To Shatter Diamond
By Rhino7
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This fic is mine. So this originally started out as a one-shot, and it just kind of mutated. Now, instead of one extremely long one-shot, I'm posting this as a five-shot…better known as a full length story. Meh. There are no pairings, and it follows the continuity of my Alliance-verse. This is a new area of writing I'm dabbling with, so any constructive advice and feedback is appreciated!
..:--X--:..
"Wake up."
Her voice was like liquid silk, winding through the air and tickling at his ears. The soft tones carried a smile and gentle laughter with it. If he had had any skin left, he would have had goose bumps from the light hearted bubble in her voice.
"Come on, you lazy bum. Wake up."
Sora kept his eyes closed, determined not to acknowledge that he was awake. She wasn't here. It wasn't her. He prayed to any god who would listen that she wasn't here with him right now.
"I know you're awake. Don't you want to talk to me?" Her voice sounded slightly clipped now, but still soft and sweet and all things Kairi.
"No." His voice had to claw past clotted blood in his throat, past a sandpaper tongue and bleeding lips. It only survived as a guttural moan.
"Oh, now that's not nice. You've hurt my feelings. Look at me, Sora."
Two hands ghosted against either side of his jaw. The friction of her smooth, unblemished fingers sent sparks of hot pain through his jaw and down his neck, over his skull and through his teeth. He felt the distinct crunch of broken bone as she shifted his shattered jaw, lifting his head from his chest so that he was facing her.
Sora refused to open his eyes. He tried to pull his face from her fingers, but all that achieved were rods of pain shooting up and down his spine, making his toes tingle. His body was completely immobile, either by the shackles or by mortal limits of pain tolerance. He couldn't see himself at the moment, but it felt like his arms were being held perpendicular to his body, crucifixion style. Heavy iron shackles were latched tight around raw wrists and ankles, pinning him to the concrete wall, which was slick with grime, sweat, and blood. His blood.
How long had he been here? His back was screaming weeks, but at the rate this was going, there was no way he could survive a whole week. Blood had dried over his shredded skin, making his clothes stick to the wounds. He was sweating. He could feel the salt of it stinging his eyes and rolling down his neck, but it was cold enough to see your own breath.
"Open your eyes now." Her sing-song voice filtered through his blown eardrums.
Without wanting to, Sora opened his eyes. Well, he opened his good eye. His left eye was swollen almost completely closed. All he could see out of it were slurred colors and distinguish light from dark. There was a lot of dark.
Her face was a mass of tan and blue framed by dark red hair. He blinked a few times in quick succession to clear the murky vision of his right eye. She smiled as he did this, her overly white, too straight teeth reflected the dim light of the two torches in the chamber.
"There. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" She beamed.
Sora fought the convulsive trembling in his bones. His muscles were contracting with dehydration, and the massive blood loss was pushing him into shock. His jaw was locked painfully, keeping his teeth from chattering. Instead, his whole skull quivered uncontrollably.
"Go to Hell, bitch." He managed, flecks of spittle and blood dribbling over his lips.
She offered a mock offended look, "Is that any way to speak to your girlfriend?"
"You're not Kairi." Any bite he tried to put into the remark was voided by the weak rasp in his voice.
She chuckled lowly in her throat, "Your little friends back home don't know that."
"Where is she?"
"Who? Your main squeeze? Sorry, sugarplum, I can't tell you that." Her voice was anything but sweet now. It was instead silky with poison, tainted.
"Who are you? What are you?" He ground out.
She laughed again, "You keep your lips sewn shut for three days and you finally open up to ask stupid questions. I'm surprised at you."
"Just answer, you bit—"
The back of her hand connected with the side of Sora's face. He jerked his head with the blow with a crack. Her knuckles and the length of her nails ran across his skin, stinging all the way.
"Tsk tsk, you kiss your mother with that mouth?" She hissed.
Sora groaned and breathed deliberately, trying to ease the agony away. He could hear her bare feet move across the brick floor back toward the table where her instruments lay waiting.
"Let's skip the monologuing and get back to play time, shall we?" She chirped.
..:--X--:..
"If she punches in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun one more time I'm going to punch her in the ovaries." Tidus grumbled, glaring over the rim of his beer at the girl sauntering over to the jukebox.
"What, you don't like that song?" Selphie said, nudging him with her elbow and sipping at her apple martini.
"It's not that I hate the song, which I do, but four times? Back to back? Really? No one here is that drunk." Tidus waved an arm at the other drinkers in the bar.
Kairi held the neck of her beer with startlingly steady hands. The rim of the bottle was propped against her lips. She'd been nursing the drink for half an hour, finally giving up and going for just tonguing the cool glass. Seriously? They were commenting on some girl who couldn't hold her liquor or her music taste in check? Three days was apparently long enough to declare someone dead.
"I come home in the morning light. My mother says "When you gonna live your life right?"
"Merciful lord…" Tidus taking a long draught from his beer, "I'd like to tell her how to live her life right."
Selphie smacked him across the back of the head, "Wakka, let's have another for Mr. Grumpy-pants."
Wakka trudged over with a sour face, "You're just milkin' this, ya?"
Selphie grinned triumphantly, "I'm just glad one of us finally works at a bar."
Kairi sighed, setting her bottle on the bar with a soft clink. "You can finish mine off."
Tidus, Selphie, and Wakka watched her take up her purse and jacket from the adjacent stool. Tidus frowned, blinked, and snatched up Kairi's now room temperature beer and drained it.
"What's wrong?" Selphie asked.
Kairi pulled her jacket on and eyed her friend steadily, "You really just asked me that?"
Selphie averted her gaze to the floor. One of Wakka's co-workers barked something at him and he edged away from his friends, eyes studying Kairi. Tidus set the beer down and swiveled on his stool to face her.
"The police said the trail is cold. Kairi, there's no—"
"How can a trail be cold after just three days?" She interrupted, "They just aren't looking hard enough."
"Why would you say that?" Selphie said softly.
"Maybe just accepting that Sora is—that he's gone would make the paperwork easier." Kairi growled, digging into her purse for her car keys.
"Whoa, where are you going?" Wakka set his attention back on the conversation.
"To get some answers. Police won't get their hands dirty, then I will."
"You're drunk." Selphie argued.
"Better drunk and motivated than drunk and apathetic." Kairi muttered, heading for the exit.
"Wait, wait," Tidus lifted a hand, "At least let me drive. You're drunk." He stood off the stool, swayed, and did a face plant on the floor.
Wakka rounded the bar, "I'll drive. You're all half-plastered."
Selphie rubbed her forehead, "Fine, you two ride off into the sunset. I'll take Tidus home."
Tidus sat up, "Oh, I'm dandy, really."
Wakka rolled his eyes and took the keys from Kairi, "I'll drop you two off on the way to the station, ya?" He signaled to his co-worker, "Emergency, I gotta go."
"They'll just let you take off like that?" Tidus asked.
"As long as boss man doesn't find out. Come on." Wakka shepherded them to the door.
"Thanks, Wakka." Kairi said quietly.
As they crossed the bar, Kairi angled away from her friends and over to the jukebox. Little Miss Thing was leaning against it, twirling her curly blond hair with her manicured fingers. She gave Kairi a once over as she walked over, pouting out her lips contemptuously.
"I wanna be the one to walk in the sun. Oh, girls, they wanna have fun."
Casually, Kairi approached the box, knelt down, and jerked the power cable from the wall outlet.
"Seriously, throw in some Styx once in a while." She suggested.
The girl started to retort, but Kairi breezed past her, catching up to her friends. Selphie and Tidus had crammed into the backseat, and Wakka was revving the engine. Kairi slid into the passenger seat. Wakka pulled the blue convertible out into mid-afternoon traffic.
"Oh, so NOW you decide the shut that music up?!" Tidus slurred behind her.
..:--X--:..
"Wake up."
Her voice was like sandpaper, chugging through the air and grating his ears. The gravelly tones carried a smile and harsh laughter with it. It was like hearing rusty nails running in a blender. If he had had any voice left, he would have cried out at the sinister addition to the normally gentle voice.
"Tired already? My, my, maybe I overestimated you."
Sora let his eyes fall open, gazing without focus at the blood stained concrete floor. He could see her feet, bare and with bright blue painted nails, standing on the grimy floor littered with shards of glass.
"Did she ever tell you that you have pretty eyes?"
He choked on bile and clenched and unclenched his fists. One finger lifted up to brush across his collarbone, the one she hadn't yet broken, and traced a sensuous line down his stomach and back up to his throat. Her fingertip lingered over his jugular vein, tapping lightly at the burned skin.
"Still not up for conversation?"
He had no words to waste on this…this monster parading around wearing Kairi's skin. Even if he had, if he could devise insults strong enough, he couldn't have. The Mute Spell she'd cast on him half an hour earlier had yet to relinquish its hold on his vocal chords. As if she was reading his thoughts, she withdrew her hand from his neck.
"Ah, yes, that's right. Still a mime. Well, I couldn't have you screaming."
Sora closed his eyes briefly, trying to fend off the waves of pain currently permeating his blood from the corkscrews wrenched into the skin and muscle of his arms.
"I know, I know, a true sadist would enjoy the screaming." She was still talking, clasping her bloodstained hands behind her back and sauntering back to the table. "But there's something to be appreciated about working in silence."
Her hands drifted over the various weapons scattered across the table. She'd used the whip, the one with the coarse, steel fibers, and the pliers, and even the lighter fluid and the salt. Now, she moved past the bloodied instruments and settled on a thin fencing sword.
"Now this is fitting."
She lifted the whippy sword and strode back over to Sora, eyes glinting. Sora tried to steady his breathing, but he only managed several short, shaky gasps that shook through his shattered ribcage. Nausea rolled through him, but he swallowed hard and stilled the tremor in his outstretched limbs.
"Isn't this what you do? Fight off the bad guys with one of these?"
She giggled and brandished the sword with a flourish, assuming a pompous fencing stance.
"First we bow." She held the sword at face level and did a curt bow. Straightening, she tilted her head, "What, you won't bow? Dear, dear, not a man of proper manners, are you?" She giggled and jabbed forward with the sword, sending the tip against one of the stab wounds on Sora's leg.
Sora mouthed soundlessly, his yell stolen by the spell. She was chuckling.
"On guard!" She chirped, driving forward again.
This time, the sword slapped against the puckered, burned underside of his arm. Pain rippled across the limb and he threw his head back against the wall. Lights danced across his tunneling vision.
"Ah, ah, ah, not swooning on me now, are you?" She cackled, lashing out again.
The fencing instrument lanced across his chest, catching the handle of one of the corkscrews embedded in his shoulder and the breath was sucked out of his lungs in an attempt to scream. The pain was blinding. He could hardly see anything. Was it possible to go blind from physical trauma?
Then her breath was on his face. The lights were still running rampant across his sight, but he could feel her up close. She was suddenly inches away from him, revolting and vile. Yet still beautiful.
"You should have retired your little pocket wand and left locked doors closed, big boy." She whispered, her fingers twirling themselves around his hair, slick and damp with sweat.
Too much of her skin was touching his skin, and it disgusted him. Her chest was pressed against his, and her lips were ghosting across his cheek as she spoke.
"Now look what has become of us." She inhaled deeply, "Look at me."
Sora blinked repeatedly as his eyes scalded and sent irritated tears down his cheeks. She was a blob of skin and blue eyes before him. His vision cleared slowly, and she smiled at him, and for a moment, just a second, he almost thought it was the real Kairi. Then she was reaching up, grasping a hold of the corkscrew at his elbow, and then she twisted.
A new door of agony was unlocked and thrown open, and Sora could only silently scream himself into hoarse stillness.
..:--X--:..
"Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll try to keep that in mind." Kairi hung up her cell phone and slipped it back into her purse.
"That doesn't sound like a Destiny Islands call." Wakka said coolly, humming Kairi's car down the highway at a clipped 70 miles an hour.
"That was Tifa Lockhart from Radiant Garden. They've been investigating Sora's disappearance too." Kairi remarked tersely, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes.
"You think he was dude-napped to another world?" Wakka questioned.
"No."
"Then spill it, woman. Where am I aiming the horsepower, ya?"
Kairi lowered her hand from her face and glared at him, "Our island."
They had dropped Tidus and Selphie off just outside their apartment building. By then, Tidus had been singing about the Copa Cabana and Selphie had grown adamant about helping Kairi and Wakka. In the end, the two more sober friends had won out and Selphie had aided Tidus up the stairs.
Depending on how far their digging got tonight, Kairi didn't want two sloshed friends potentially getting in the way and getting hurt. She was wary enough of Wakka helping her, but she wasn't stupid enough to think she could man a one-person rescue mission by herself.
"Our island? The one we played on when we were kids?" Wakka exhaled heavily, "That's an hour drive from here. What's put the island in your crosshairs?"
"Sara Pritchet." Kairi said simply. When Wakka lifted an eyebrow, she continued, "Also known as Agnes Lily: also known as Veronica Andrews."
When Wakka's eyebrow continued to move higher, she drew a deep breath. "They're all aliases of a recently escaped fugitive of the Alliance. She was charged with treason and attempted murder, along with three counts of successful homicide."
Wakka whistled, "What's she got to do with Sora?"
"She wasn't silent in her anti-Allied views. She pretty much came out and said we should all raise the white flag and place our loyalties in Xehanort's hands." Kairi explained, "She was finally arrested when she took a .45 to work one day, mowed down three co-workers and shot her commanding officer."
"Riku." Wakka muttered. "Son of a bitch."
Kairi nodded, "She broke out of max security last week. I don't know how, but I know she had her eyes on Destiny Islands, on Sora."
"Just because he's the Keybearer? Why not go try to finish off Riku?" Wakka said, grimacing.
"Riku's still in Radiant Garden, in the closest knit area of Allied soldiers and security. Even in her mental state and with her abilities, she's not stupid enough to try that."
"Okay, I figured she was a few fries short of a happy meal, but this zealot has abilities?"
"Unfortunately, she can shapeshift."
Wakka's face went lax and he sat up straighter, "Oh, of course, she can shapeshift. Why not? Did I mention I can walk through walls? I bet you can leap tall buildings in a single bound too."
Kairi rolled her eyes, "I know how it sounds, and if I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't believe it either."
"So…" Wakka started, "She's insane, homicidal, able to break out of a max security prison, evil's number one fan, and she can be anyone at any time? Is that about right?"
"It gets worse."
"Of course it does. Who is this nut?"
"Lenore Johnson. Also known as Sydney Tavern. Also known as Debra Carter."
"And why isn't DIPD aware of all this?" Wakka waved one hand around for emphasis.
"Oh please. They're all still convinced the Heartless Invasion six years ago was an eclipse-slash-earthquake. You really think they'd buy that an intergalactic head case had taken captive a mild mannered man who was supposedly the universal hero of all outside worlds?"
"Good point, but can't the Alliance send in some professionals, instead of a local bartender and a jazz club waitress?" He said pointedly. "At least tell me you're packing a tazer in that purse."
"Tifa's sending people, but it won't be until tomorrow morning that they get here. Sora might not have that long." Kairi settled her shoulders against the seat.
Wakka turned onto the off ramp that branched toward the boat docks to the other island. "So Jane Doe, aka Chuckles McGiggles. Who exactly are we sharpening our pitchforks for?"
Kairi leaned her forehead against the glass of the side window. "Ansem's wife."
..:--X--:..
"Wake up."
Her voice was like running molasses, slurring through the air and clogging his ears. The thick tones carried an underlying giggle with it. If he had had any feeling left, he would have felt enough despair to break what was left of him to rubble.
As it was, he had finally achieved a salve of sorts, an unpleasant numbness that licked at his weary bones and scolded away the scorching pain racking his body. While the numbness was a blissful complement to the agony of the torture, Sora found it harder and harder to think straight, to fend off her relentless, ruthless barrages on his sanity.
"Wake up, you silly goose."
Blood was dribbling over his lips, he watched it drip onto his chest and carve its way down his chest, cutting a shallow brook around the lumpiness of broken ribs and contusions that grotesquely littered his torso. Had he fainted with his eyes open? He couldn't remember closing or opening his eyes, but he had definitely left awareness for an indeterminable length of time.
Something lukewarm, salty, and wet crashed over his skull and across his midsection. Sora gasped and gagged, shoulders bunching in surprise. Nothing should have surprised him anymore. The salty water splattered over his bloody, bruised, and broken form, cascading in little waterfalls from his shoulders, down his sides, back, and chest, and down his legs to puddle on the floor. The salt stung bitterly at his open wounds, immediately jerking him to the present.
Eyes rolling, Sora dropped his head against the wall, lackluster focus finding her. She was standing casually before him, empty water pail in her hands, lopsided grin fastened in place.
"Morning, sleepyhead. Or is it afternoon? My, my, time flies when you're having fun."
The Mute Spell had been loosening its hold on his throat for several minutes now, not that he had anything to say. His jaw was also still shattered, which made forming words nearly impossible. He grunted hoarsely, his voice scratching at his throat.
"—ayue dun' his?" Sora managed wetly.
"I'm sorry, you'll have to speak more clearly." Her smile widened with a menace.
"Hiyue dun' hjis?" He groaned.
"Why am I doing this?" She tilted her head. "Why wouldn't I do this?"
"I dun'ven n'you." Sora muttered.
"Of course you know me. We may not have ever met, gee, you probably didn't even know I existed, but I did. I still do though. You knew my ex-husband." She giggled.
Sora blinked his good eye. This bizarro Kairi didn't act or speak like anyone he had ever met, other than maybe Maleficent. But even that witch hadn't been married. What man would be crazy enough to marry her?
"I'll give you a hint, since it looks like you're hurting yourself by thinking so hard." She set the pail down and sauntered up close to him. She lifted her arms, placing them on either side of his head and letting her fingers play through his hair. She whispered, "It starts with an An, and ends with a Sem."
Sora's good eye widened and he instinctively jerked away from her, "Ansem?"
Her eyes twinkled, "Before he was The Wise, yes. Unfortunately, our marriage met its end when he stumbled upon the Dark Ones." Her voice dropped a few notes for emphasis.
Ansem had a wife?! An evil wife?! An insane, evil wife?! Nausea swam through Sora and he gagged as she traced a finger along the unbroken side of his jaw. An insane, evil ex-wife who was monologuing now.
"Yes, I did love him once, but, alas, you might say we had a difference of opinion." She was saying, flicking a finger against each individual corkscrew that was twisted into his skin.
Sora's groan was instinctual now. He could hardly feel the pain anymore. He felt oddly cold. Maybe that was a signal that he was finally dying, that there was a light at the end of this hellish tunnel.
"And you even killed him for me. Well, not with your little Keyblade, but you're the reason he's dead." She licked her lips playfully, "You're also the one who's been destroying the Heartless for half a decade. You're upsetting the natural balance. People always brag about light, how light is so wonderful and beautiful and pure. You know what was there before the light hogged the audience? Darkness." She giggled.
"You're insane." Sora said after deliberation.
Her laugh was throaty and deep for a woman, "I prefer enlightened."
It was an ironic choice of words.