Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is the property of its owners, and the writer of this work of fiction makes no profit from their use. Although this disclaimer will be pretty useless in the event that I actually get sued.
Rating: T for some language.
Pairings: None.
Notes: Theories sure to be firmly jossed in future KH installments.
Word Count: 3,805
Nothing is whole, and nothing is broken. ~Utada Hikaru
It wasn't the pain of it, though that was pretty fantastic; it hurt about as much as the time he'd tried to scale the thirteen foot fence around the abandoned power plant for the sake of seeing what was inside, and broken his arm in several places.
It wasn't the fear, which had been oddly distant. On the contrary, it had been kind of cool, seeing it come away in all that light. Bloodless and pure, radiant, in a way that made his mind laugh out an "oh man, not fucking good."
No, the thing that had alarmed Lea, shaken him to his very perishing core, was the sensation of tearing.
Like watching gravity come to full visibility right in front of your face, only to find out it was not some unbreakable law, but a fraying rope that had just snapped. The feeling that everything in him, down to the follicles and molecules and all those words Isa liked to use, to the the litany of things he loved and hated and passed over without a second thought, to the very microscopic burn he'd worked so hard to place on the world, was being rent into shreds that should not have existed.
Dying? He'd been there before, more than once. Dying was falling asleep in class. Dying was getting black-out drunk when you thought you were good for another round, at least. This was –
Wrong, wrong. God, so wrong –
He wanted to reach for that little orb of light, to cling to it and kiss it and force it back in. To tie it in place with heavy chains, or ropes, or fucking twist ties, anything. May have tried, surely did, but all of it was failing...limbs, lungs, ears.
For the barest instant, he thought he saw his own eyes reflected back at him. In the clarity of The End, they appeared colder and brighter than he'd ever seen before.
The eyes went.
So did he.
"Ta-da! Did I pull it off or did I pull it off? Now pay up."
"...Are you serious?"
"I sure am! See? One egg, good as new."
"Lea. That is not an unbroken egg. It's a clump of tape and broken shell."
"It's a triumph of man!"
"It's a mess on the concrete."
"Your mom's a mess on the concrete!"
"...What?"
"Yeah, you heard me."
"...Go wash your hands."
There wasn't much to mourn after that. By the time some semblance of reason came back to him, the memory of those last few moments was no more than a sliver of recollection – something about light, and hurting – a miniscule scrap of a painting, a puzzle, the remainder of which he didn't care to uncover.
As if he would want to. Why would he ever? It was painfully obvious he didn't need to fear the light anymore, not when there was so much warm, comforting darkness in the world...between it and beyond it and around it and of it. He could travel between the corridors of the planets or slip into the shadows in the corner of a room, and no one could touch him.
No one could hurt him.
No one had ever hurt him in the first place.
It had always been this way. Always warmth and darkness and mist and hunger –
Hunger.
So very hungry. He could not remember a time when he hadn't been hungry (didn't try, no point) but that didn't matter, because for every ounce of darkness there lay a pound of food. And there was only one type of food.
As he surveyed the world through fluorescent eyes that did not blink, staring at a town whose name was dead to him, he listened to the staccato beats of a million singing hearts all layered and folded and rolled into a single, perfect thrum. Ravenous, he shot out.
If Lea's mind had once been comparable to his own bedroom, colorful and over-cluttered, this new one was a vast, empty loft that contained a single set of bare cupboards.
If he had been able to remember what he'd lost, he would have wept.
"I think we've underestimated what's going on in there."
"You saw it too?"
"Hmm. It will be dangerous...if we're ever caught again..."
"Pssht, we won't be, now that we've gotten inside. Cased the joint, you know?"
"We got as far as the stairway."
"What's your point?'
"That if you ever wanted to back out, now would be the time. If we go any farther, there may be no turning back."
"Exactly. That's what makes it so fun."
He was always moving these days. It was not only death itself to stand still, but foolishness on such a scale as to defy the very definition of common sense. You kept moving because there was always something, Things to Eat and darkness to hide in, lying just up ahead. Why stop?
Moreover, there was the signal. The homing beacon. One could even call it a promise, if such meaningful words hadn't been lost long ago.
More realistically, it was the same beckoning that drew geese back and forth between the hemispheres and salmon to die at the spawning ground.
The heart.
The one that he'd been meant to find and consume. It didn't matter how, and whoever had placed the map in his ant-brain wasn't sharing why. But then again, the very possibility of asking questions was never something that had occurred to him, and never would.
"...'and it's stupid, because you can't recreate spontaneous combustion,' I told her. 'It just happens, kind of like falling in love. Or something. You just go up in flames, boom, fat, skin, hair. Just like that. It could happen to anyone.' And she tells me, 'Even you? Even right now?' And I'm like 'Hell yeah! That's why it's so beautiful...you never see it coming.' And then...oh wait! Back up, I've got to tell you how I outed myself to her at the train station. Isa, it was seriously the best-"
"And you'd never met this girl before."
"Right."
"And haven't seen her since."
"Right!"
"...The day you start acting your age, I'm going to count it a tragedy."
He found it at the end of the earth, or at the very least, he thought he did. When you kept to the shadows, stepping into the light always felt like staring out over the precipice of the universe.
The key was there, as he'd instinctively known it would be; pale and dull, and capable of wounding him in a way that the soft, kicking, biting bodies he opened up never could. There was a face, too, and hair and eyes, but he never took notice of that.
It was only that heart!
He could sense it beating there, impossibly powerful, a nuclei ready to burst into violent life and burn on for miles...wasn't sure that it wouldn't shatter him from the inside out. He only knew that if he could somehow get to it, he would never be hungry again.
The claws came out, and he leapt.
Time came to be measured in those heartbeats. In a flash he was ripping cloth, faintly able to sense the smell of blood. Pounding, racing, and so close that for a moment he could almost recall the desperate, illogical desires of the mortal human. It wasn't even in his mouth, and he could taste it clearer than anything he'd ever known.
Even after traveling so far and wanting it for so long, there was no regret as the keyblade descended on him mere seconds after latching on.
Heartless don't have a sense of anticlimax.
"Isa? Isa, come on, wake up! What the hell did you do to him? Bastards, get back here!"
"Lea...stop it."
"Isa?"
"It's not helping."
"Fuck, Isa...your face...I'm so sorry, this is all my fault-"
"No. If you say one more word, I'll never forgive you."
"...Then what do you want me to do?"
"We're going to get out of here, and I need you to listen to me for once. Can you do that?"
"..."
"Lea!"
"...Yeah. Yeah, Isa, I'm listening. I promise."
The darkness took him once more.
It could have been worse, and on some level he may have understood that. There was no pain here, and the space seemed vast, endless, more so than he would have been able to comprehend even without this instinct driven mind. He was free to move wherever he liked, to sink into the ground and surface a universe away, but there was little reason to expend the effort. One end of this world, if indeed it had them, was identical to the other.
He was no longer hungry.
When the first tug came, it was faint enough that he might have easily missed it, had his mind been even slightly preoccupied with anything else. It was as though a tiny fishhook, thin as a hair and tied to a fairy's dust-mote spun line, had snagged the end of his antennae and pulled. He turned his head in the appropriate direction, cocked it when he was faced with nothing but more darkness.
But he was not left wondering long. Moments later, three more invisible lines had woven their soft little snares around him, and were pulling him onwards. Ten. Fifteen. One hundred. A thousand.
Go there.
The summons was plain, even if "there" appeared to be thick, solid nothingness.
Go there.
He could not decipher how long he ran any more than he could tell how long he'd been trapped in this world; time had no meaning here. The unchanging, empty landscape oozed by as the strings beckoned him tirelessly, unceasingly forward. At some point, he began to wonder if he was simply running full circles around the world, which seemed somewhat pointless; he thought about stopping –
And ground to a halt in his tracks.
Thought.
He was racing then, stumbling and half-galloping as fast as the short limbs could carry him; a mad desperation fed by the constant, building clarity, and he knew – oh, he knew – that the phantom threads could have changed direction en massé at that very moment, and it still would not have been enough to hold him back.
"Stop it! For goddsakes, you're younger than I am! Get AWAY from me! Don't touch me!"
"This is a paralytic I'm administering now. For the following test, it's crucial that you be conscious."
"FUCK! NO, they'll find out! They'll tear this place apart!'
"There."
"You don't have to do this...please...PLEASE! Stop...st..."
"...Now, I need you to breathe as deeply as you can, and not just for my own sake; the agent eventually affects the respiratory system, and we need to make every breath count. System 6.78, countdown to immersion, ten seconds!"
"Hhhhh...hhh..."
"As a final note, please bare in mind that this was nothing personal."
"Hhh!"
"You just found out too much."
Just a fragment of color, at first. A literal pinprick...as though some unseen being had stuck the darkness with a hat pin, causing it to bleed out a single, violent drop. But from within the body of this creature, Lea was waking up, and he was close enough now to know.
At long last, he came to a stop, and there were no threads now. They had vanished, been replaced by something more tangible than invisible filaments, something deep and painful and overwhelming. The signal that drew him to the One Heart had been a gentle suggestion compared to this call, this pull, that demanded he go forward as he valued his very existence.
'It's you.'
He was tall, long and sharp and dressed entirely in black, and Lea was reminded for a wild instant of the scarecrows the Radiant Garden farmers used to burn at the start of spring, when the straw had gone to mold. Just above the dagger mark tattoos glittered a pair of verdant green eyes, bright as death, burning their way back into the forefront Lea's memory. For what seemed an impossibly long time, the two of them stood there, staring at one another. Then, the man smiled sardonically.
"Tens of millions of heartless roaming loose in the worlds, and I run into you. What are the odds, huh?"
The sound of him speaking struck an odd chord in Lea, because it didn't seem right hearing your own voice coming back at you that way – at least, he thought it was his. He was sure that, even at his lowest points, he'd never sounded so bitter.
'Who are you?'
The words never actually came out, but somehow the man heard them anyway. "Good question. The name's...naaw. On second thought, it doesn't really matter much now, does it?"
'No, I meant you're my...I mean, you're me. Aren't you?'
"Something like that." A shake of the head, checking himself. "Maybe exactly like that. After all, aren't we both in the same boat? Couldn't hold on to it in the end."
'I know. I...can remember it all now.'
"Doesn't surprise me. I've got your whole life story filed away in here" – he gave his left temple a brusque tap – "down to the last hour, juicy bits and stuff you don't care about included. As a matter of fact, you could say I've got it memorized." The words were left intentionally to settle on the dead air, forcibly impressing on Lea the reality of who he'd been, what he was now. An old, once beloved jacket dragged up from the closet, riddled with moth-eaten holes. Lea's throat clenched. "And I've got to say, I'm not finding a single thing in here that justifies handing it all back."
There was no malice in his voice, which made it all the more frightening in its causality. Like he was poised to shrug and walk on by, taking Lea's life with him.
'No! Shit...please, please don't leave!'
"Chill, kid," said the man with a low chuckle, smoky and amused and something else that almost resembled resignation. With a sigh, he sank down onto his knees, gloved hands resting on his thighs as though anticipating some ancient ritual – whether supplication or a children's clapping game. It wasn't until he actually moved that Lea noticed the edges of his frame were frayed. Warped, like an old photograph gone yellow in the sun. "I'm not going anywhere."
Carefully, and yet too drained to be hesitant, Lea inched closer. With every step of the way, the soles of his feet seemed to prickle with new energy, and small orbs of light began to dance around him. Around both of them, thin wisps that trailed off into the nothingness. The man smiled sadly.
"That's it..."
Lea groped for his knee in the gathering light and found it, expecting something dramatic to happen at that first contact – the fabric of this world coming undone, the sky showing through. When nothing did, he looked up into his counterpart's eyes, discovering an unnerving finality in them. They looked tired, ready to close.
'...So, what's gonna happen to us?'
"Nothing," he replied. "Stop worrying so much, alright? You're gonna be fine." The light was consuming both of them now, a sweet blindness. The sound that accompanied it was almost bell-like. "Just wish I could get half as psyched about this as he was..."
'Who?'
"Just talking to myself."
'…Hey.'
"What?"
A shadowy hand came up, and thorny claws were rasped lightly over the tattooed cheek. He wanted to say something before they both faded away for good; anything to prove they'd crossed paths, and been. All that came out was...
'I like your marks...'
Although Lea couldn't see anything now, he thought he felt the weight of a hand settle between his antennae. "Thanks, kid."
He closed his eyes, and...
"Hey, Isa? What do you think happens when you die?"
"What brought that on?"
"Don't think about it. Hurry. Just answer."
"A field of sea salt ice cream growing on the dark side of the moon."
"Cool, really?"
"No."
"Isa! Hey, c'mon. I'm being serious this time...I want to know what you believe."
"You honestly want to know, Lea? Nothing. I believe that nothing whatsoever happens after we die...that's the whole point of being dead."
"...Pessimist."
"It's called being 'realistic.'"
"No, you're not thinking outside the box. I bet you're not even going to ask me the same question back, like a good friend would."
"...Fine. Lea, what do you think happens after you die?"
"Obvious. You get to come back as whatever you want."
"And what are you going to come back as? Please tell me it's not something sappy, like you want things to stay exactly as they are right now."
"Hah! You wish. I'm coming back to bother you, alright...but aside from that, I want everything to be totally different than it is now."
"So...you want things to change, but not too much."
"Exactly! A whole new adventure."
"I don't think you get to place orders for your reincarnation."
"Wouldn't hurt to ask."
Sun...
...Lea opened his eyes, only to wince and turn away as the light that had been so welcoming before now assaulted his corneas. The ground was uneven and chafing beneath his back, yet giving enough to be instantly recognized as sand. From somewhere very nearby came the crash and hiss of the ocean, close enough to rain a light mist down over his cheeks and eyelids, but unable to shift him in the face of the single sound to break through it all...the only sound that mattered.
His heart was beating out a rhythm against chest, just as though it had never left.
He lay a palm over the place where that beloved little beat lay, a silent promise to never let it slip away again. The memories came flooding back, and he welcomed them like a warm bath after a long journey through frozen twilight. Even the most insignificant of recollections – the taste of bad coffee, jumping a puddle – became precious now, old treasures to be turned over and held impossibly close. It was enough to make him want to smile, but he couldn't begin to try. Not after everything that had happened, after what he'd been and done.
The faces came next...Isa, his parents, the refugees from Radiant Garden...he refused to entertain the notion, in the light of this miracle, that they were anywhere but the height of safety. No. They were all perfectly fine, and now that he remembered them, that was all he needed to find his way home. And who knew? Maybe this was Heaven, and he could still find them here, and the past was all a dark dream fading out behind him.
Very soon, whether he was ready or not, it was going to hit him hard. He could only cherish every second that passed until it did.
As Lea sat up and took stock of his surroundings – ocean on one side, rocks on the other, the sounds of civilization off in the near distance – it dawned on him that he was alone. The red haired man who had been-him-and-not-him was nowhere to be seen. But deep inside his own being, somewhere behind his heart and just alongside his soul, was a strange and weighted sense of presence that had never been there before. It was only just beginning to occur to him what that presence might be, when he felt it change.
Just one attempt, a sort of muscular flexing. Tentative. Experimental. The prisoner who awakens in a dark room to the feeling of bound limbs, and instinctively tests their restraints. Then, all of a sudden, something much quicker.
Panicking.
Twisting, fighting to move in a small space that allowed for no motion, because there was no form to move in the first place. Pushing against an unseen bond in claustrophobic realization, again and again, and Lea felt no physical force from it, only an overpowering sense of helplessness and grief...
...before finally falling still.
No more.
It had been painless, but his breath rattled too high, too quick, as though it had been anything but.
"Axel," he said. Because the name was there now, as clearly written into his mind as if it had always been there, and in a sense, perhaps it always had. "That was your name, wasn't it?"
He didn't knew if he'd honestly been expecting an answer, or whether his shadow was capable of even giving one. Nothing answered but the wind, the sea birds, and the blue waves that reached deep inside him to a place of unfathomable loss.
It was then that Lea knew he'd felt him giving up.
And everything hit him hard.
The world's image began to blur, burning his eyes as the sun had done. He wiped at his face, streaking it with grains of sand.
"Damn it..." he hissed, as the tears came faster than he could stop them, until he too accepted the inevitability of it.
Alone on that long, pale stretch of rocks and salt, he wept without knowing exactly whom he was grieving for...there seemed to be too much. For all the people he had cut down in a mindless, ravenous stupor; for Isa, whom he would never see again; for the person he would never be again. There was no such thing as "living forever", when your body was no more than a cheap twelve piece puzzle of bones and skin and memories that could be shot to pieces at a moment's notice. When you couldn't do a thing to protect anyone, let alone yourself.
Somewhere amidst it all, he cried tears he couldn't explain, for people whose names he couldn't reach in the vast, sealed vault now sequestered away inside himself. For a brief lifetime of wild, bittersweet flame and all the lives that had drawn near it; for that final, tenacious conviction that it had to have meant something in the end.
Between the two of them lay a long line of graves that could never be covered over. A worn road leading back that refused to be tread again.
An old, familiar pain.
Like being torn in two.
~End~