The Lost Princess
Chapter One – A Rumour
"Did you hear?" an old woman whispered to her friend.
"Hear what?" the old man replied eagerly. Their lives were consumed by work throughout most of the day, so any little bit of gossip was welcomed.
The woman looked around for a moment and said, "You didn't hear it from me, but there are people saying that Princess Kairi survived."
"Really?" a nearby listener asked. "That sounds like rubbish to me. The girl was what, eight when it happened? No way an eight-year-old could survive when no one was taking prisoners. They even killed the five-year-old."
"I don't know," another woman said. "The boy's body was found with his sister, but if the girl wasn't with the rest of the family, she was small enough to hide. You must have heard about how the Grandmother escaped, right?"
"Not like anyone had to worry about the old coot anyway," the old man said. "She was no threat to them. She did escape though, and she's offering a huge reward if someone can find the girl."
"So that means that the former Queen must know something nobody else does," the first woman said with a nod. "She must have had Princess Kairi with her, but then they got separated somehow."
"Maybe."
They all quickly stopped talking as one of the guards passed by them. The current government held no love for the former royal family, not even talk about them. Most people believed that it was simple just a political revolution that destroyed the Hart family, but there was a few out there that knew the political unrest had occurred because of a dark curse.
None of the gossiping people noticed a boy with spiky, blond hair listening to them. His cerulean eyes flickered towards them for a moment as he waited, listening to see if they would start talking again. They did, but this time it was about how the winters seemed to be longer than normal now. He rolled his eyes and quickly got up, walking away from them. They did have a point though, because he remembered that winter only lasted about a month ten years ago, not four months like it did now.
He pushed passed the people in the busy streets, burying his hands into his pockets with his eyes turned to the ground. As he was walking, he thought he heard a 'pssst', but he ignored it until he heard someone say, "Rox!"
He looked around quickly and saw a boy the same age as him with light brown hair that was spikier than his. The young man motioned for the first young man to follow him, and they started moving down the street, whispering quietly.
"Did you book the theatre, Roxas?"
"Everything's all set to go," Roxas said while nodding his head. "You know you can count of me. After all, if you can't count on your twin, who can you count on, right Sora?"
Sora nodded his head in agreement. Sora and Roxas Keys were twin brothers who were almost identical. The only physical difference between them was their hair, and their voices were different. Their personalities though, while they had their similar points, were like day and night. Roxas thought things through, and was better at working quietly and pulling strings from the background. He was more rational than his brother, but he also tended to become angry quicker, and he held grudges longer. Sora was the one who jumped into things head first without thinking. He was the leader of the two, per say, the one who would take the lead role in their latest scheme. With his goofy smile, and his ability to not get angry quickly, he was the perfect leading man for the role that needed to be played.
"Great," Sora said happily. "Now all we need is the girl."
Roxas hesitated for a moment before saying, "I don't know Sor, do you really think this is right? Tricking the former Queen into believing that we found Princess Kairi? Isn't it a little..."
"Wrong? Dishonorable? Terrible?" Sora suggested. "You know it is. Think about it though. If she never finds out that the girl isn't Kairi, she'll be happy, the girl will be happy because she'll be treated like a princess, and we'll be happy because we'll be rich. Ten million munny, Rox."
"Split three ways," Roxas added.
"Well, yes, but it's still a lot. You know this is the perfect con, bro." Sora reached into his pocket and pulled out a charm that appeared to be made out of seashells in the shape of a star. "Besides, once dear-old grandma sees this, she'll believe us."
Roxas eyed it for a moment before looking at Sora again and asking, "How do you know this is really that important?"
Sora looked at the charm in his hand, a memory flashing before his eyes quickly. He never told his brother exactly how the Princess had escaped. Roxas had no clue that the real Princess Kairi could very well be alive. He was agreeing to go along with his brother's crazy scheme because he, like so many others, believed that she had actually perished that night. He always did like the stories about her being alive though.
For also Sora knew, maybe he really was dead. All he knew was that she wouldn't have died in the palace. Servants rarely used what was dubbed the servants corridors. Sora had only discovered them while sneaking around the castle. He could still remember the Princess trying to run back into her room to get the charm, so he knew it was important to her.
Part of him felt a little bad, because they were going to try to find a girl to act as the Princess to get her grandmother's money when he knew that the real Princess could very well be alive. If he were stuck in a country where the government would kill him on sight because he had the last name Hart, he would hide too, if that's what she was doing. Her grandmother was in Destiny Islands though, which would have been a safe place for her to be.
Roxas took Sora's silence for an 'I don't know' answer and dropped the question. During the siege on the palace, he had been safe because their other had forced him to hide, so he hadn't seen as much as his brother had. Never once had he agreed with what they were doing though. His brother, on the other hand, had been found in the Princess's room, unconscious. He had been questioned, but he said that he hadn't seen the princess. He had accidentally ended up in that room while trying to get away from the Hart's so that he wouldn't be killed. A poor choice, he had joked. Still, Roxas knew that it was a lie. He never questioned his brother, but he knew there was more to the story.
"Come on Rox," Sora said while clapping him on the shoulder. "Let's get to the theatre and see what we've got to work with."
Roxas nodded and said, "It's been ten years Sora, and the only thing I remember about the Hart family is that they consisted of blonds and redheads. I remember the smallest one, Axel, was a redhead, and that crazy one, Larxene, was blonde, but aside from that I don't remember the others."
"Aurora was blonde," Sora said as he scrunched up his face. "And Ariel had the same color as Axel, if I remember right, but while Kairi was a redhead too, her hair was darker. It was more of a crimson, almost burgundy color. Haven't you look at the portrait?"
"No, I generally avoid going anywhere else in the palace. So, dark red hair is going to narrow it down some," Roxas said with a nod. "But I suppose we can try to find a way to color the girl's hair if need be. And the eyes? I remember Ansem having freaky orange eyes"
Sora thought back for a moment, but not about the color of Imperial King Ansem's eyes. He could clearly remember the exact shade of Princess Kairi's eyes. They were a bright shade of indigo most of the time, but he remembered in the bright light of the fires outside, her eyes had been a much paler shade of blue. He quickly shook his head and said, "Blue."
"Alright," Roxas nodded. "And she was our age, right?"
"She was eight when the revolution started," Sora answered. "So a year younger than us."
Roxas made a quick note of that before looking up at the sky and saying, "It's hard to believe it's been ten years."
"Ten years since people thought that our lives would be better without the Harts," Sora muttered. "But things have gotten worse. Look, all people do is work here. You know, it might almost be a good thing the Hart daughters are gone." He saw Roxas' shocked look and held up his hands. "No, not like that. It's just, all of them, even Larxene, loved nature. Imagine if Aurora was here to see the forests torn down for more industrial buildings, or if Ariel could see everything we've been tossing in the ocean?"
Roxas was silent for a moment before asking, "She had a pet crab, and a pet fish, didn't she? Ariel, that is."
"Yeah," Sora nodded. "You've got all the common facts written down, right?"
"As well as the ones that only people who were in the palace a lot would know."
"Alright. Lead the way to the theater."
VVVVVVVVVVV
As a young boy, Sora had indeed been quite the curious child. While he was raised to work in the kitchens with his mother, like his brother was, he had been an adventurous child by nature. Not to say that Roxas wasn't, but as mentioned before, Roxas was the deep thinker of the two, and realized that slacking off on his duties probably wouldn't be a good idea. Sora, as mentioned before, usually tended to leap without looking. He had explored the palace, and had learned not only many secrets about the building itself, but about the family as well.
He had learned that, while Aurora seemed to be perfectly kind to everyone else, behind closed doors she had been rather vain and egotistical. She knew that she was beautiful, more so than many others, and she let it get to her head. He had learned that, while Ariel seemed to be perfectly obedient, she had a rather fiery temper and even though she was only 14, she was known for arguing with her father.
Axel, well he was too young for Sora to really remember. He had never really cared about the younger boy, but it had amused him when, at the age of three, he caught one of the old family tapestries on fire somehow. One of the other servants had taken the blame for it though. That particular servant had been punished but then he vanished. If Sora remembered right, this was around the time when Xehanort started his gruesome experiments on the human heart, so it was easy to guess what happened to the servant.
Out of all of them, Larxene had been the most honest with everyone, per say. She had always shown her real personality and never let what anyone told her bother her.
Kairi, well this princess was the center of all Sora's thoughts recently. Actually, out of all of the royals, she was the one that had always stood out the most to him, even as a child. She was a bit of a wild child, and liked to cause mischief, but when her father told her to stop, she stopped. Sora was using all of the memories that he had to make a convincing Princess Kairi. He was tired of living in the slums of Radiant Garden.
Sora already had a good idea of what he was looking for in his mind, so when the first girl got up on stage with her hyper personality, her flipped brown hair and her happy green eyes, Sora knew that she was a no-go. He crossed her name off of the list automatically because of her looks alone. Sophie or Sally or something like that, oh, he wrote down Selphie.
The next girl up, although she did act more like how Sora imagined the Princess would, she looked strikingly like the first girl, and he assumed that they were related. Olette was quickly crossed off of the list.
The next girl had her back turned to them, and he could feel Roxas sit up a little bit straighter next to him. She was a bit on the skinny side, but that could be easily explained, it was her hair that caught both of their interest. It was long, straight and a deep cherry red. However, the second the girl turned around Sora's face scrunched up and he said, "Next."
"Sora," Roxas hissed at him.
"I don't care if she's got the right hair, the Princess Kairi did not look like a weird cross between a pig and a toad." Yes, he had a very specific image in his mind, and it would at least take several days of failure for him to ease off from that exact image.
On and on the parade of wannabe Kairi's came on the stage, and while Roxas thought a few of them were alright, he generally agreed with his brother. After a few people, he started to formulate what he imaged the Princess would be like now as well, and none of them added up.
The end of the first day of auditions brought out Roxas' bad side quickly. He was already annoyed and angry with their lack of success on their missions. Sora was a little more optimistic, saying that it couldn't get any worse than the 300 pound woman with pitch black hair that had wandered in.
Of course, Sora would quickly change his mind on this fact when the first person the next day was a cross-dressing man. He became equally as frustrated as his brother after that one moment. He knew most people were taking this as a joke, because hundreds of people had already tried to prove that they were the Princess, but the former queen was never fooled. They just assumed that this was exactly like that. It wasn't though. Sora and Roxas both knew about how the royals had acted, about what they did, especially Sora.
By the third day, Sora was beyond frustrated. He was almost certain that they'd never find the right girl to pull off being the princess. Something told him to keep at it though, it was the same feeling he got when he first came up with the plan, the same feeling when he had chosen to save the Queen and the Princess.
He knew he had to do this.
VVVVVVVVVVV
Author's Note
I'm trying to keep this close to Anastasia, but at the same time I don't want Sora and Kairi to be completely OOC.
And yes, instead of an older friend, I put a twin brother is. I love Roxas too much not to put him in.
It's funny, I like Sora and Roxas the best of all KH characters (Xion's pretty cool, but they're all technically the same person, aren't they?) but the best theme songs in the entire thing belong to Riku and Xion. Xion's Final Battle theme is pretty BA too.
Why do I get the feeling that 358/2 isn't going to be the only time we see Xion again?
Thank you to everyone who reviewed! Shire Folk, Chiglet663, Topaz Tsubasa, Trainalf and chasingfireflies (Aka Milk)! You guys all FTW!
Now I have German homework to do so I'll blab some more next time!
Krystal Lily Potter
