Isa is 16 when his light is snuffed out. He and his best friend, his heart, his world, are pitched from the castle doors, caught at some mischief. Both get up; Lea wanders forward, grumbling and swinging his arms; Isa pauses to dust himself off. When he looks up, Lea is twenty feet away, turning back to beckon him. He doesn't see the shadows rising at his feet, doesn't think to run as Isa cries out a warning, doesn't even have time to scream before the Shadows have wrested his heart from him and plunged Isa's world into darkness. Isa plunges himself into the press of bodies between him and Lea, reaching, punching, kicking as the monsters tear at his clothes and claw at his face and the darkness of the Heartless bleeds into the darkness of unconsciousness.
Isa wakes to the feeling of cotton pressed to a searing pain in his face. He moans and raises his hands to touch the bandages. He hears a deep voice from beside him, and he cracks his eyes open to see he is in a hospital, and none other than Ansem the Wise sits beside his bed.
"Your face will scar, I'm afraid, but it could have been much worse."
Isa is disoriented. He doesn't care about his face or about Ansem. He sits up in his bed.
"Where's Lea? Is he okay?"
Ansem does not answer, and Isa's heart drops into his stomach. No. It can't-...Lea can't. He can't. Isa stares as Ansem produces a torn yellow scarf and a few shards of broken ceramic. This is why he is here in person. This is why.
"I am sorry...the guards were not able to reach him in time. If it helps, we do not believe he suffered."
It doesn't help. Isa reaches trembling fingers to gather the cloth and the broken pieces to his chest. He feels numb, and cold. Lea is gone. Lea. His Lea. Then he is sobbing, choking, pressing the cloth to his face and crying so hard he feels like he's going to die. He wishes he would die, but he doesn't.
Isa lives.
o
o
Isa is 16 when he first goes berserk. He had always enjoyed school, but now it, like everything in his life, has lost all luster. Looking at the empty desk beside his where Lea used to sit is a torment, but he can't stop glancing over at his friend's untidy scrawl grafitti'd onto the surface (it reminds Isa of when he was younger and losing his baby teeth; no matter how he tries, he can't stop fiddling with the hole left behind). He has never had trouble ignoring the class bully, and it is only easier when he is so distracted to ignore the taunts about his face. The bully snorts.
"Eh, you're just mad 'cuz you're not getting any now that your little girlfriend's kicked the bucket."
Isa sees red. The last thing he remembers is a sudden pressure behind his eyes, building and building until he explodes. Then, nothing but a blur of sound and color, and then he is being restrained by no less than four teachers, and his knuckles are covered in blood, and the bully is a crying mess of blood and teeth and broken bones, curled on himself on the floor.
And Isa feels better.
o
o
Isa is 16 when he realizes his parents care more about the idea of a model son than they do about him. He realizes that they had merely tolerated Lea; as long as Isa got good grades and was well-behaved at home, they were willing to let him run amok with the redhead. But now Isa can't concentrate in school, and he doesn't do the homework. His grades are nosediving. He picks fights, every day, and comes home bloody more often than not. Isa's parents don't recognize him, and they don't know how to deal with him, so they don't.
Isa spirals.
o
o
Isa is 16 the first time Cid saves him. Isa thinks his neighbor must have been a soldier, once, the way he understands. He calls from his porch as Isa walks by one night.
"Hey, kid. Come sit with me."
Isa has nothing better to do, so he does. Cid holds out a flask to him; it smells like whiskey. Isa looks at Cid suspiciously.
"I'm too young to drink."
"Ain't nobody who goes through somethin' like you did's too young to drink. I won't tell your folks if you don't."
So Isa drinks until he vomits, and he cries, and for the first time, he tells someone, and he talks until he vomits again, and it's like lancing a sore, and Isa heals. Just a little bit.
o
o
Isa is 17 when his world is swallowed up in the Darkness. He works for Cid, in his shop, and has since the day Cid sat him down and let him cry. It is evening, and only three people are in the shop, all children; a boy, Squall, ten years old and fascinated by the gummi blocks on Cid's walls, and two girls, Aerith and Yuffie, nine and five respectively, who follow Squall like his shadow. They are there, and Cid, and Isa, when the screaming starts. Isa looks out the window and everything stops. Those things are there; those monsters that took his Lea from him. He is frozen, until Cid grabs him and yanks him away from the window, screaming at him to help barricade the door. The children are crying and people outside are dying and Isa feels like he's moving through tar because this can't be happening, this must be a nightmare, and then Cid is dragging him and the children into the basement, and Isa realizes what is happening as he is shoved towards a Gummi Ship.
"No! No, I'm staying to fight! I'm staying!"
"Are you crazy? That's suicide, Isa!"
"I don't care! Those things killed Lea! Lea-"
"Lea would want you to live! Now get in the goddamn ship!"
And then Cid is grabbing Isa's shirt and throwing him as far back into the ship as he can, which is surprisingly far, and Cid is slamming the door and firing up the engine as the children cling to Isa, terrified, and he watches as their world shrinks into the distance and is swallowed up in darkness.
And Isa lives.
o
o
Isa is 17 when he remembers just how much he needs to be needed. He and Cid and the children are refugees in a strange, cobbled-together world, built of the broken dreams of hundreds of other survivors, huddled together against the darkness that took their worlds. He'd had no idea how much work and attention children demanded. Squall is broody and angry, which Isa can understand. Yuffie is confused, too young to understand what's happened, and she cries for her parents every night. And Aerith is just sad, moving through her day by rote and totally disconnected. They need Isa and Cid, and Isa realizes just how much he needs them, because when they come to him for hugs and comfort after their nightmares, he heals, and he remembers who he used to be, back when the sun was in his life.
Isa feels warm again.
o
o
Isa is 19 when he remembers how easy it is to lose everything. Yuffie barrels into the shop, scraped and bleeding and crying about Heartless and Leon and Aerith. Isa feels his heart stop, and he grabs the first heavy thing he can lay hands on, and it's a wrench, not a weapon, but Isa doesn't care, and he swears to never be without a weapon within arm's reach ever again as he runs. And then there they are, and Aerith is pressed back against a wall, and Squall is only twelve and his face is flayed wide open, and Isa remembers how painful that is, but Squall is still standing in front of Aerith, swinging a pipe at the three Soldier Heartless penning them in. Isa doesn't think, just leaps, and then he is smashing the Heartless with the wrench, over and over, until they fade back into darkness. And then the littles are crying and hugging him, and he's clutching them and determinedly not crying, and then Cid and Yuffie catch up and suddenly he is screaming at the littles until Yuffie cries, and he knows he'll feel awful about that later, but the thought that he could have lost them terrifies him so much he can't deal with it.
Squall's face needs attention, so Cid lets Isa scream himself hoarse and then takes them back to the shop. Squall's face is going to scar for sure. Cid speaks soothingly to the boy as he cleans his wound.
"That there's a badge of honor. Y'got that protecting your important people. Y'oughta be damn proud of that scar."
Squall thinks, and nods, and says "Yeah...and now I'll look cool, too, like Isa."
Isa flinches. He sees Squall's face fall as he gets up to leave the room, but he can't stay there. His scar is a badge of shame.
Isa sits on his bed, legs tucked under him, as he leans on the windowsill and stares out at the night, running a worn yellow scarf through his fingers. He hears his name called softly, questioningly, and he turns to look towards the door. Squall is standing there, a bandage bisecting his face and a frown wrinkling his brow. Isa is silent, and Squall climbs up on the bed beside him. He wraps his arms around Isa's neck, and whispers in his ear.
"You tried."
But it's not enough.
o
o
Isa is 21 when Squall and Aerith start to notice each other. He watches, and smiles, as they dance around each other, and he wonders if he was like that, once, with a red-headed boy who smiled like the sun. Not for the first time, or the last, he wonders, and hopes, that that boy knew how much Isa loved him.
Isa prays he did.
o
o
Isa is 25 when he meets Sora. The boy turns up in Traverse Town, a refugee from yet another lost world, no different from any other, except for the key he wields. Isa, though, can tell that he is something special, key or no key. His world is gone, his friends missing, but Sora still has something so lacking from the general populace of Traverse Town; hope. He has hope, and a sunny smile, and the drive to succeed where Isa had failed. Isa is sure that this child, with his big heart, can mend the hurts and banish the darkness that has ruined so many lives. Sora's light could never be put out, he knows.
Isa misses Lea.