Across These Oceans
A group of compiled Kingdom Hearts drabbles

The following is a sampling of my drabble work for the Kingdom Hearts series. No real themes tie them together, except those already present within the base storyline: loss, yearning, friendship, promise, curiosity, desperation, darkness and light. The genres of these short works range from sappy romance, to incredibly dark and twisted sex, to wistful finality and associated angst. Each work stands on its own, but I arranged them in an order I found appropriately befitting. Characters in this drabble set currently include Sora, Riku, Kairi, King Mickey, Queen Minnie, Axel, Demyx, Marluxia, and Naminé. I'll be updating periodically in…I suppose new chapters? Yeah, that sounds good.

Enjoy.

The Dangling Conversation
Word Count: 532
Rating: G
Spoilers: None. Set pre-game.

"Mickey?"

The tiny king turns from the sky to face his queen with an expression of mild surprise, as if he's just been woken from a dream. She stands in the doorway, her form framed in candlelight, three circles etched dark against the fire. "You've been out here for quite awhile," she says as she steps lightly onto the balcony, and her voice sounds like twilight. "Aren't you getting sleepy?"

He notices that the starlight sends the anxiety on her face into sharp relief. She looked prettier in the bedroom, he thinks, illuminated by firelight that was small and manageable and could be ignited or extinguished at will. "Just a moment longer, Minnie, I'll be comin' in soon," he assures her with a voice that sounds unusually distant in his own overlarge ears.

His words seem not to comfort the queen, however, and she moves across the balcony until they stand side by side against the railing. A silence settles between them and they both watch the sky, which glitters innocuously with thousands of tiny stars. "You've been watching the stars an awful lot lately," she says after what seems considerable deliberation, and as the words pass from her lips they seem somehow unsatisfying, yet pregnant with meaning. The starlight is digging shadows into her otherwise gentle features.

The king is quiet for a moment. "Someone's gotta watch over 'em," he says slowly. He doesn't look at her; her expression is too raw for his tiny heart to bear. "Or else, if they were in trouble, who'd be there to help 'em out?" He seems to choose his words with care.

Minnie smiles at that. Just as she's about to speak, a star just above their heads and slightly to the right glows with an unnatural brightness. And then, in an instant, darkness sweeps across it and it blinks into nothingness. In an instant. Mickey's face hardens; the queen's seems to wilt just a bit. It's a sight they've shared before; nothing new. But it hasn't gotten any easier to watch. "They do need someone to protect them," she says after a moment of hushed awe. "Somebody...very strong. And brave. Who people believe in." She, too, seems to carefully choose her words.

Now it's the king's turn to smile, despite the tension in his lower jaw, and his ears grow warm with blush. "Naw. Just somebody mindful enough to do somethin' about it."

There's something strong, something final in the way he says it that makes the queen shiver. "But there are so many stars," she replies. "How would such a one be able to find his way? And," she hesitates, "find his way home again?"

The silence between them is the longest it's been, and as thick as the night. Slowly, a gloved hand fingers its way across the banister to lay across a smaller, daintier one. And it squeezes. "He'd have the love in his heart to guide him." She catches his face, and it's lit beautifully in the starlight. "There's no star brighter than that."

In the light of the falling stars, a tiny king and queen share a gentle kiss that will last them through years of separation.

To Save Her
Word Count: 302
Rating: PG
Spoilers: For KH1, through Hollow Bastion.

He's only wanted to save her, from the moment he first glimpsed the ocean in her eyes and the sun in her hair.

He told her once, just came out and said it, one afternoon as they sat alone on the sand watching Sora toss about in the waves. He turned to her and said quite plainly, "I want to save you."

That was the last time they were alone together. After his confession, though she never said so, she avoided him like the shadows cast across the crevices of her room at night, and the air between them was crisp and palpable. Maybe, in that moment, she saw their fate in the darkness of his eyes.

When she fell into his presence again, thrust without care through the darkness, he renewed his vow: he would be the one to save her. He'd be the one to raise her from the depths, to repel the shadows and fend off the demons, to protect her from the world, whether she wished it or not. He'd be the one to save her.

So now, as he stares daggers down at her lifeless form, the murderous instinct in his corroded heart comes as a bit of a surprise. There's a voice somewhere in his confliction that's whispering i save her, save her, you want to save her /i but it's weak and it's small and it's hard to hear over the thudding of darkness in his veins. So it goes disregarded, and instead he smiles (darkness seeps through the cracks), takes pleasure in her form (feeding on her weakness), prepares for her awakening (that he may silence her again), his intentions warped, his innocence raped, the hero inside him suffocated by the darkness that he harnessed

just to save her.

He only wanted to save her.

To No Return
Word Count: 497
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For KHII - Sora's first return to Twilight Town and beyond.

"Let me go! Let me GO!"

The girl was putting up more of a fight than Axel had anticipated. Her feet were planted stubbornly into the ground, and she beat tantrum-like on his back as he dragged her by the wrist through the portal. Should have expected this from a girl who'd dived into the darkness alone, he thought. Axel might have laughed aloud at his own hindsight, but there was something dark in his expression, and the humor was uncharacteristically lost. "Come on, Kairi, I thought we were friends," he said with a tight-lipped half-smirk as he jerked his captive bodily forward. She stumbled with a cry and lost her footing, and for a few strides Axel dragged her mercilessly along the ground.

"You said that, not me," Kairi shot back angrily as she stumbled under Axel's force.

"True enough," Axel replied vaguely as he swept his arm back again, forcing the girl awkwardly to her feet. "You have a good memory."

"Where are you taking me?" she countered vehemently through struggled grunts.

Axel sighed heavily, his expression melting slowly into tense numbness. "Apparently not that good, or else you'd remember what I said before," he commented, giving the girl another jerk that sent her off her feet. "We're going to see Sora."

"No...!" Kairi protested with breath strangled by exertion. "I'm going to find him myself. And when I do, you won't be there."

Axel chuckled darkly. "I'm feeling the love here, Kairi, I really am."

"Just let me go."

He was silent.

"Let me go!"

"Sorry, can't do that."

"Let me GO!"

"DAMNIT, don't you know how to say anything else?!" Axel suddenly bellowed. In a flash, his free hand whipped around fast like a bullet and came down hard on Kairi's cheek.

A slap, a gasp, then silence. Axel stared down at her from his considerable height, bottomless eyes crackling dangerously with fire that had been too long repressed. Cupping her cheek, Kairi met his gaze with defiant yet admittedly stunned eyes that swam with the power of oceans. "So confident that you'll be reunited with the one you care about," he mused disdainfully. "What if you're wrong, and you never see him again?"

"Sora is always with me," Kairi replied swiftly, surely. "In my heart."

Axel's expression was suddenly unfathomable. "In your heart, huh?" he managed, his voice hollow. Slowly, a crooked smile slipped across his lips, and at length, he laughed. It was a dark, mirthless sound that shivered Kairi into silence. "You're a real sap, you know that, Kairi?" he said dismissively. "That's the difference between you and me." With a swift jerk, Axel pulled his hostage carelessly forward, and the two began to move through the darkness again. Kairi, with a strange sort of stunned expression, did not struggle much.

It was not until later, when the fires had simmered some, that Axel finally allowed himself to feel the gentle thrum of life in Kairi's pulse beneath his fingers.

Birth Order
Word Count: 434
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Implied for all.

Her hands are small, fingers like strands of thin white lace brushing ephemeral against larger palms. Her footprints are dwarfed in the sandy shore, and are usually the first to become swept away in the swallowing sea. Her chest is childishly flat, her hips straight and narrow, her lips two blushing virgins set like the petals of a newly bloomed rose beneath two eyes that twinkle hungry with youthful enthusiasm. Her skin is soft and new and innocent as the dawn.

His body is hard and clearly defined, the lines of manhood already stretching across his skin. His chest is thick armor, his arms powerful like the wings of a hawk, his legs two pendulums always pumping him forward. His groin has swelled round and dropped; his voice is deep and rumbles like the ocean. His footprints are the largest, and they remain pressed into the beach for hours after. He thinks of the world in terms of what can be conquered.

She sees herself a girl; he sees her as a woman. She yearns for sunlit beaches and windswept hair, for citrus and smiles and summertime. He aches for the dark, for secluded spots where two people could become lost in one another, for body heat and heaviness and all things taboo.

She wants to live an unencumbered life with few worries. For her, darkness is a far off mystery that she has no desire to investigate. He thinks he would like to save her from something life-threatening, and he envisions the ways she would thank him alone in his room at night.

It's out of fear that she withdraws. His attentions are foreign and frightening, and his eyes are suddenly full of things her childish brain cannot yet fathom. She seeks simplicity in the younger of the two boys, who still regards her with innocent eyes and sees her as the child she envisions herself. "Let's take the raft and go, just the two of us!" she tells him one day. When he responds with confusion, she only smiles; at least he's still the same.

When her breasts are round and her legs are long, when she, too, has fantasies of an adult nature (they take place on an isolated beach at sunrise), it's to another that she gives her heart over. The image of that first boy, of the one who first blossomed in a way his two companions could not yet understand, is tainted by her memory of him, the memory of a child who feared the mature unknown.

And so she scorns the boy who grew up too fast.

For Blood and Thorn
Word Count: 162
Rating: R
Spoilers: For Chain of Memories.

Always on a flowerbed they fall, crushed together by mutual lack and one-sided need that permeates his weightless frame like smoke. The roses obey him, twisting coiling trapping naked limbs, drawing blood from empty veins, locking nothing to nothing like smoke to sky. Her body – a cage, made barren by nature – folds open with the rest of them, yielding unripe virgin fruit that he harvests with greed, one by one by one until what never was can never, ever be.

When he's finished, he weaves a thread of thorns around her crown, casts the vines across her eyes. Her face cries heavy crimson tears that seep through white imperfection; her tangled gaze remains distinctly dry. He asks of her – demands of her – why, Naminé, again tell me why. "For you," she whispers in obedient reply, aching wind through winter trees. His smile echoes the hungry dark. "Good girl." And the roses breathe again.

She no longer feels their thorns pierce her skin.

Last
Word Count: 451
Rating: PG
Spoilers: For KH2, through what I like to call the game's "middle-marker": Hollow Bastion, just before the battle of 1000 Heartless.

"Hey, you guys are looking lively…"

I'm not taking on this kid! There's no way! Didn't he defeat The Superior's Heartless when he was just eight or something like that? They've got to be crazy sending me in to do this kind of stuff! I'm not cut out for it. I told them that I don't like to—I told them that—"I told them they were sending the wrong guy."

They probably think I'm craz—this kid is going to destroy me! Damnit, how did I get roped into this? He's looking at me like he is going to rip off my—he looks so much like—…Roxas, can you see me? You're probably thinking, what a wuss I—I don't want to do this. I just want to play my sitar. I want to play my music. I want to fill the halls with—…you'd say I was stupid for that, wouldn't you, Roxas? Why did you leave us? Why would you make me stand face to face with you and fight—you know I don't know how to figh—why did you leave us? Did you even believe me when I told you that—

"The Organization's made up of Nobodies."

"Right—no hearts!"

Oh, that again. Why do they all think that? Don't you know—"Oh, we do too have hearts!" just not…Don't look at me like that. Don't look at me like you're going to—no don't—"Don't be mad…" I've always hated that look. It makes me feel… You make me feel sad when you look at me like that. Yeah, you make me feel. You make us all feel. Why didn't you believe me when I told you—

"You can't trick us!"

This kid is—this kid is going to kill me …And you're going to let him do it, aren't you Roxas? You—you didn't believe me when I told you—we have—we have hearts , Roxas. Maybe not inside of us, but we have them. We can feel. We can feel without our hearts being with us because we have them and that's all that matters. I tried to tell you, but you didn't—you didn't need him to give you emotion—you had it all along—I always saw it in your—

—Keyblade …

…So that's how it's going to be, isn't it? Fine, then. You want to fight me, prove me wrong? You want to throw everything I ever said to you back in my face? You—you—tra—"Silence, traitor." Yeah. Traitor. Traitor. You traitor. You should have believed me, traitor. Number XIII. But now, I'll prove you wrong. I'll prove you both wrong. I won't lose to you.

No way.

Nobody
Word Count: 100
Rating: PG
Spoilers: For the definition of a Nobody, I suppose.

It's an ache, repressed suppression wanting, an open wound drawing in the dark calling out for light, simultaneously. The result is emptiness: cancelled-out existence, impulsive inaction gnawing needful at the limbs that will not move, the voice that will not speak, the eyes that cannot blink. It's stifling echo-soft, empty reverberation in the massless body, inescapably etched in resurgent memory. We think, perhaps, we should cry. Each unshed tear (they do not come they do not come) adds weight to the weightlessness. And finally, our shoulders collapse under a burden half-formed, crushed in nonexistence.

And we fade into the dark.

The Next Life
Word Count: 612
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For Axel's fate at the end of KH2.

In darkness, the other speaks. "I knew you'd go out in a 'blaze of glory.' A man after my own heart."

He answers, scriptedly. "Funny you should say that—"

"Right, right. Haven't got one." It's not quite mocking, but the boy does seem incredulous, talking sideways from his mouth in a way that's uncomfortably familiar.

He takes a drag from his cigarette.

"You smoke. I forgot."

"I'm surprised you don't."

"I killed myself in other ways."

"So you did."

The fag glows dimly in the dark.

"So…is this really it, then? Am I…"

"Well, not yet. Consider this a…crossroads. A hell before the hell."

"Heh, so I am going to hell."

"Hell is only what you make it. I thought that shadow of an 'existence' you took part in was pretty hellish, if you ask me. Especially that last bit. You know, with all the fire."

"That was pretty cool, wasn't it."

"I was proud."

"At least someone was."

He stretches out a lanky arm. "Do you want one?"

"Yeah, sure. Not like it'll kill me." A lanky hand accepts. The lighter clicks, and spark leads to a second flame, which smolders in green eyes dimmed by the half-life. Two boys drag from their cigarettes. "It was better than the way you went out, anyway."

"I'd have burnt myself to death too if I'd had badass fire powers."

"You were a pansy. You would've been afraid."

"And you weren't?"

"I don't have a—"

"—heart, right, right."

"Asshole."

Smoke fills the air.

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"That you're an asshole?"

"No, asshole, that you don't have a heart."

"How could I believe anything else when there is a wide gaping hole of nothing in my chest?"

"Because you have me."

"Yeah, and when you gave into the darkness, you didn't lose—"

"Well…technically."

"Technically."

"Technically my heart left my body—"

"—my body now—"

"—not anymore—"

"—so I am dead—"

"—just shut up for a second. When I fell to darkness, my heart left my body." He's smiling now in a way that's comfortably familiar, out of the side of his thin, twisted mouth. "But…it didn't disappear."

"Didn't disappear, huh…? So where did it go?"

"You don't know?"

Silence. Two boys drag from their cigarettes. "I looked for it through the entirety of my nonexistence. But… I think I have an idea now." He chuckles dark like the smoke that swirls around him. "How fucking ironic." A pause. "How fucking I like cigarettes."

"You always have. You just forgot."

The flame smolders in his vision.

"It's all planned out, isn't it. All of this. Destiny really does exist."

"Destiny is only what you make it."

"I think I've heard that somewhere before."

"Yeah. From him ."

For a moment he's stunted, like the dead butt his companion tosses languid to the dark. "…That's not what I—"

"But he said it, didn't he?"

It's true; he can hear them, clear as the crackling of his death-flames: the words cruelly muttered from pursed, frustrated lips, shadowed under stalks of blond. "…So he did."

And then, like ash in his mouth: "Got it memorized?"

"…You're an asshole."

"Well do you?"

"…Yeah. Yeah, I really do."

The cigarette dangles loosely from the side of his mouth, which curves upwards in a way that's fittingly familiar. When the lips absently twitch, it falls from its perch with a whisper, joining its fellow on the ground under a drizzle of smothered embers.

"So…" They match each other gaze for gaze, like mirrors calling back; at their feet, the dead butts spark. "Are you ready for the next life?"

Her Glorious Burden
Word Count: 625
Rating: G
Spoilers: Very mild, if you haven't gotten through Disney Castle in KHII.

When she accepted her role as queen and took up the burden of defending the light, she knew there would be sacrifices.

It's a blur of skirts and clicking heels as she bursts into the castle library, her heart in her throat and the magic on her sleeves. She's done all that she can alone: sealed the Hall, fortified the castle, sent for the heroes--and here she is in an empty room with an empty desk and an empty chair with only the books to accompany her. The door slams behind her and she presses light desperately into it, praying praying praying that her power is enough to keep the darkness at bay for just a little while, until help arrives. But until then it's the room where they used to sit in the evenings--rare solitary time--and pet the dog and trade ideas about history and philosophy and magic until the nighttime claimed them for sleep.

There are no sweet sounds of contentment now, no happy barking, no heart-filled laughter, just the sound of shallow breathing as she strains against the door with every spark of her strength. Dimly she hears darkness erupting outside, and into the dusty air she releases a cry of frustration.

Click click click go the solitary heels as the queen darts to the desk. Parchment goes flying and litters the floor in her frenzy to find a blank sheaf, and in her haste she spills the inkwell, dripping black like blood across the desk's polished white surface. Can't worry about that now; no time, not enough time. She dips a pen in the puddle and begins to write:

Mickey,

An insidious darkness that I cannot identify has descended upon the castle and threatens the Cornerstone of Light. It is dense and swift, and I can feel it overcoming us. I don't know what to do. I need you here. I'm lost without your guidance. Please come back to me--

A tiny gasp halts her scribbling when she realizes with shock that she's been reciting the words aloud. Her voice rings like a tiny bell that's been muffled in fabric and quickly dissipates into the darkness beyond. Gone. Her hand grows unsteady and when she glances back to her work, she discovers fresh tears glazing the page.

With the over-careful movements of one handling glass, the queen places the pen down on the desk, crosses her hands in her lap, and closes her eyes. This is not how you would have me be, is it she ventures silently as the tears roll down her longish nose and dampen the parchment below. They are the first she's cried for him in all this time, and now she weeps in noble silence, salt spilling oceans over in her dark eyes as she mourns the burden the darkness has pressed upon their shoulders.

In her ears, the Heartless storm the ramparts; their claws scratch at the doors. It's a sound that makes her skin crawl.

It's what motivates her, inevitably, to straighten her shoulders and tighten her grip and whisper words that in their gentleness powerfully resound: "Lend me the strength I need to do this. Please."

The queen rises slow and steady--regally--from the desk, tucking away her weakness into the back of her resilient heart. She pores over the books in the towering shelves with eyes like stones, firm in their existence, powerful in their prowess. The sounds of darkness fall on ears gone deaf; she hears only his voice, strong and gentle: Through love, our hearts are connected. I share all of your burdens, both good and bad. I am always with you. Never forget that.

Never again she affirms silently.

To the Dawn
Word Count: 352
Rating: G
Spoilers: Implied. Set post-KH2, so be forewarned.

The raft has remained. While, so many years ago, its three captains fell blindly into unknown worlds cast oceans away, the tiny wooden vessel waited steadfastly in the familiar sand, and was still waiting when the children-turned-adults returned world-weary and hungry for home. Since then, it has been a comforting reminder to those unlikely travelers of the things they used to dream of, its dormancy a testimony to the serendipitous way in which they finally realized those dreams.

One morning, in that twilit time just before dawn when night and day pass each other for an instant in the sky, it is pulled roughly from its idleness on the shore and into the water, where it finally tastes the salt sea it was built for. A single form climbs aboard, not the expected three, and the old wood creaks threateningly against the weight of his adult-sized body. Eventually it settles, and the form dips his paddle into the water.

From a shore close by, two others stand and watch vigilantly as the raft moves slowly into the open ocean. "Just watching him go makes my heart ache," the girl whispers, placing a hand to her chest.

"He'll be back," her companion affirms, bringing his arms around her smaller form.

"Why does he leave again?" she wonders aloud, her bottomless eyes wavering against the prickling of tears. "He's seen it already; we all have."

"I think," the other clarifies, pressing his chin into her scarlet hair, "that he's leaving to see it from another angle."

"From the view of the light?" she asks.

"Maybe..." he replies quietly, and his eyes turn with a sudden understanding to the sky. "No... From the view of the dawn."

As they speak, the sky is blooming citrus, and the figures of the lone captain and his vessel are painted dark against it. The sun rises and sends its radiance across his hair, which suddenly lights up silver in a way it never had before. Aqua eyes catch the light, and he looks daringly into the dawn, his heart guiding him towards it and into the unknown beyond.