Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

Oh non, rien de rien,

Oh non, Je ne regrette rien…

-Oh no, nothing at all,

Oh no, I don't regret anything…-

~Various artists

First off, I'm dedicating this to Shannello (whether you like it or not, hahaha!) because otherwise this wouldn't have been posted today, but… some other time, later. xD

Well, here starts a new story in the KH universe. Best part? This one actually happens in the KH universe.

As always, I'm trying out new things and new perspectives, and new ideas. I hope I get the voice right, and that you'll all enjoy this excursion.

Also, as always, I have an idea about what's going to go on, but these things tend to get a life of themselves. In other words, I have a vague idea and I'm going to run amuck with it, as usual.

Please, sit back and enjoy!

Reviews are always happily received! Cookies and cake for all who review! Yay!

Title: Je Ne Regrette Rien

Author: theZoshi

Rating: PG13

Category:

Genre: Drama/Life/Adventure

May contain: A little bit of everything

A Cosmic Sort of Thing

There's an ocean, a big one, right where you'd think there shouldn't be an ocean at all. Its huge and large and if you started off from one end you could spend your whole lifetime swimming or boating or whatever and you'd never reach the other end. Hell, you could spend twenty lifetimes, thirty, and it still wouldn't be enough. It's got one end set solidly in the light and the other in the dark. This ocean, it's so huge even space is small compared to it. Or, well, I guess it's kind of like space itself, in a way. It's got stars in it, but there are stars that hang above it too, so I don't really know how that all works out. All across it, though, you can find islands. Some of them are closer together and some of them are farther apart and some of them are so little you can barely find them, and none of them are actually islands at all. They're all worlds, different worlds all connected by this gigantic ocean. If you wanted to you could just set sail and go from world to world on this ocean.

You know how I know this? Well, it's like, I'm part of it. The ocean. I don't know how or why, but that's how it is. You know, I'm not even supposed to be here. I mean, once like way back in the beginning when I first started in with the Organization, I managed to catch Zexion one of the times he surfaced and asked him about a few things, like why we were called "Nobodies" and where our hearts had gone, and most importantly, what happened when we died. Or, er, got erased. Got vanished? I don't know, but anyway, he said we just disappeared. Poof, and that's that. Our existence, our memories, our lives, gone.

Well, I don't know, but I'm starting to think Zexi didn't really know everything, even though he acted like he did. I thought that huge book of his held a lot of answers, but maybe some of those answers were just ones he made up to make himself sound smarter. Or feel better about not knowing. Or both. Either way, whatever he said, here I am, floating around in the great big ocean of space. I'm still having a hard time believing that it's really water out here, but it has to be if I'm part of it.

I can feel the waves on the surface, if I move close to it. I can feel the ripples and the wind that causes them. I guess it's a cosmic wind, right? If I focus hard enough, I can just manage to feel the starlight too. I can't see it; I'm not me, after all, just… well, I don't know what I am. Floating jelly? A patch of water with a consciousness? I guess, my body is gone, but my soul isn't? Because, that's what a Nobody is, body and soul without a heart, right? Man, I can't remember things right. I don't know if it's just me being me, or if it's this whole bodilessness thing I got going on that's doing it.

Hey, I tried getting a form, or making a form, whatever, but it just didn't work out. Total bummer, but I guess Xemnas and Saix and Xigbar and everyone was right, you know? Maybe I should've spent a little more time learning how to work with this whole water-element thing and less time hiding out and jamming on the sitar. What a waste. Stuck as a blob of consciousness in a gigantic sea of space all because I didn't do the extra credit. It's official; unlife sucks just as much as regular life.

I tried to do a few things, but I can't really do anything at all. It's not like I can just whip out my sitar and start playing and make the water do stuff with my music like I used to, and I'm kind of lost now. I've been hanging around like this for… wow, I can't remember. It's kind of hard to tell time when you can't see anything. All I know is I've been to a few places now, one world that was kind of cool, where the waters were warm and less salty and the beaches were made of some kind of hollow rocks that practically sung when the water moved in and out between them. I hung out there for a good while, riding the waves and listening to the rocks sing, but it wasn't helping with anything so I went on. After that was that one world where the water was really dirty and I felt like I was moving through sludge most of the time. It was horrible and I hated it and I felt sick for a while after even though I don't know how a consciousness can be sick. I guess I'm special like that. Then I hit up a world that was just surrounded by cliffs, and one where I traveled all the way through it in a really neat river that had waterfalls and underground caves and everything. That place was pretty cool. Now, though, I'm somewhere out in the middle of everything and I have no idea where I'm going to go next. I'm getting a feeling, from the way the waters moving, that there's a world nearby, and I think that I'll head that way and see what I can find. Or, feel, notice. Whatever.

It's not that far, and I'm getting close. I can tell because the waters moving differently, moving forward and then rolling back in on itself, and I can tell that's because there's a beach there. If there are cliffs there's a sort of… crashy feeling, the waters all chaotic and disjointed and stuff. I'm heading in with the flow and the waters taking me around an edge of this smaller island – it's really small, for a world, and then woah. There's a huge, huge piece of land ahead of me. The small island must have been just, well, a small island, and that huge thing in front of me that has the water dodging around it in all directions for, like, miles all around, that must be the world. Awesome. I let the stream carry me on towards that large land mass and try to get a feel for the place. There's tons of fish around, but they're all hanging out by the bottom and, oh hey, there's a coral reef out there too! I can feel the fish hanging out around the nooks there, and I'm pretty sure that shape that feels like a knife slicing its way through the water is a shark, a small one, but its moving around like its out on the hunt. I don't feel any fish up by the surface, and there aren't any hanging out by the edges of the beach, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say it's nighttime in this world. I don't know how the tides are out here, but I guess I'll see. For now I'm taking my time floating around and checking out if there are any inlets or streams coming into the ocean. If I can find any I can take a trip through the world and see what the waters inland hold. You can find a lot out about the world just from its water, like, what kind of animals live on it, if there are humans, all sorts of stuff. It's pretty cool, all this info from this one source. I wish I could see the world, as fun as drifting around with the water is, it'd be nice to actually look at it and see what it's like.

Well, I'm passing the beach by. There doesn't seem to be anything interesting happening there, and I stop following the flow of the water and start pushing off by myself. It takes a bit of work but I'm gliding past the edges of the higher banks and there's a spot where it gets stony and I can feel the water splashing against rocky edges and, hmmm, something roundish? Like, poles… no, thicker… trees? Palm trees? They're growing right on the edges of the water. I drift closer to the surface, but I can't get a feel for their shadows too well, but I do feel the starlight on the water. So I was right, it is night – awesome. I keep floating on along the banks, and the rocks are fading away into the feel of sand again. This beach though is smaller, more like just a little patch of sand at the edge of the water than a real beach. The waters splashing pretty far along it too, and I can just feel the edges of palm tree trunks and some stones and… well, that's not a part of the beach. The waters is just barely reaching a shape on the sand, no, two shapes. They're rounded just a little bit and they're not, well, natural. They kind of feel like… rubber, and they shift slightly as I'm trying to get a feel for them. Rubber… rubber soles… shoes? There's a slight gust of wind and the water splashes farther along them and I'm certain now, those are definitely shoes. I glide up against the surface, getting right to the top layer of the water, and try to send my senses out. There's a shift in the way the light is hitting the water – I think it's a reflection. It moves slightly, and I feel the shoes move too, just a little. Oh, wait, this reflection, it could be of whoever – it's a person, right, if there are shoes? – is sitting there at the edge of the water. I'm trying to get a feel for the reflection, to find its edges, when there's a shift in the air and the vibrations touch the water.

"What am I doing?"

A voice! Oh man, I haven't found anyone talking around the water in… well, forever. Well, at least as long as I've been part of the whole ocean thing. I stop trying to feel the reflection and start focusing on the voice. I can't say if it's a guy or girl, old or young, I'm just translation vibrations after all, but hearing a voice, after all this time, well, it's pretty cool. Scratch that, it's really cool.

"What the hell is happening? I don't…"

There's a vibration that sounds sort of like… a groan, an aggravated sigh, or something. Suddenly something hits the water with a splash – a stone, it's falling to the bottom. Geeze, it hit right where I'm at, too, and there're more vibrations. The person is talking but I can't make out what they're saying because the water's still settling after the stone toss. I try to make the water settle faster, but yeah right, like I can actually influence it. Pfft. I'm finally able to catch the vibrations from the voice again, but I have to focus harder because the person is talking quieter.

"Why hasn't he written back yet?"

Who? What's this person waiting for, a letter? Why's he out here on the beach at night, then? Weird. There's a shift in the sand, I can feel the way it pushes back against the water, and there's a new set of vibrations against the water – the shoes are gone, and whoever it is, is walking away across the sand. Dammit, guess I'm not going to learn anything more tonight.

Still, this place seems to be interesting. I think I'm going to stay here for a little while.

****

I spent most of the day floating around the main island. There were splashes out at the main beach, and I followed some boats out to the small island and tried to listen in on conversations. I still can't believe I found a place with people living so close to the water. All the other places I found either didn't have humans at all, or they were far above or far away enough from the water that I couldn't make out what they were saying. Here, well, there were just tons of them. A lot of the voices seemed to come from kids; they were talking about summer vacation, and playing games, and sometimes things would fall into the water, like sticks and balls and wooden disks. Once, as I was heading back to the main island, this weirdly shaped thing fell into the water, and I could make out voices sounding, all distressed and stuff. I was a little bit away but I found it as it was falling down to the sand. Fish were gathering around it, but I managed to figure out where the fish ended and the object started and it was weird, but it was shaped like a star, and it had leaves coming out at the points of the star. I guess it must have been a fruit or something, since the fish were biting it and eating it up, but I'd never seen one like that before.

I practiced a bit with getting a feel for reflections, too. Most of the reflections of people and boats would go by too quickly for me to get a good grip on them, so I hung out in places where there were a lot of palm trees and mucked around with them for a bit. It took a while, but I got the hang of figuring out where one reflection ended and another began, and I started trying to, you know, shape myself like the reflection. I mean, like, feel the reflection good enough that my… er, being, I guess, sort of flowed in its shape. Man, it's weird to explain, but that's the best I could do. Well, eventually I started to get a really good feel for palm trees. I mean, I was totally spot on with the reflections, I could move along with the way the light was hitting the surface, and then I totally figured something out. Okay, I had a little help, and it was sort of by accident, but hey that's how we learn, right? So I was just hanging out with this one reflection and just wasting time and I got kind of off my rhythm, like, not keeping up with the movements anymore, and then I heard someone sort of… gasp, and a conversation between what seemed to be two kids, and it went like this.

"Oh, hey! Hey, look at that!"

Look at what?

"What?"

"The reflection, of that tree! It's all weird. Look at it!"

What, weird? Excuse me?

"Woah, it's not moving right at all."

So, it kind of got me thinking, and I tried to, you know, move the water so the reflection would do what I wanted it to, like, by affecting the way the light and stuff was hitting the surface… aw man, I'm really bad at explaining things, but that's sort of what I tried to do. I guess it worked, because the kids sort of shrieked and gasped and I could make out their footsteps pounding away. I was so totally stoked; I mean, affecting reflections like that? I could make the water move and change the reflections, that's something, right? It's like, almost what I could do with my music, but it's a little different. More tiring, too, but still.

Anyways, I ended up playing around with reflections a bit, and scaring a few people too, I guess, what with all the gasps and stuff. After a while I could feel the sun light reflecting at lower and lower angles, and I headed back out to where I'd found the little beach the night before. I don't know if whoever had been there the night before would come back, but hey, I had time. I could wait. I hoped whoever it was did come back, I wanted to know more about this letter, and about what they were talking about. Seriously, this place was probably the most interesting of all the places I'd been in.

A good long while passed, with the tide going out and the fish scattering to the depths for the night. Moonlight and starlight had been shining down on the water for a while, and I was starting to think that tonight was going to be a no-show, but then there was the sound of sand crunching beneath shoes and the water started to touch at rubber soles again. I floated up to the surfaced and reached around, grabbing at the reflection at the surface and trying to see if I can't get a feel for who was standing above the water.

"Nothing."

There was an aggravated sigh. I'd caught the edges of the reflection and I was starting to feel for contours and changes in the light. I'd figured out a way to separate leaves from tree trunks earlier, and I thought I could figure out a way to do the same with this person's reflection. Maybe, if I could, I could find out more about them, like, if they were a guy or a girl and how tall they were and stuff like that. I was starting to grab at the contours of the person's face and shoulders and arms, but they shifted and turned a little and I lost hold of them for a moment. Dammit, this wasn't easy at all, and I was getting tired. Like, mentally, not physically, duh, but still.

"It'll come tomorrow…"

The person sounded a bit worried, a little hopeless too. The person was standing sideways to the water now, and from what I could grab from the reflection, I could figure that this person was a guy. Definitely a guy, or he'd have to be a really, really flat chested girl, but I doubted that. He was kind of tall too, a little bit taller than me back when I had a body. He seemed interested in something farther out, or it seemed like that with where his face was directed, and he wasn't saying anything, which was boring, so I played around with his reflection, just a little. It wasn't like I could do too much, it was kind of difficult holding onto it anyways. Trees were just trees, but humans made all sorts of little movements, so I focused really hard on trying to get a feel for things in the reflection. I could separate the arm from the rest of the reflection, but I couldn't really move it because I wasn't sure how to reflect the part that was behind the arm, so I just tried to move the fingers a little bit. It was annoyingly difficult, way too much effort, and I decided to stop and pay attention to the guy again, but I was a little late with that. Like, way late, because he was turned towards the water again, but I was still holding his reflection like he'd been standing before, sideways, and I'm pretty sure he noticed because while I let go of the reflection and felt it snap back into place, I could tell he was looking down at the water. Shit.

Well, he wasn't saying anything. I didn't try grabbing his reflection anymore, although I was tempted. Sorely tempted. Maybe if I grabbed it, just a little, I could feel what kind of expression he had on? I mean, just a little touch… Just a tiny, little –

I was totally not expecting that rock. The backsplash sent the reflection scattering, and I couldn't feel anything on the surface anymore. That was one huge rock, how did I not notice him picking it up? I dodged to a side where the splashes seemed to die down quicker, and hovered just under the surface.

"I don't know what you are, but you don't belong here."

Geeze, thanks. That makes me feel totally better. I floated in my little area and waited to see what else this guy would do, or say. I was a little shocked, though, I mean, he wasn't responding like everyone else did. Like, why did he think that someone was messing around with the reflection? Everyone else just thought they were seeing things. What made him different?

"Maybe you're the reason it isn't coming in…"

His voice got quieter, like he was thinking about something. I floated a little closer to his reflection, just close enough to feel for it. His head was tilted slightly.

"What…? Am I really talking at my reflection? Dammit."

There was a shifting in the sand, and I could feel from his reflection that he had sat down at the edge of the water again. I floated up against his reflection again, felt for it and decided to just go along with the flow of it for now. No need to get him angry. He wasn't doing much, just staring out at the water. Boring, again. It'd be nice if he talked a little, at least then I'd have something to pay attention to. Like this, though, I was seriously reconsidering hanging around. I mean, yeah, people are fun and all, but other than kids splashing around the beach and fisherman going out in their boats, there wasn't really all that much to do. This place was really quiet, and calm, and peaceful, and I guess I should've been cool with that, since it meant that I didn't really have to do anything, but… seriously. Bo-ring. I'm not exactly the most active person – er, consciousness, but even I can't just sit around doing nothing forever. I like the calm life, yeah, but I don't like it all… stagnant and stuff.

Which is why I started messing around with the guy's reflection again. Smart? No, but hey, no one ever accused me of that, right? Barely a minute passed and the guy was on his feet again, and I was still holding his reflection in the position he was before.

"What… who's doing that?"

I let go of his reflection again, holding onto it just enough to feel its shape as it snapped back into place. He was looking around, but he could do that all night, he wasn't going to find anything. I was hoping he was going to say something again, or do something, but he turned around and headed off instead. Well, awesome. Just great. I floated around the little beach for a while, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't coming back, and I headed back out to deeper water to just vegetate and wait for the sun to rise.