Title: Puppets and Trinkets
Word Count: 423
Notes: For KH Drabble's "Puppet" challenge. Takes place in KH after the events of Hollow Bastion, goes up to the second visit to Beast's Castle.
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After Kairi and her friends leave, Cinderella proves the most sensible of them and asks if anybody is hungry. She takes a count of hands before she descending down the grand staircase but returns half-an-hour later, rolling her eyes over a castle that lacks a kitchen.
Aurora mutters something about the ballroom looking very familiar between wide jaw-cracking yawns. Belle is about to ask her where she's seen it before when she feels a nudge at her shoulder.
It's Alice.
"If a heart in darkness without a body is called a heartless, then what do you call a body in darkness without a heart? "
It's not a question Belle's ever come across in all her years of book-reading. "A puppet?"
The English girl shakes her head. "No, I'm sure that's not it."
There is a loud thump. Jasmine has kicked over one of the capsules that held them captive and is now busy dismantling it. Snow White leans over her, breathily asking for a fragment as keepsake - something unusual to give to her beloved dwarfs.
Alice gives Belle a sweet smile before drifting off to join them.
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When Sora returns to seal up the Keyhole, Belle peppers him with questions, wanting every answer she couldn't find by browsing through Hollow Bastion's considerable library. What did her kidnappers look like? What had they wanted with her? Where were they now? Where was Kairi now? What was going to happen?
He answers none of them to her satisfaction, but he is only a fourteen-year-old boy, after all.
She asks him Alice's question.
Sora scratches his head in confusion. "I don't know. I don't think things like that exist."
Belle knows now that they do. She imagines Xaldin's cruel sneer and jerks a little harder. The arm around her tightens.
It seems that she was right after all. Sora talks about Nobodies and Organizations and Darkness, but he hadn't been here when the Beast's eyes first went dull and unrecognizable. When the fragile trust she had built up with him had crumbled. When he had begun letting Xaldin think for him.
A hot frisson of anger runs through her. She is angry with the Beast. For allowing himself to be manipulated as completely as some plaything. Like a puppet. Xaldin pulls the strings and the Beast dances.
She is angry with herself. For being caught and used as barter. A pretty trinket with more form than function.
She's been here before - but she was unconscious then. She has no excuse this time.
Belle drives her elbow hard into Xaldin's side, grabs the rose, and takes off running.