m e r r y - g o - r o u n d
entry for warm.summer.nights' friendship contest
characters: tidus && olette
setting: kh1; traverse town
prompt: playground
Tidus had never wanted to travel. Really. He'd always been content to stay on Destiny Islands, running around on the Play Island, playing Blitzball with Wakka, jumping rope with Selphie, and practicing with his wooden sword so that one day he'd be able to beat Riku (he never really was able to do that, just for the record). He liked his home - the sun, the sand, the sea - and he wouldn't give it up for anything. That was why, when he woke up in some whacked-out town called Traverse Town the day after that weird storm, he spent the entire day in some empty house glaring at a wall, unwilling to actually go look around and see if there was anything he liked in the town (he cried, too, though he would never actually admit that - a thirteen year old boy just wasn't supposed to cry!).
The second day would have been spent in the same way as the first, except the owner of the house came home and shooed him out halfway through the day, so he was left with nothing to do but take some time to explore the town. It was, for the most part, boring, though he did learn a little about the creepy little dark creatures called Heartless, which, as it turned out, were responsible for him being in Traverse Town in the first place (once he'd heard that, he'd tried to go out and hunt down a few Heartless to let them know just what he thought of them, but he'd been held back by a few people because really, one kid with a wooden sword stood no chance against the Heartless).
The third day was actually pretty interesting. Tidus had taken to exploring again (but only the less dangerous parts of town - no one would let him into the dangerous parts after his little outburst the day before), and had stumbled upon a playground, of all things. It was mostly empty, except for a girl, sitting on a merry-go-round and not bothering to make it spin at all, as she was apparently too busy staring glumly down at her feet to do anything else.
Olette had always wanted to travel, but this just wasn't travelling. Travelling was going on trips to places she hadn't been to yet in her own world, preferably with her family or one or two of her friends. Travelling wasn't waking up in some unfamiliar town after getting caught up on the clock tower back home during a storm. She didn't remember falling asleep, but she guessed she must have at some point; either that, or she'd forgotten what had happened after she, Hayner, and Pence had decided that it would be safer to stay up there instead of trying to get back to their houses during the storm, because they'd seen some really creepy-looking things going on down on the ground.
Because the next thing she could remember after all of that was waking up in an alleyway in a place she'd never been to before. Now, she could have freaked out or started crying or something, but she didn't. Because Olette was a level-headed person (at least, that's what people back home had said) and even at the tender age of fourteen years she knew that crying or throwing a fit didn't solve anything. So after taking a really quick look around, she had headed out of the alley and into the main part of town. There'd been some sort of commotion that day - some guy had wanted to go somewhere and fight something dangerous and some people were trying to stop him, or something like that, she hadn't paid much attention - but she'd just stayed out of it and had gone exploring on her own.
She'd found an empty playground on her first day, but she only stayed there for a few minutes - just enough time to take a look around the place and see what there was. There was a a tree with enough branches to climb easily, a swingset with two swings, a slide, a teeter-totter, and in the center of it all, a merry-go-round. Olette had vaguely wondered why there wasn't anyone playing there - weren't playgrounds usually swarmed with kids? - before turning to leave and continue her exploration of the town.
Her second day was a really bad one. She'd found out about the Heartless then - and had been told that if she hadn't found her friends Hayner and Pence by now, they'd probably lost their hearts to the Darkness and were as good as dead. The person who had told her that was an insensitive prick and really hadn't known what they were talking about, but she hadn't known any better - so of course that had upset her. And she hadn't wanted to be near anyone at all, so she'd gone to the one place where she hadn't seen anyone, the one place where she thought she could be alone: the empty playground she'd found the day before.
"Hey..."
Olette's head snapped up at the sound of Tidus' voice, and she stared at him, wide-eyed. If there had been anything she was expecting, it wasn't running into someone here. The playground had seemed pretty much abandoned the day before, but maybe she'd just come on an off-day or something. There was a few moments' pause, in which she blinked and stopped staring, before offering up a small smile and a soft, "Hi."
Another pause, in which the two both fidgeted slightly - Tidus shifted his weight from foot to foot and Olette made a slight change in the way she was sitting on the merry-go-round.
"...Come here often?" Olette asked, breaking the silence. Tidus shook his head.
"No, this is my first time here. ...I'm Tidus."
"My name's Olette." She smiled again, because she was a smiley person by nature, and the sandy-haired boy returned her smile with one of his own. "Have you been... here... long?"
Tidus knew, from the slight pause before and after the "here," that she wasn't talking about being at the playground. "This is my third day."
"Oh. This is my second."
Tidus fidgeted again, and Olette sighed. The girl brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes before standing up and brushing some dust from the merry-go-round off of her pants. The boy's head tilted to the side as she got up, as if to ask, 'what are you doing?' She simply shrugged in response and brought up her hands to stretch, going up on her tip-toes as she did so. Even when she was up, though, she still wasn't taller than him, which she saw as completely unfair because she was pretty sure she was older than he was.
"...Hey, Olette?"
She blinked intertwined her fingers before bringing her hands to rest on her stomach. "Yeah?"
"Where are you from?" He started walking, and gestured for her to follow him. "Tell me about your hometown, and I'll tell you about mine, okay?"
She blinked again, before a small smile tugged on her lips. "Sure!" The orange-clad girl fell into step beside Tidus and the two began their conversation. "My hometown's called Twilight Town..."
The two ended up spending the rest of the day together. And they spent the day after that together too, and the day after that, and the day after that... after awhile, it got to the point where one was almost never seen without the other, and truthfully, the two wouldn't have had it any other way. Maybe Tidus went on and on about Blitzball a lot, but that was okay with Olette, because she'd never heard about it before so it was all new to her, and besides, it sounded like fun and she was hoping to learn the rules so she could play it sometime when she got the chance. And maybe Olette went on and on about Hayner and Pence a lot (because she thought they were dead and it helped to talk about them), but that was okay with Tidus, because he liked hearing about Olette's friends - they sounded like the kind of people that he could be friends with, too, and he felt like he was getting to know them more and more with each tale she told.
Since they didn't have their usual friends or activities to entertain them, they came up with new things to do. Together, the two of them explored the town in its entirety; they played hide-and-go-seek and one time, they both thought the other was it and hid within three feet of each other for two hours before they finally realized what had happened; they climbed up onto roofs and in the daytime, they would try to find shapes in the clouds, and at night, they looked for shapes in the stars and once, they even saw a shooting star (They'd both said "Make a wish!" at the same time, and, laughing, had done just that); they took risks, too, like the time when they decided it would be fun to see how high they could jump from without breaking a limb, or, even worse, that one time that they'd purposely walked into an area where there were Heartless and made a game out of getting away from the creatures; but no matter what they did, they would always go to the playground at least once, and sometimes they would climb in the tree or sit on the swings or slide on the slide or ride the teeter-totter, but for some reason, they always left the merry-go-round untouched.
Always, except for the last day they had together.
"Not so fast, not so fast!"
Olette tightened her grip on the railing of the merry-go-round as the thing sped up. Tidus put on a last burst of speed and made it go even faster (because he knew by now that when she repeated herself twice it meant that she wasn't serious) before jumping on to join her. The two were laughing the entire time, and when it finally came to a stop, they stumbled off - dizzy and breathless, but in a good way - and collapsed onto the ground, grinning from ear to ear. Tidus got up first and held out a hand to help up Olette, which she took gladly. When she got to her feet, she ran her hands through her hair to smooth it down before pulling a camera out of her pocket. "Take a picture with me!"
Tidus nodded, and the two settled themselves onto the merry-go-round (becuase really, they were starting to feel a bit dizzy again and the merry-go-round had something they cold hold onto to keep from falling over). Olette held the camera with one hand and snapped a few pictures. Instant-developing cameras were nice, and after the pictures had developed, they divided the pictures up between themselves - two for Tidus, and two for Olette.
"Hey... Tidus?"
The sandy-haired boy glanced over at Olette, who was staring up at the sky. The stars were just beginning to come out, and she appeared to be trying to count them as they appeared.
"Yeah?"
"...Do you think... That we'll ever be able to go back home?"
Tidus nodded and grinned reassuringly at her. "Of course we will! It's all just a matter of time. You've heard the rumors, haven't you? The Keyblade Master's gonna put everything back to the way it oughta be." Because Tidus hadn't really bothered to learn the name of the Keyblade Master - he'd just heard that there was one and that he could fix everything. And he was confident that if they believed in this person, the person would be able to do it.
There was a pause, and then, "Will we still be friends, once we're separated?"
The boy blinked, then nodded. "Yeah. Even if we can't see each other, we'll still be friends." He reached over and ruffled her hair. "Don't worry about that stuff. Friends forever, okay?"
"Right!" Olette smiled at Tidus and batted away his hand, then yawned. "I'm getting kinda tired. Same time tomorrow?" Tidus nodded, and the two got up, exchanged a quick hug, and went their separate ways.
That was the last time that Tidus and Olette saw each other, because that very night, while they were sleeping, the worlds were restored and the people who had been scattered returned to their homes. But they never forgot each other. Tidus didn't forget her when he was back home with Selphie and Wakka and was able to go back to wandering the islands and playing with his wooden sword, and Olette didn't forget him when she was back home with Hayner and Pence (because the person who'd told her they were dead really didn't know what they were talking about) and was able to go back to hanging out with them all day.
They never forgot, because they were friends, and friends never truly forget each other.
Ever.
fin.