I've always wanted to do a Kingdom Hearts story for the movie Original Sin because it's just perfect and I think of it every time I watch it. And now I am, so hah!
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Anyway, I have MOVED this story COMPLETELY to another site. You can find this STORY and all its subsequent UPDATES here, remove asterisks and spaces: h*t*t*p :/ archiveofourown. o*r*g /works/835117/chapters/1590102
I have the same penname there as I do here: ParadiseAvenger
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Chapter One: Original Sin
"You cannot walk away from love." That was the advertisement in the Baltimore newspaper. And that is how he found her. She was a young woman in need of a husband and he was a man who wanted a wife. It would have been nice for it to be that simple, but it's never that way… is it?
…
The Spanish villa was beautiful. It was all pearl-white stone, white stucco, wide terraces with ornate wrought iron banisters and garden gates also white. All the hallways were open to the mild summer air, but then it was always warm in Santiago, Cuba. Bright green ivy crawled all over the walls like a curious child, potted palms swayed in the crisp early morning breeze, the perfume of nearby flowers graced the air, and there was a distant chirrup of crickets in the darkness that was pierced only by pale lantern light.
Three long purple-black shadows skipped across the beautifully tiled floors, racing up the walls like phantoms. Then, the trio turned the corner sharply onto the open veranda passage—two ahead, one dragging behind. Flanking the beautiful villa's young master was the lovely Spanish servant, Chloe Mavarachi, and the young master's father, Leopold Skye, was lagging.
"There's no use trying to talk any sense into him now. He's completely loco!" Chloe said flatly and swished along in her full white linen skirts, keeping up with young Sora Skye where his father could not. She was used to these antics from the young man and was in good shape.
Huffing and puffing along behind the servant-girl and his son, Leopold panted out, "You can't marry her, Sora. You've never even met her!" Leopold, on the other hand, was getting old and still thought of his son as the quiet child who did as he was told.
But, like Chloe said, Sora was out of his mind.
"Exactly, Father, but I am meeting her today. The boat from America comes at six this morning. We marry at nine and, by ten, I am back at work," Sora Skye said patiently. He had explained this to Chloe already while she was trying to talk him out of this. He had an entire speech prepared for the next person who tried to talk him down just so he could get through it faster.
"Preposterous!" Leopold said and finally pulled up abreast of his quick-walking son. (He had only caught up because Sora had stopped and turned to Chloe so she could help him straighten himself out. It was five in the morning and everyone needed a little buffing up and smoothing out that early in the day.) "This is ridiculous!"
Obediently, Chloe adjusted the lapels of Sora's white suit coat and tightened his too-loose tie just a hair even though she rather felt like strangling him.
"A man needs a wife," Sora said flatly to his father as Chloe finished and gave him a pat. "Isn't that what you have been telling me?" He slowed his pace so his father could keep up with him. "Well, I sent for one."
"From America," Chloe supplied helpfully.
Sora slid her a look and kept walking.
"Well, what does she look like?" Leopold asked Chloe. Leopold was all about a woman's looks—her body, her face, her breasts, everything. He was even that way about his servants.
For a moment, the two stayed behind him, looking at the bride's photograph and then his father made an impolite sound deep in his throat. Chloe's footsteps tapped on the tile as she approached Sora and Leopold began to huff after them again.
"There comes a time in every man's life when the band is playing and he's the only one who can't hear it," Chloe said as she caught up briskly with Sora. It was some of her wisdom that Sora was beginning to think she carried in a secret bucket and dumped out on him every time he did something out of the ordinary—like send away for a mail-order bride and from America no less. "Today is your day," she said and handed him the photo of his bride that she had stored somewhere on her person.
Leopold snatched the picture from between them, but Sora ignored that. Instead, he said to Chloe, "I love you, woman," and gave her a loud kiss on the cheek.
She laughed, a beautiful heartfelt sound that no one ever tired of hearing. The day Chloe stopped laughing would be an unfortunate day indeed.
"This bride! She is not beautiful!" Leopold said and waved the photograph in his son's face.
Sora did admit, in secret to himself, that he had picked a rather… handsome woman indeed. She had a stern sharp face and was dressed frumpily in a floral dress, but she was what he needed in his life right now. So, to his father, he explained, "She is not meant to be beautiful. She is meant to be kind and true and young enough to bear children." Then, he plucked the picture from his father's fingers before he could make another comment.
Chloe chuckled and separated father and son before anything could spring up to spoil the wedding. Leopold huffed and puffed down the stairs after them, into the courtyard where a carriage drawn by two white horses was waiting patiently.
Sora was already climbing into the carriage and she closed the door behind him, peering in through the window at his pale face. "The sun will be up soon and that boat is coming in," she said to him, as if he didn't know.
Leopold made it to the other carriage window, which Chloe hadn't been able to block fast enough. "What about love, Sora?" he panted. "Does love come into this equation at all?" Damn childhood. Sora had gone on and on about marrying for love as a child and it seemed Leopold hadn't forgotten. He was playing that card as a last ditch effort to stop his son's marriage to a strange foreign woman.
"Love is not for me, Father," Sora said, leaning out the window. "Love is for people who believe in it." And why should Sora believe in love? His father only cared for beauty and his mother had only loved her own beauty, never her husband and never her son. Maybe that was why Sora had chosen a not-beautiful bride, because beauty was only something that brought up bad memories of his strained and fanciful childhood.
Chloe laughed.
Leopold huffed and Sora patted his father's hand.
Chloe was still laughing in the background as Sora spoke to the carriage driver, telling him to go, and he craned his head out the window again to look back at her. "Why are you laughing at me? You've been laughing at me the whole morning!" he called as the carriage pulled away.
"Oh never mind! You go! Go on!" Chloe said and waved. Leopold was still frowning and huffing from the exorcise he had gotten this morning. His lighter flared in the darkness and he lit up a cigar, casting the warm light across Chloe's caramel-colored face.
…
The docks were business as usual—a lot of commotion and aboriginal singing, some shouting and fighting and even a little brawling, fish tossing and ware shouting, boats coming and going, a few people falling in or fishing, and a lot of swearing (these were sailors after all). The docks were the culture and activity of the world. Everything came together with the brine of the green-glass sea and the cool wet breeze. If it didn't come in by the ocean, it didn't exist in the world, but life was that way when you lived on an island.
The massive ocean liner was anchored out in the deep briny bay and all the little dinghies were being rowed in from the ship to the docks in a never-ending stream, letting off passengers and cargo and exotic animals and the like. All kind of things came in on a ship like that, including Sora Skye's future wife.
Sora meandered the docks, inspecting passing faces for the handsome woman who matched his photograph. On the edge of the horizon, the sun was just cresting over the water and he had never seen such a beautiful sight.
"No, this is not a love story, but it is a story about love and the power it has over a life. The power to heal or destroy. And this is where the story begins…"
The sun was full over the horizon now, the sea had turned from dull green to deep blue, and the great liner was empty of passengers and cargo and sailors alike. It would make port here, in Santiago, tonight and be on its way in the morning. Sora had wandered the entire area, but had been unable to find his bride. Where could she be? He stood on the bluffs, on the high marble wall there, and looked down, but even from that vantage point he could see nothing but the endless sea.
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And I removed the original mature content that continued from that point due to the trolls. Please join the cause to bring maturity to Fanfiction again. Or read this story and all its updates in its original version on Archive of Our Own.
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