Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, I'm not making any money from this, etc. We all know the drill. :)
Chapter One
Like ice.
Swelling forward, across pale sands, just barely catching the tips of my fingers.
Cold, a biting warning of the storm to come.
A chilled breeze swept across my face, my back, my legs. A golden flash, quick and bright, made me blink. I waited. One second. Two seconds. The thick, dark skies above let loose a bellowing rumble, and a flock of seagulls burst into a panic, screeching and fluttering through the wind, seeking a safer place. Feathers drifted down, spinning and sailing toward me. A drop of rain hit the nape of my neck, and I sighed, pushing myself onto my knees and brushing the gritty sand off of my shirt.
This weather wasn't exactly the best to be out in, and I knew I shouldn't have come in the first place. The temptation, however, was irresistible. This was the last day before preparations for the summer festival began, and once tomorrow arrived, there would be noise and people bustling around everywhere, giving everyone else more tasks. I felt that I needed to appreciate the peace before it was taken away for the next two weeks. It would've been a lot easier if Demyx hadn't chosen today to throw a storm at us. I fingered the small water drop charm hanging loosely around my neck, wondering if the god wasn't just being an asshole. As much as everybody preached otherwise, I couldn't help but envision the deity with more of a personality. They'd swear up and down that he was divine, incomprehensible to us mere mortals, but I knew he did this sort of thing just to laugh at us all.
Lightning flashed again.
Larxene must have been in on it. She had to be a bit of a sadist, because the worst storms always came at the most inconvenient times, so she was surely right next to Demyx, enjoying our misery. Damn gods.
I slowly got up onto my feet, knowing I'd be soaked by the time I got home, so there was no point in trying to hurry anyway. The sand was cool on the bottom of my feet, and only slightly hard to walk on. With each step toward the nearby town, little pools of water sprung up, and sank back down every time I moved on, until I finally reached the wooden steps leading up to the sightly raised expanse of land, which I called my home.
Nobody else was outside. Everything was silent, but for the crying of the gulls, and the sharp pattering of rain on the ground. There was a quiet blowing of wind, too, but it struggled to be heard over the other noises. The soft, barely audible slap of flesh on wood marked my rhythmic journey down the road to my house.
This town... it was called Destiny. Built right by the sea, with our own little sandy opening in the rocky cliffs that lined the connection of ocean and land, we were quite comfortably settled here. The town itself was small, and was often missing from maps of the island it was located on. Luckily, though, it was only about 10 or 15 miles away from a small city, and on horseback, the ride there was really quite pleasant. Once in that city, Twilight Town, they called it, the major city of Midgar was another 15 or 20 miles. Overall, the trip there was alright. It wasn't as long as it might've been, at least.
I ran a hand through my already wet hair, shaking out a few droplets, and noticed that, in the town center, the candles were lit inside of the Destiny Bakery. I could see my brother, Sora, and his friends, Kairi and Riku, laughing over a small plate of glazed buns. I hesitated, feeling tempted to join them, but I wasn't as close to them and I didn't really want to intrude. Before I moved on, though, Kairi glanced out the window and saw me. I waved sheepishly, and she smiled brightly at me, gesturing for me to come in.
Well... it certainly couldn't hurt to stop by for a little while.
I made my way over to the door, smiling at the tinkling of the small silver bell hung from the door, and was greeted happily by the three teenagers inside. Shaking my head to get some of the water off, I didn't enter too far, for fear of dirtying the clean floors. Kairi's mother liked having things in proper order, and she was like a dragon if anybody messed that up. I was not willing to be the one to cross her. She wasn't exactly fond of me. Sora and Riku were angels, of course, and if they got a little mud on the floor, well, it'd wipe right off.
If anybody else dared to, she'd insist that they spend the rest of the day cleaning it up and being damn careful about it too, because if they wiped at it like that it was bound to leave a nasty stain. I knew that from experience.
"Roxas, why in the world were you out in this weather?" Kairi giggled, tossing me a soft, blue towel from the counter. I grinned back at her, giving a nod of thanks as I started drying off a little better.
"I was enjoying the peace while it lasts," I replied. Sora rolled his eyes.
"It's storming outside. How is that peaceful?"
"Tomorrow's going to be worse. I just wanted to take advantage of the last day before preparations for the festival, y'know?" I shot back, sticking my tongue out. Sora tossed me a fresh, raisin roll in response, allowing me to make better use of my tongue.
"Anyway, you're heading back home, then, right?" My brother checked with me, shoving another bun in his mouth.
"Yeah. Why?"
"C'n oo pass on a m'ss'ge to Ma fer me?" he slurred around his food before swallowing. "Tell her I'm going to spend the night at Riku's place."
Riku gave Sora a startled glance. "Wait-"
"I'll be home tomorrow morning to help with the chores," the smaller brunet continued happily. I could tell that Riku hadn't invited him over, but he sighed and didn't object, so he was probably fine with it.
"Alright," I agreed. "But, uh, even with the towel, I'm dripping everywhere, so I should probably head home now anyway. Thank you for the food, Kairi!" I turned to leave, after Kairi and Sora had waved, but Riku stopped me.
"Hold on a minute, Roxas!" He called. I turned back around.
"Yes?"
"How's the sea?"
"Pretty choppy, but it's been plenty worse in the past. I'm sure your boat's fine."
Riku did a lot of fishing. Knowing him, it was a little strange, but he certainly had the patience to make it work, and without a family business to inherit or work for, like Kairi, Sora and I all did, it was a good way to get the money he needed. See, Riku was a mystery.
When we were all younger, probably about 6 or 7, Riku had just shown up out of the blue, in our little town. He was half-dead, hungry, dehydrated, and smelly. No one knew where he'd come from, or why he'd shown up here, and for a while he wouldn't talk at all. Most of us assumed he was mute. An older couple, living off of the land about a mile outside of Destiny, agreed to take him in. They were probably the ones who taught him how to fish as well as he did, and it's a good thing they did. He didn't seem to have any other useful talents, though he was fast and strong. In a little village, that wasn't so helpful. We were never attacked.
But still, even after he had been accepted and embraced by the rest of the town, he never did explain what had happened to him. He never claimed to have forgotten, either, he just refused to talk about it. I had a sneaking suspicion that Sora knew, but that kid also knew how to keep a secret. He would never tell a soul.
"Excellent. Thank you, Roxas. I'll see you around." Riku's voice brought me back to the present, and I smiled and waved goodbye to everyone before stepping back outside.
Come to think of it, the towel was completely useless, if the only reason I'd gone in was so that Sora could give me a message, and Riku could know if his boat was alright. I wasn't in there for very long, and drying off had really been pointless.
Of course... if any of the water had damaged the wooden floors, Kairi's mom would have...
I shuddered, and stopped thinking about it. The towel was definitely useful.
By the time I got to my house, which was only about a half-mile away from the town center, I was thoroughly soaked through, shivering and on the verge of sprinting across the muddy fields if it meant getting out of the rain any sooner. The day had become absolutely miserable, and I was doubting the wisdom of my decision to be outside for as long as I was. It wasn't unlikely that I'd catch a cold if I couldn't get warm and dry very soon.
Luckily, when I stepped inside, the fireplace was lit up and the smell of hot vegetable stew permeated the air. Pots and pans were clinking around in the kitchen, drawing attention to my mother's presence. I paused in the entranceway to the home, shutting the door as quietly as possible. My mother may not have been obsessive about her floors, but I knew she wouldn't be happy about my appearance and the mud that I'd tracked in.
Tiptoeing, I slowly worked my way to the bottom of the stairs. First step... success! No creak!
"Roxas, honey, do stop trying to sneak around."
How the hell did she do that? Crestfallen, I turned around and trudged back into the living room, waiting for her to leave the kitchen. As I waited, I tugged my shirt off and quickly wrapped a quilt around myself, settling by the fire.
I wasn't left alone for very long, as my mother came in with a dishrag, drying her hands. She paused. Her eyes, a rich, warm brown that seemed red sometimes, depending on the lighting, traveled down my shivering form, and to the shirt dripping on the floor. Slender hands tensed.
"Where have you been?" Her voice was deceptively quiet. It unnerved me, and I knew I'd never be used to how she contained all of her irritation. It made it hard to tell if it was annoyance or actual anger.
"Um... I've been... y'know... out." My explanation was weak, and I knew it. There wasn't any doubt in my mind.
"Out?" She confirmed, arching a brow at me. I smiled hesitantly, and nodded. "Well then. Dinner is almost ready, so get yourself cleaned up, alright?"
I wasn't in any trouble? Seriously? I peeked at my shirt, realizing that I should've attempted to pick it up instead of stupidly leaving it there. That she wasn't angry about it was surprising. "Sure, Mom. I'll, uh, I'll be right down." As I spoke, I backed up toward the stairs, snagging my shirt as I did so. When she just watched me, I turned and began to hop up the steps.
"And sweetie?" She called after me. I stopped and glanced back at her.
"Yeah?"
"When we're done eating, please clean all the floors, if you don't mind. I've already cleaned them, after all, and I'd hate to do it again," she noted, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes ever so slightly before adding, "That would be a shame, wouldn't it?"
There. There it was. I knew it was coming. I chuckled sheepishly. "Sure thing. Wouldn't want you to clean more."
She hummed a bit in acknowledgment before strolling back to the kitchen. I sighed, making my way upstairs and cursing every bit of dirt that rubbed off on the floor. Without Dad here, and with Sora gone for the night, there was no one to distract her from my own misbehavior, so I had to be extra careful. She never missed anything.
My mind jumped back to my dad.
He had left this morning for Midgar, to earn us some extra money. As always, Mom gently teased about him heading to the city to catch up on the latest gossip, but I suspected something more sinister.
Before Sora and I were born, Dad was a run-away soldier, turned mercenary. He'd do just about any job if it put food on the table. He later settled down, as he got over whatever had driven him to escape, and started a delivery service in Midgar. He and Mom met when he came by her bar, Seventh Heaven, and they realized they'd grown up together in some backwoods town (even more backwoods than Destiny), and had found each other again. There was something about a rebellion and avalanches involved, but my information source had been discovered before he could get into detail about that. Oddly enough, rather than suspecting that Reno was exaggerating when he told me some of the stories, I wondered often if he was actually toning it down. Exactly who could my parents be? Their friends were weird enough...
Still, I was pretty sure that Dad was out in the city, doing something either dangerous or illegal (because why else would he refuse to tell his own kids what he was doing over there?). One day, I'd get it out of him.
I let myself imagine all the cool things I could probably learn from my father, as I shrugged into my nice, dry pajamas, and ruffled my hair until it was only damp.
After that, I made my way downstairs again. Dinner wasn't ready yet, it looked like, so I padded toward the small worship room built onto the side of our house. As I pushed the black curtain aside, a plume of smoke curled across my face. I coughed a bit before getting used to it. Mom had already lit the incense, it seemed, on two of the shrines. We didn't have shrines for all the gods, but we had a few, including ones for Demyx and Xaldin.
It was those two which were lit, and I found it appropriate. Demyx was the main god in Destiny and all the other seaside areas. Xaldin was the god of wind, travel, and roads, so his shrine was always paid more attention to when Dad was out doing whatever it was that he did. I knelt down and whispered a quick prayer.
I stayed there for a little bit, smelling the sweet, musky smoke, letting the light from the window trickle in weakly to illuminate some of the shrines. My favorite one to watch was Demyx's. It was almost like a vase, but the glass was finely shaped into swirls and curves and spikes, with a small bowl above dripping water into it. As the droplets slid down, they fell along all the curls and almost seemed to be dancing.
Out of all the designs, that one was the coolest. I'd heard that a few of the other traditional shrines were very interesting, but we didn't have any of those. Xemnas' was the nicest of all, befitting the king of gods, of course, but to be honest, I found it a little frightening. Dark black, shining like oil, shaped like a thorned, twisted heart. It reflected the myths of him ruling with an iron fist, harsh and cold, but with our best interests at heart.
"Roxas, dinner's ready! Come and get it!" Called Mom, with a few clanks that sounded like she was setting the table. I stood back up, bowed low, breathed in the incense one last time for the night, and hurried into the kitchen. There was food! Finally! I had skipped lunch, so my stomach had been growling a good bit.
Mom was pouring water into our cups, and the stew was already filling our bowls. I noticed a third bowl on the counter, waiting to be filled from the large pot keeping the food warm, and I remembered Sora's message. As I dropped into my seat, I spoke up.
"Sora said he wasn't going to be home tonight. He's staying at Riku's place," I informed, and my mother sighed lightly.
"Again? Well, alright. I do wish he'd give more warning sometimes. He's like his dad, the way he comes and goes without warning."
I gave her a funny look. "Dad doesn't do that," I reminded her. Her eyes widened a bit, and she giggled.
"He used to, all the time. I still expect to come downstairs some days and find him gone for who knows how long. I guess I just forget sometimes that he doesn't do it anymore." There was a subtle note of caution in her voice, and I had to wonder what that was about. What wasn't she telling me? I mean... was there something more to it than unexpected deliveries (because that's what my mind jumped to)? Maybe she was remembering all his super dangerous jobs that he supposedly never had. My eyes narrowed, and a hand lightly slapped my head.
"Don't glare at the stew," she scolded. "It's for eating." She moved to her side of the table and sat down, and we bowed our heads together for a quick, silent prayer of thanks.
Once finished, she tucked in to the meal, but I paused. Over in the corner... something... but there was no way. Because I would have noticed it before. Definitely. And where the hell would it have been hidden? This house didn't have many hiding places... that I knew of.
"Hey... Mom?"
She seemed to have detected the mystified tone in my voice, and she looked up, brushing her dark brown hair out of her eyes. "Yeah?"
I waved my spoon in the direction of the corner, and her gaze followed. Her eyes widened, and she cursed.
"Damn it, Cloud. How do you leave something like that behind?"
My jaw hung open. What.. the... hell.
"And now it's too dark to send anyone after you, and gods forbid I leave Roxas here alone or he'll destroy the place," she muttered to herself, shaking her head.
"M-Mom?"
"Eat your stew," she ordered. "That can wait until tomorrow morning."
I couldn't stop staring at it, and I could've sworn I heard her mumble something under her breath along the lines of, 'you don't want your kids to know, and then go around leaving that in the kitchen.'
A piece of carrot hit my cheek, but I paid it no mind until a spoon actually got shoved into my mouth, and I was choking on potatoes. "It's going to get cold," she scolded, but I really didn't give a damn about whether I could or couldn't breath, and whether the stew was warm or not.
There was a huge-ass sword leaning against the wall, as big as I was.
"But Mom-"
"He uses it to chop down trees, that's all."
"Nobody uses something like that to chop trees, Mom!"
"It's getting cold, Roxas!"
The prospect of cold stew was apparently supposed to be more concerning than the massive chunk of death that was only a few feet away from us.
Dad was just a delivery boy? No way in hell I'd ever believe that story again.
There is nothing divine about us. We are all nothing but puppets, hanging on thin strings. What we pursue is impossible. Yet, we refuse to believe that. It's our last chance of finding freedom. Our last hope.
I've been told that the remnants of ancient powers long-gone are at play. It is those that pull our strings, and suspend us between life and death. They left us here.
They left us to die.
But we can't.
All we can do is play their freaking games, and waste our time trying to attain the unattainable. I don't know why this happened. Why to me? I was a good guy, you know? But everything got screwed up, and now I'm stuck in a never-ending game of sacrifices, and my prey calls me a god. They worship us all even as we hunt them down and use them for our hopeless ambitions.
Fuck it all.
Once upon a time, I thought it was wrong, taking advantage of these silly mortals the way we did. But as the years flew by, and I remained trapped, I realized that I shouldn't care. The humans are damn lucky,
because they have something that we don't.
An afterlife.
So, what does it matter if I help them along to something so precious? They should be thanking me. And even if, sometimes, I feel like the shittiest guy in the world for doing what I have to do, I know it will all be worth it in the end. Earth can't contain me forever, in this state of being. I won't stop for anything, not until I can be somebody. Real people don't have to work so hard to pass on.
Nobodies like me? We've got to fucking fight for that end.
A/N: Welcome, dear readers, to my first attempt at writing fanfiction! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter, and now I've got a few things to say, just to get them out of the way!
1) I really, really, would love to get some reviews! Please? I mean, I've gotta know if even one person likes this story. I'm planning to always reply to reviews at the bottom of the following chapters. So again... please?
2) I don't know if this chapter was too short or not. Sorry, if it was. :( But as I get more into the swing of things (after writing nothing but poetry, stories take a little getting used to) the chapters will get longer. If this is a good length, though, I can keep it and just have more chapters instead of longer ones. But I won't know unless you tell me, so please refer to #1. :D
3) Like I said in the summary, this is rated for language. Chances are, violence will be the only other reason. But if I ever do get more bold (and you know what I mean ;D ), I'll warn you at the beginning of the chapter.
4) I promise to never give up on this story. It will be completed. I might take a break or two, but if I do, I'll give warning, along with an actual date for the break to end, so it won't drag on too long.
And with that, I bid thee farewell for now! I hope you keep reading in the future. :)
