A/N: This story was inspired, or rather, directly extracted from an English essay I had written earlier this year, indicating the obvious AU changes.
Warning: AU. Slightly OoC Kairi. For all intents and purposes, Sora is four years older than Kairi.
My first attempt at a KH fic. Don't maim me.
In Watched Silence
--- ---
Tick,
tock,
tick,
tock…
--- ---
Soft, the whispered murmurs of a metallic soliloquy reached my ears. Roused from vacant reverie, I removed my eyes from the drab wooden floor to gaze around into a sea of cardboard boxes, searching for the dying notes struck upon the heartstrings of familiarity.
Tick, tock, tick, tock…Paraphernalia lay strewn across the floor, consequence of a box I had dislodged unknowingly. From the countless childhood toys charmed once with reminiscent delight, arose the thick, insipid odour of stagnancy, having surrendered their prized memories to the parting of time.
I passed over them.
Refuse other things may be, but my eyes had glimpsed a locket amongst them, its untarnished sheen bright in the dull confines of the room.
I picked it up. It was star-shaped, wrought in brass. Many had often remarked about its incredible likeness to the famed Destiny Islands wonder – the Paopufruit. As instinctively as one would upon laying hands on such a device, my finger lifted the catch, and it sprung open with a barely audible click.
Within sang a watch in its death throes, paralyzed at eleven fifty-nine. Beside it, were the faces of two youths, complementary in their differences.
One was perceptibly shy, if pretty, delicate features and sea-blue eyes partly concealed by a curtain of mahogany red hair. There was a rosy hint to her cheeks, as though she was embarrassed.
The other, slightly older, his handsome sun-dark face topped by gravity defying spikes of sienna, he was radiant as the other was withdrawn. His eyes were the hue that all other blues were born of, the first splattering of colour upon dawn of the cerulean sky.
Kairi and her stepbrother, Sora.
That was six years ago.
And six years ago told the story of a love born, a love forbidden, that in its nature, could only end in tragedy. So it was, as Destiny had preordained it –
--- ---
A love that never was.
--- ---
The memories were coming back to me.
"Oh! Haven't seen you before. By the way, I'm Sora, the postboy – obviously." He indicated the latter with a unnecessary pat of his envelope-filled satchel, grinning brightly all the while. "What's your name?"Caught in the front yard with a unfamiliar person, she immediately hid herself behind her blessedly nearby father, who offered her a kind, crinkled brown-eyed smile in acquiescence.
Turning to the boy, he said quietly, "Don't worry, she's just a tad shy."
Then she felt a warm, gentle hand on her shoulder.
"Go on, Princess. Tell him your name."
Emboldened by her father's consent, she nervously poked her head out to face – him.
"I… I'm… Kairi."
The expression on Sora's face was tinged with a hint of ruefulness.
"I'm sorry, Kairi. I didn't mean to scare you."
That was their first meeting. She was ten, he was fourteen. Poor Kairi, she had never taken well to newcomers. Any stranger frightened her, more so the comely young man at her doorstep, light of empyrean dancing about him.
Now Kairi, I knew her. Knew her every word, her every step. Her childhood marred by endless abuse from her vengeful mother, she had retreated into herself, friendless, hiding from the very company she longed for. It had taken her poor work-stressed father eight years to discover the truth; leaving early and returning home late, he simply had no time to spare.
--- ---
But I was there.
--- ---
Vulnerable, emotionally distraught with no one else to confide in, Kairi had turned to me. Every night as the tears would fall, she fed me more of herself.
She was pure, blameless. Neither hate nor perversion could dwell in her, her being would not permit it. Under idealized circumstances, none of this would be given chance to take root, but of course, the world was never perfect, and life was never kind.
Such was my purpose.
I was the outlet to all her feelings. All her darkest secrets; her hate, loneliness, and most of all, fear, I took.
I returned nothing. What she gave me was all I had – no sympathy, no warmth, no kindness. No emotion. Only in the dark, I grew, filled with but the despair of suffering.
If I was soulless, curse her mother.
Her parents divorced immediately after. However, Kairi's newfound peace was short-lived – her father soon found someone else.
--- ---
Then Sora came.
--- ---
Sora. Warm of heart, outgoing, and good-looking to boot, he was incredibly popular. It had seemed an impossibility that he would even take notice of his reclusive stepsister. But few knew deep within, where his great compassion resided, lay the still greater need to fulfill this compassion.
He was drawn to her, joy drawn to sorrow.
"Are you alright, Kai'? You seem… sad."
"I… "Lurking in the shadows, I had watched silently the courses of their tender exchange, watched as it blossomed into something so beautiful, so pristine, that in my taintedness, touching it was sacrilege.
Love.
"Is it really – for me?"
A small, white box sat innocently on the dining table.
"Come on, Kai'!" His tone was exasperated, although his eyes sparkled with amusement. "I can't be that horrible not to get you anything for your sixteenth birthday now, can I?"
She giggled bashfully, a small hand clasped to mouth.
"What is it?"
The goofy grin grew wider on his face.
"Open it and find out."
I remembered her shriek of joy as her eyes fell upon the golden locket. Poor as they were, it was a gift appreciation was hardly worthy of.
Kairi took it everywhere with her. Waiting, I rose in the night, ready for the outpouring of feelings I would take to ease her heart. Jealousy welled up as she gazed at her brother's gift instead, soothed by its ticking that reminded one of heartbeats – the heartbeats of their love.
Doomed in my silence, I could make no objection.
If I was heartless, curse Sora.
Soon after that, both their parents died. Car accident. Strange how I could relay that so indifferently – but then again, I had affected not to care.
Left with only themselves, Sora and Kairi clung still tighter to one another, bound in grief, sustained by love. I was powerless to stop the closeness of their bonding, unable to change the mutual need they had for one another. Inevitably, I was pushed aside as Sora became the one to complete her heart.
And I despised them for it. I despised their love which I had lacked, which had taken Kairi away from me. Little did I know this hatred I bore was the ultimate cause of my loss in the end.
I had unwittingly willed catastrophe to befall Sora, and so it did. In the most tragic way possible.
For the fateful night came in Kairi's seventeenth year.
"Listen, Kairi," he said gravely, although his face was blank. "There's a mission I've been dispatched to – "
"You're going away, aren't you?" She already knew.
"…Yeah."
"How long will you be gone for?"
He turned away from her, unable to speak.
"Sora?"
Another pause.
"I'll… I'll try to come back as early as I can, okay?"
But his voice was shaky and failed to reassure her.
"You won't be coming back, will you?" It was not a question.
He did not have to nod his assent to prove her words. Anger at injustice blossomed in her, bursting into flame.
"They can't do this to you – they can't! It's not fair!"
Surprisingly, his eyes hardened.
"I'm a Wielder, Kairi. I've got no choice."
"No, you don't have to go! You could just – "
"What, Kairi – what? Back down like a coward and see the rest of worlds get destroyed?"
They had a terrible row that night. Finally he turned away, the anguish burning in his eyes seared in eternal memory into my mind's eye.
But she, in her rage and desperation, had not heard his whispered last words.
"I'm sorry, Kairi."
--- ---
That was the last time Kairi saw him.
--- ---
It was a inter-global Keyblade War. The King had intended to draw as little attention as possible to it, but there was no chance of concealing the mass slaughtering of Keyblade Wielders on both sides. Nothing was left to the imagination, as I had witnessed – barren fields littered with Keyblades where their Wielders had fallen, their legacies to pass untold into a bleaker future.
It spoke of how Sora was just another Wielder to be expended for the purposes of political maneuvering.
But Kairi didn't care how many Wielders died out there. She didn't care how many were mutilated enough to be confined to a wheelchair or how many lost their minds at the ravages of war. All she cared about was that Sora came home safety.
But he never did.
A letter arrived in her postbox one day, six months later.
I was there. She was gazing aimlessly at the ceiling, so stricken by agony that the tears no longer flowed. Watching her silently as time, already so cruel as to condemn her a life of nothing but loss, smother the last flame, I felt no victory, but sorrow overwhelm my meaningless existence.
Kairi had died that night. Her heart had died with him.
Yet I was left behind, the lone witness to their star-crossed love.
Tick, tock, tick, tock…I turned around. The room was empty – all the boxes have already been moved. Dust was cascading down to the ground, to settle again the inertia undisturbed in the provocation of life's energy.
Gently I laid the watch down on the floor. Memories, nostalgia – past lives others were desperate to claim back, I abandoned instead to cold oblivion.
I had loved Sora. Once.
A part of me had dwelt in that watch, sealed in watched silence into the departing beats of its disyllable chord. A part of me – my hope, my sorrow, my regret. My unrequited love.
A part of me – who was Kairi.
But I was Kairi no longer.
"Miss Dalmasca, we've finished," a burly, masculine voice called out of the emptiness. "You coming?"
I hastened to reply. "Yes. I'm coming."
Pushing the straw coloured strands out of my eyes as I stood, I stole one final glance at the trinket which had promised so much and yet nothing, then left the room.
If I was loveless, there was no other to curse but myself.
--- ---
Tick…
tock…
tick…
tock.
--- ---
-Fin.
A/N: Weird fic, eh? Well, I'm free to accept any opinions. Reviews are very kind.