing little circles down the four lines that formed the scar.

"You know this never works." he murmured.

"I know." Lea replied softly. "But I hate it when you're in pain, so even if this doesn't make it go away, if it makes you feel a little better, then it's worth it."

"I can't imagine what will happen if someone were to see this through the windows. There are already rumors swirling around about us being lovers."

Lea laughed quietly without stopping the motions of his hands. "Lovers? Us? We'd kill each other in a matter of weeks. Most people understand that we're just close friends and nothing more."

Isa chuckled. "Are you sure about that?"

"Well... I KNOW we're not together or anything, but I love you more than I can say. I risked everything to get you out of that prison, and it was protecting you that caused me to summon a keyblade, so yeah, we're more than just best friends, but I don't know what."

"Likewise, you realize." Isa said quietly as Lea's thumbs began to work on his temples. "If things had been reversed, I would have done the same as you did." With his eyes still closed, he couldn't see Lea, but he still picture the smile that was no doubt appearing on his face then.

"I said it before, I'll always be there to get my friends back."

"You used to say that to Roxas and Xion."

"Yeah, but not in a nice way, since you and Xemnas were always ordering me to drag them back, whether they liked it or not."

"So the nice version of it is only reserved for me then?"

"You betcha."

Isa smiled as he felt Lea move down the lines of his scar, and he relaxed with a sigh and tried not to think about being on the floor.

"I'm here." Lea told him. "You're safe with me."

"I know." Isa's voice was barely a whisper.

The next few minutes passed in silence, and then Lea spoke up.

"How much..." he hesitated, and Isa tensed up. He was not going to like whatever Lea was going to say. "How much do you remember from back then?"

"What do you mean?" He didn't want to think about this, much less talk about it. What the hell was Lea thinking, bringing it up?

"Do you remember us taking your out of there?"

"No," Isa said shortly. "I don't remember anything until I came around in the hospital here."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Why do you want to know? What purpose does it serve?"

"I just want to know."

"And I do not wish to speak of it."

"Alright then. Just forget I asked. Now relax; you're like a coiled spring."

"A side effect of you bringing up bad memories."

Lea whispered. "I'm sorry."

And he was; Isa could hear the genuine remorse in his voice, and he sighed. "The last thing I remember," he said quietly. "is you visiting me not long after I fell ill. You managed to smuggle in a small thermos of soup and some bread for me. I was so dizzy from the fever that you had to hold me in your arms like a child and spoon feed me. You held me for a while after I finished it, and I think I fell asleep in your arms."

"You did. Lying you down on that cold floor and leaving you there was harder than hell, but I had to leave. I couldn't try and find a way to get you out of there unless I left. I tried pleading your deteriorating health to try and get you a medical release, but Ansem refused. When I next came down, you were out of it. I tried to portal out with you, but the chains had you anchored to the floor. I don't know how he found out, but Ansem threatened to have you hung if I tried that again."

"At least you tried."

"But it wasn't enough." Isa felt water drip onto his forehead. Was Lea crying? "Nothing I did was enough. The food and water I managed to sneak in wasn't enough to keep you going, and you just got worse and worse. If Roxas had refused to help me that night, I had intended to stay there and hold you in my arms as you died. I'm so glad that it didn't come to that."

Isa didn't say anything, he simply reached up and grasped one of Lea's hands in his own. Lea squeezed his hand for a moment before he laid it down on the floor and went back to massaging Isa's face.

"You never told me how you got this scar to begin with." he said after a few minutes.

"You never asked." Isa replied as he felt Lea's fingers work their way back up to the center of the scar. "Mmmm, that feels nice."

"I'm glad you're enjoying it, and Saïx would have ripped Axel's head off if he'd asked, and once we were Isa and Lea again, we had more important things to worry about."

"That's true, and if you must know, it was Xemnas that was responsible for it."

"Xemnas? Why would he do that?"

"It was a warning."

"For what?"

"Not long after I was promoted to second, he attacked me when we were alone on the Altar of Naught. He said it was a warning of what could be expected if I ever betrayed him. I never asked Xavier, but I suspect that he knew what we were planning from the start."

"He did that? When you hadn't even done anything yet?"

"Imagine what he would have done to Marluxia, had he lived. Compared to that, a little scar is not so bad."

"A scar that still bothers you to this day, and speaking of which, does it feel any better?"

"Some, thank you." Isa paused. "Do you.. remember the day I came around?"

"Best day of my life. Why?"

"I'd been hearing your voice off and on for a few days, and I'd thought I was dreaming. And when I finally opened my eyes and saw you there..." Isa swallowed a lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat, and he voice trembled as he finished his sentence. "It was the best feeling. I knew that you had gotten me out of there somehow and that everything was going to be all right."

"You looked at me," Lea picked up the tale. "and Taylor nodded at me, so I scooped you right out of bed. Both of us were crying then."

"All I could think was that I could breathe again, that there was no cold floor under me, no shackles, no fever, just you and your arms holding me tight, keeping me safe."

"You didn't want to let go of me when I went to put you back in bed."

"I remember you telling me that you weren't going to leave, that you were going to stay right there beside me, but I was so terrified that it was all a dying dream."

"That explains why it took so long to get you to go back to sleep, despite how sick you were."

"You can't imagine how relieved I was to open my eyes later and see you, still sitting in that chair by the bed."

Lea's hands moved from his face, up the sides of his head, to his scalp. "Taylor assured me that you were slowly getting better and that you weren't going to slip back into the semi-comatose state you had been in before, but I was also very relieved when you opened your eyes the next day."

Isa smiled faintly. "I'm glad you were there to take care of me. I know I had to have driven you crazy sometimes, with how helpless I was then."

"I didn't mind. Taking care of you was a small price to pay in exchange for having you there, alive and safe. I would have done anything, if it meant helping you." Lea shifted, and a second later, Isa felt a kiss press against his forehead. Lea's fingers then resumed their work on his scalp.

"Lea?"

"Hm?"

Isa opened his eyes and looked up at him. "I love you too, and thanks, for everything."