Flying in Neverland is a simple feat – a careful tug of distortion-wary shadows and lifting a heart (always the heart, because bodies can fly easy when they rise, and minds never truly land). Of course with a pinch of fairy-dust, or else even the pirates would fly and that's not the idea – but still, it's merely a reagent.
To do the deed, it's a happy thought and a jump-step. It's feeling – wishing – the wind tug on your shoulders to pull you up and tangle-brush your hair. The shadow becoming gorgeously grotesque with mile-long limbs and water-mirror gaping wounds and soft licks of water.
Sora had it easy, with the memory of Kairi's voice in the cyan skies and the scent of star-shaped fruit and tropical flowers that clung to their unlinked hands. And the girl in the air-worthy recollection is just smiling to him, and speaking of a distant together. It's enough for a Sora who still doesn't know what he wants with her save for the warm insistent tug of his heart and the way that he'll still blush when memory-Riku waves one of the promise-fruits up in the air, taunting with an "I'll share it with her" that doesn't quite manage to imply that Sora will get to share it with them too.
That pushes him to reach for the skies in a vain attempt to catch the sun-fruit held high by a ghostly hand and hand it to a girl which isn't there yet.
But Kairi always did wait for him, daintily perched on the piers or standing sentry over Sora's sleeping form. Or, if the memory wants to keep him airborne and in its possessive winds, the ghost will be organizing a pile of supplies for the journey that might have taken them to this basic-blue sea with the seashells that don't quite match those of the charm that she gifted him.
Sora thinks he'll meet up with Kairi on the next shore, the one with palm trees that don't bend over their reflections. If she isn't there…
Well, there are more islands.
Riku was there way back then along with Sora, but land-bound instead of free. And it stung, the thought of invisible chains that tied him to a deck richly scented of dust and peeling varnish. And back then, Riku would have tried to lift himself with mental images of a star within hand's reach and his Kairi by his side, awake and vibrant like she was on their isles.
She is a marionette with her strings cut off now, and the somewhat pale skin Kairi has makes her seem more like porcelain than breathing girl and her clothes are resembling garishly poor costumes here surrounded by gilded thieves. Riku hasn't flown yet, and he doubts he can while she's still sleeping.
He gets to come back changed, but a sleeper awake is still the one pushing him into the skies. Only that now it's Sora, almost physically shoving him into the air with a smile and a 'race you'…
Riku doesn't land running – he soars, racing a shadow that wears a moonlight-crafted crown of wild spikes.
And he knows, deep within himself, that his happiness is as fluctuating as the shadows' liquid shape. Because at times, when he won his phantom-race, the defeated shadow can be misconstrued as feminine, floating in dreams, and Riku can't wish her awake without losing the first burst of not-quite joy.
For now, it's keeping his shadow alive with a clownish outfit that the moon can't provide and untamed hair.
Xion would've really, truly facsimile-liked to have a thought of both her best friends – brothers maybe, or something so close and so far – as the key to flight. Ugh, not the key – Xion has never liked thinking much about her eccentric blade, but it's justified for her, Xion rationalizes.
Instead, for the marionette, her dream is of herself. Xion berates herself (yes, herself, because she won't deny herself a castle in the air and such a trivial bit of information) for such an egoist trigger, but that's what she wants.
To be able to call herself as well, Xion, and even assign a correct gender to a badly replicated dream. To not glare at herself in the mirror for having a bed head that might be evoking spiky hair and too-goofy grins that she can't say she will never wear. And to, over any other miscellaneous trinket-actions, to be able to stay with Axel and Roxas for long, and never worry about how the blond boy's body seems to fade and ripple like the tides below her heels or the increasingly faux-despairing glances from the eldest of them.
Xion has never liked losing, even when she honestly had nothing to lose. But it's, in her case, about the pain that it won't cause her friends to lose her.
Roxas isn't quite sure what got him off the rocky outcroppings and towards the air that first time, apart from the minuscule girl in the radiant dress and dunked in glitter.
But Roxas does know that the fairy-dust elicited the image of Axel and Xion draped over their clock tower ledge and the salt-sweet tang of an ice-cream bar. Roxas never did manage to make sure he felt it, but the seeping warmth of rising memories and the rolling peals of laughter and half-answered questions mingled with a din of pointless activities makes the usually tranquil sunset skies pick him up like a doll and dance him across a sea that lacks the sweetness of his break times.
Roxas did always like watching sunsets though, and it breaks his flawless airmanship to see only listless blue mirrored back at him, like the dozing eyes that greet him from every mirror. Maybe Axel gets the red of sunsets, and Xion manages to reflect the far-off night at times, but Roxas is merely sunlight and routine for now.
It doesn't stop him from visualizing – at times with a wasted fire spell or two – a sunset water-coloring the shore. Although Roxas has never been good filling in missing blanks, he does conjure up two other cloaked ravens swirling in ice-cream scented air.
It's as happy as he gets to be away from a clock tower.
Larxene hates to admit she even has happy thoughts, but she is as able a flier as any of them obsessive bastards. Maybe that came along with her lightning – if electricity can twirl in empty air, then so can Larxene.
And the sheer echo of ecstasy that comes from a freefall or the high speeds that can't truly thrill her anymore is merely a coincidence you know. Same as the venomous comments zipping towards you, or the feline grin of a pretend-free woman dancing free of physic's chains – same as a nameless girl once wished to obtain from the waving darkness.
Larxene isn't really free in Neverland – none of them are, as it's an insipid world to visit in vacations and the pirates are hopeless shots and even more pathetic targets. The heartless are even more of a joke – and that leaves a Nymph more time to act like her allegedly more refined kin.
She'll dance with the red ribbons she sheared before, spill treason like sickly-sweet oils in the deceptively clean sea and plot revenge against the chains that held her once and the ones that bind her now, cousins to the decorations of her cloak.
Larxene doesn't dream of a heart that much – but of neon lights and the liberty that she always did so want…
Only little, pointless detail is she can't enjoy the brief windows of it. But it's only a minor, easily ignored detail. And you don't disagree with a blade, do you?
Marluxia also thinks he dreams of freedom when the ground is further away and the flowers have to lift their artful forms to greet their master. But he doesn't really – he focuses more on the attentive poses of his colorful subjects.
Power really is freedom – and Marluxia might be quite lyrical and evasive in the way he admits this, but he really has always been on a quest for such a thing.
Sure, Marluxia might not be the most caring of masters – but he isn't the most cruel either. The enchanting flower arrangements and verdant monuments take both care and shear to achieve. A flower never blooms in perfect manner with only pampering, and weeds have to be scythed off.
Marluxia knows this, and Organization XIII is both weed and stilted flower; it will require a new master, a new cause. Maybe not the last – Marluxia is also in this for a heart, even though the methods might make him fake disgust and reverberate with callous past deeds.
So he flies by, mentally plotting the layout of a blooming future, where a graceful dahlia can be left a breath further away from his hand and Marluxia can enjoy the sight.
Luxord prefers to insinuate that, for such a renowned gambler as he is, flying is Lady Luck's boon. A trick, to allow him to play as her elegant pawn for longer. And he has paid in darkness and the jewelry he still wears as a commemoration of those losses he once had.
A kiss blown to the fate's wind. Luxord was once superstitious, and it never seemed to go away with the black embrace. But to fly, all he has to do is think of a certain charm he'd say and the way the charmed females and pride-wounded males would flock to him singing secrets for him to work 'ancient traditions' in their favor, all with a poise and straight face earned from practice.
Until obviously the dark swallowed him up and he played all his cards for another chance – Luxords very much wanted a future, and the details of it past his concern. And this minor (to Lady Luck, all is minor) victory is sweet after all this time.
It certainly gets him off the ground as sure as his bargain did. And Luxord makes a point of keeping true to his word – he'll pay it back in full to his fickle mistress.
But slowly, and just on time.
Demyx is usually just draped over the couch, coaxing empty melodies from a garish sitar (that is so much of a remnant of nothing as he is) and whining about an overload of missions he can't be bothered to do.
But Neverland can be… inspiring, shall we say… enough to get a certain Nocturne to leave his comfortable couch and traipse around, dedicating lethal serenades and bladed ballades to the lush isles.
Demyx flies off on the twisted string of logic – flight requires a 'happy', emotional memory, the emotion requires a heart. It proves his point, really it does, and for the star-splattered skies or dozing clouds (which he envies) the melodies of death he produces are less empty.
That's the catch for him, the lure to drag him away from just lying low somewhere and sucker Roxas into doing his missions – nice kid, Demyx is sure he'll figure out they so do to have hearts earlier than the others.
And Demyx logically won't do much of the mission – Neverland is dreamland for Demyx, and he has made an art of filtering out the heartless from his dreams.
But he always plays a dirge or a requiem – it wards them away. And that's actually having to do something aside from playing a proof of a heart into the amnesiac skies.
Axel remembers mucking around standing on tiptoes in front of an eager hovering Roxas, trying to muster one of those fairytale-esque vignettes of an existence long past.
Logically, Axel comes up empty-handed, save for the bitter taste of a blue-haired best friend who isn't like himself anymore and seems to be pulling him into the stone rather than pushing him upwards (like that time when they made the ceilings the perfect hideout…)
But the blink-and-you'll-miss-it snapshot of a boy who looks passably like Roxas (okay, more like nearly identical) derails him long enough to think of the still waiting friend, faking anxiousness by the second and summons up the image of a girl laughing at the boy hovering in front of Axel while there is such a reek of sea-salt ice-cream.
The last two bring him up an inch or two, in which Axel just hangs still and not sure if the ground has really gone down or if he's such a master pretender that he can even blur out stone.
But Axel really is flying, and maybe this is similar enough to adventures with a (once) best friend and racing over stores and trees when he was a Roxas-sized midget.
Saïx did enjoy getting caught up in remembered reveries, where the co-star was a hyperkinetic red-head and past-Saïx (Isa, he can't forget) was there for the running, sarcastic comments and the occasional non-harebrained plan.
Those did work, most of the time. Caught only seven times (out of so many), grounded for only four and managing to sweet-talk themselves out of the others.
Saïx isn't a usual comer to Neverland though, and he rarely flies there. Now, dreamy Isa is buried deep like a treasure, keeping the moon (heart) embroidered on his jacket with him.
But when Saïx flies, he sees a younger face in his mind's eye, without a scar, and who is still (but not now) trusting enough of people to spout sarcasm and even smirk freely.
But Isa always did get told his poker face was legendary, and Saïx lives his call to fame every day now.
Zexion is an illusionist, and he thrives on fabricated emotions – never his own, but that's to be expected.
So for him, when the carefully woven dreams and figments of wishes fail to beat like spirit wings, he turns to those who have managed to counterfeit such delicate things. The Replicas – one in what passes for a healthy friendship, the other obsessed with a witch of faerie. The key to destiny (not of, because that is an illusion worthy of his work), curious and growing into… well, a future that Zexion hasn't had to date, despite his apparent age. A girl that he's met for a brief second or two, bewitching memories into emotions she professed to believe.
And a true phantom of a too-colorful girl, who did really emote and maybe was the cause of getting caught outside when the darkness surged with sweet illusions of safety – although Zexion isn't sure if they meant for him or for her or for both.
Zexion's flight comes from finding out how to make those alluring illusions, or so he says.
But any good magician and illusionist is well-versed in lies. And why would he lie about such a thing?
(Zexion still hunts for the flowers with honey inside, of the type and color they used to like, and bends light to no advantage while there. The fact that he has been among the soon-to-be-truly lost kids while clad in a lab-coat and looking much unlike himself passed off as reconnaissance.
But he knows better, and weaves a shield out of words. They won't question it.)
Lexaeus has also seen the lost kids, and more often than not he's tried to hunt for a little girl with long auburn braids trailing behind her and garments mimicking those of a little goat.
Maybe she even still had the toy, and she'd be looking for a father who she wouldn't recognize in a dark cloak and wielding a weapon several times her tall (for a child) size. Lexaeus rationalized this probably came as a psychological effect requiring extensive research caused by failing to adequately protect the scientist's castle youngest charge and being unaware of his own kin's fate.
Probably the carefree child sunk to no more than a measly shadow, the type he slew a million times daily and who once clambered up to his shoulders to look properly at the clouds.
What passes for happiness is, in Lexaeus's case, true closure. A definite proof the girl with the braids he once held close became just fluid darkness or empty quicksilver. Or a glimpse of perpetually undone hair ribbons and her crooning calls after being caught in a tree or some other high place after she forgot the route.
But it's nothing more than a psychological effect.
Vexen had always been a researcher, living for the latest breakthrough and the short nights in which caffeine carried him through.
It is probably the reason he always was so gaunt and fantasy mad scientist looking. But he was respected back then, second and then third only to Ansem and… the newcomer, which Vexen refrains from naming in this moment.
And Neverland is a land perfect for research, with endless materials and objectives. Maybe dream-water behaves differently, and Vexen has yet to see any edible goods. But it isn't the promise for endless research what lifts his wiry frame off the abhorrently warm ground.
It's wanting to be respected again – not that Vexen doesn't see that at times but…
When even the heartless seem amused at his muttered theories and the shadows morph and meld into a boy in an oversized lab-coat looking on in awe, it's allegedly easy to fly.
Now, Vexen just has to prove it.
Xaldin's flight usually is driven by himself. He is wind, hurricanes and cyclones – measly fairy-dust is trivial to him, if not a nuisance.
But if he can get it, he will. Because it's usually manipulation – which Xaldin has always liked to do, although before it was merely a way to cow a particularly unfit foe. And sometimes it's that odd trust that he can't understand. It's similar to Roxas's though – the trust that comes from taking the hints Xaldin will drop casually in a conversation or of staged lessons in a battlefield.
It's trust that makes Xaldin able to fly when the wind falls asleep in Neverland – getting and breaking, playing with and fake building some, usually with a target he'll never see again.
But Xaldin sees less of the pointless mistakes done as well – hovels and dwellings maybe decently hidden, catching the eye of a sentry for the heartless and watching it doze off at times.
Yes, he has planted some of those mistakes as well – but apparently, the fairy folk here trust him enough with his lances and the winds.
Never mind Xaldin is equally prone to scythe their wings off but…
For now, they can go in peace. Xaldin has no need of them.
Xigbar's key (heh, he sees what he did there) to lazy flight is simply imagining two functioning eyes. But that's for lazy flight, when the legendary Freeshooter is above manipulating space to his wiles.
That makes him play at the epic (and somewhat disastrous) showdowns against true Keyblade wielders, miles away from the spineless rookies that the Organization has gotten. And in Xigbar's mind, he wins every time now – even when the foe is only a pudgy heartless in a hat.
But he wins, and that seems to buy him a second or so of free flight. And Xigbar will frown then, just to show the world that when he chooses to propel himself, that's what he will do.
The world(s) can give him a break later, when they fix his other golden eye.
And Xemnas is not a real visitor – he has other ravens to tend to his schemes, maybe even weave the small missions that he has deemed safe for them to manipulate.
But he will take a stroll down a world where the heart in the sky is conspicuously absent, and Neverland is maybe a world to do so:
The voids in his memories will patch over in some places, and glide somewhere else – to a recent scheme, or a failed plan. The Superior can't bend all to his will here – at least, not using the darkness…
But all voids are within his domain, and here Xemnas might manipulate anything – use this world as leverage for power (he knows what the others do and possibly think of here), and…
Xemnas can attempt to twist the voids in his recollections, and fly with the success of a genuine smile flashing behind his lids, or the fact that the Key of Destiny lokos so much like someone he can't remember.
It's an empty victory for sure – but empty means Xemnas can use them for something later on. At the very least, if he keeps speaking about these (or not, someone might hear) to the comatose armor buried deep in his realm, he'll find out exactly what he wants.
And from there, infinity is the limit.
A.N. – The idea for this…
Well, apart from coming out from nowhere, it had bugged me for a long time. And yeah, I probably did screw around with official back story and such for the purposes of this: I profusely apologize. It was all done in the name of fun though, so hoped you liked it as well!
As always, nothing belongs to me (Disney and Square Enix – thanks from this fan), cheers to you for reading, and leaving a review is much appreciated.
((On other thoughts – the Jump Festa trailer? I kinda sorta died with awesome – almost everyone is back! I'm still missing Isa and… however Demyx was called though. And Neku, Joshua, Shiki, Rhyme, Sora, Riku et al were quite the awe-inspiring people. Can't wait!))