Author's Note: This is a short KH One-shot that I just needed to write. It was the end of the year and six in the morning. It just developped independently, a constant flow of thought following thought and sensation following sensation. Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts belongs to Squarenix and Disney.
GLOW
End
Swirling bluish darkness before him, moving like tendrils of fog, slowly circling and circling. He had, at a point in his younger days, wondered what death felt like. Paradoxically, to his inner eye death was a solid void, antimatter which was non-definable but still almost graspable because it was there. Always, sometimes more clearly and other times more covert. Maybe it felt like meeting a new person you always knew existed could feel, but then again, he could still see no joy in encountering death in any shape or form, that's why he found the analogy to be puzzling. While still alive death was far more non-existent and thus non-present than it actually was now.
Now…
He wasn't crying, not at all, but his thoughts were. Spilling out of him in violent shudders and hiccups. He was thinking and thinking all around the subject but never of it at all, egoistically ignoring the impact it actually had here and now, on him. On everyone he held dear and not quite as dear, but they still mattered. At this point, everyone and everything mattered, everyone and everything seemed to hold a little sparkling precious gem.
Death was then more like a state of being or not being, a state of feeling or not feeling. Overall, death felt very familiar.
He had come to a standstill, or maybe because his state was in a questionable condition, the world had. The swirling darkness around him had dimmed into nothing but dark fog. Not plain darkness, but darkness made visible through shape, through light. Like the world, the thoughts within himself slowly came to a halt until there was nothing more than a blank. Staring through the dark atmosphere at nothing. Not thinking, not wondering, not asking, not grieving.
But then the darkness around him started vibrating with a soundless humming and he felt himself. He was not sure if he was being formed or dissolved. If he moved or stood still. Just like it had started the quivering stopped and tiny dots of light appeared in the distance, like stars in the night-sky.
And he was thinking again, moving again. The lights guiding, the little precious gems of people that mattered, people that he had met before, people that thought of him, people that remembered him. He was brushed by emotions as he moved or was pulled. He was heading somewhere, either a state of dissolving or of formation. He didn't know, but it wasn't his life that now passed before his eyes, but emotions. Panic ran its claws along his body, anger burnt his chest, grief pulled a hole through him, joy made his head feel light, love tickled his belly. The emotions kept coming and going, like rain touching him, rolling down on him, leaving a little, fast drying wet trail on him before falling off him.
And he started to believe, he started to hope, he started to fear, he started to fall towards the lights. Gravity was suddenly pulling him forwards and he tumbled through the clouds of dark blue fog. Bit by bit the little dots became bigger, clearer and almost graspable, but still beyond reach. Maybe he would never touch them, maybe he would never see them again, like a child looking at the day sky, hoping to catch shooting stars.
Here he was, falling, a shooting star himself, burning with so many emotions he couldn't name. He didn't know where he was headed, but like a shooting star he probably would burn brightly and then vanish into oblivion. And through death, now, he could look at life and wonder what life had been, what it felt like.
Like this. Like feeling and burning brightly. One ray of light that left an impression on so many other people, never quite graspable because they moved differently, but all towards the same destination. There was solace in this recognition, even now. All heading in the same direction, a constant flow of light and after-images and emotions and gaps and not knowing, guessing, believing but still, constantly heading there with a burning fire.
The lights grew bigger, the darkness around him lighter until he seemed to feel the light. Then what did light feel like? Like life, he thought, feeling himself losing grip of his mind, his memory, his body. Now, just like going to sleep.
...
And waking up. Overhead were a thousand sparkling lights, the night-sky. Around him was not perfect darkness, but the darkness of a summer night, with the moon and stars shining. He was not thinking, just looking. Then he started to feel, first a little prickling at his arms. Grass? He was lying on soft grass, among flowers whose light had been dimmed by the night. Then there was scent; fresh water somewhere, the grass, the flowers, something he also knew, but couldn't place just yet. Finally, noise came to him, of the wind blowing, a fountain and a chuckle just next to him.
"So, are you finally awake?" A face appeared in his field of vision, obstructing a portion of the sky overhead. Cast into shadows but the eyes were still gleaming at him.
"Isa…" The voice came out dazzled, dreamy, but then memories gently started flowing back in.
"Geez, you just fell asleep on me," the young man said, disappearing out of vision again and he could now place everything. His body, lying on the field behind the castle, a warm summer night in Radiant Garden, with Isa. He was Lea. He was someone. He was alive.
"Did I…?" he asked, turning his head slightly to the side. Isa sat there, looking at him with his hard to read expression. Isa pulled his lips up in a grin and turned his head down, snorting slightly. "Do you know what I dreamt of?" He wanted to sit up, but Isa moved faster and pushed him back down. Their chests touched, Isa's head rested against Lea's throat.
"I know… I had the same dream," he said and then there was silence. Lea thinking, Isa pressing against him. "I am sorry. Deeply sorry." Lea raised his hands and wrapped his arms around Isa, stars reflecting in his eyes.
"This is a perfect night sky. Do you see all these worlds? All these hearts?" he asked with a smile on his lips. "It's all out there."
"For the moment I prefer staying here," Isa said, "just here." He moved his head, hair tickling Lea's skin. Lea nodded, silent.
He didn't know what was beyond that night-sky, beyond the stars and waiting for them on the next morning. If there was a next morning at all. But death, Lea thought, now, alive, being, feeling, maybe it really was a person. Or many people, many memories, just sparks of himself in everybody's hearts where he had left a lasting or even just fleeting impression, just like the shooting star moving along its path in life, visible to others far and near, precious and not so precious. For others there might last just an after-glow, but he'd circle on as a star, as a heart.
But that was just a thought in the back of Lea's head, after all, now was the time to figure out what Life and Being felt like all over again.
Beginning
And Circle and Circle again
Notes: Letting my thoughts run, using Lea as a vessel. I know it doesn't say much, I'm sorry if it seems raw and unfinished and not brilliant but I don't think that this is meant to be quite polished. I might experiment with the topic again, because writing is also trying to make sense of KH's mysteries. Also, I'm very fond of Isa and Lea's (and Saïx and Axel's) relationship. It does have some depth I wasn't aware of before and it just struck me like lightning one day. I've been in love ever since. ;D
About Isa apologizing; I guess this is a matter of perception or preference - I could have had Lea apologize too for what happened when they were Nobodies.
P.S. "Circle and Circle again" got that stuck in my head ever since Tori Amos' Cloud on my Tongue. It felt appropriate to use it here. :)
Silly-Blue