The drops falling from the ceiling fell into the pool of water around Isa. He was used to waking up like this; his teeth chattering with cold, his breath white as snow as he exhaled and flinched when one particular big drop fell onto the bridge of his nose. The first question on his mind was no longer "Where's Lea?"

The answer was always "not here" anyway.

Isa sat up reluctantly, not interested in his surroundings as it was easier to assume that he had woken up by the washing machine in his bathroom. The apartment overflowed with water at least once a day. Vexen said it was because Isa insisted on washing sheets that needed no washing, but Isa still firmly believed that it was the bubbles trying to get out.

The big drop of water that had fallen onto the bridge of his nose ran down his cheek second after second until Isa felt like he had to gently brush the tips of his fingers against his cheek to see if his face had broken under the impact of the hit. The tips of his fingers were colored in crimson when he looked at them with a slight tilt of his head.

He brought them to his lips.

The white of his breath covered his act of curiousness. His tongue pressed against his finger tips with the hope that he'd be able to taste it; the crimson.

He let out a relieved laugh that sounded like a muffled sob. His fingers tasted like wet cardboard smelled. The crimson that ran down his cheek had trickled down his throat and was coloring the water around him. He should have been worried, but his mind was overtaken by one simple thought: I'm not empty.

From a corner of the room, Isa heard a noise; the stealthy tapping of four sticks against the concrete walls. It moved from the corner and up onto the ceiling. Tap, tap, tap. The eyelids that were sewn shut, were the first thing Isa's attention was drawn to when he was faced by the strange creature hanging upside down, watching him through the stitches. Isa would have felt his insides freeze with fear if he wasn't frozen already. His instinct to scream and pull away went as soon as it came, and in that time he came to recognize that face.

"What are you doing here?" Isa asked.

"X marks the spot, remember?" Charles's plastered smile grew wider. "There are very few guardians left."

"I don't care."

"The Heart Station will collapse."

"It doesn't matter if it collapses."

"A bit grim, are we?" Charles plopped down from the ceiling and into the water. His head remained upside-down until he stood firmly on the floor. The mechanical sound of Charles' head spinning back into place echoed in the room and traveled down the long corridor outside. "Don't you think Lea would care if you let the Heart Station fall?"

Isa pulled his knees close to his chest and hid his face against his knees, leaving smudges of red on his exposed skin.

"Lea will replace me. The Man on the Moon only gives red strings to those with hearts that matter and are prone to light. I don't really fit the label."

"Now who in the grim world told you such a grim thing?" Charles asked, concerned, and crossed his arms. "Where there's a will, there's a way. The Man on the Moon is easy to persuade. If it's a heart you need, a heart you'll get, tied in a million red strings to whom you desire. Charlotte told you to collect the spheres, didn't she? The Man on the Moon feeds on spheres. Collect as many as you can, and give him the most valuable ones."

The drops kept falling. The dripping had barely been noticeable at first, but the sound became louder until it was all Isa could hear. The ceiling was raining down in pieces, turning into white noise. Once Isa blinked again, he opened his eyes to a different sight altogether. The dripping was still there, but it wasn't the ceiling falling down anymore. It was a downpour tapping against the aluminum roof of the half box in the same material that was held together with wires and soft branches.

The wet rag that was put against Isa's forehead made him back away slightly with a wince at the sting it caused.

"Sit still. It'll just take a second."

Lea frowned slightly as he moved in closer to gently dab the the open wound on Isa's face. Isa gulped and quickly looked away. He stared into the wood of the improvised bench in the half box of aluminum as best as he could, but the white rag was in his way, and what wasn't covered in white was Lea's face.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Lea put the rag down and folded it carefully. "I know you'll do what it takes to get our hearts back, and I'll help you every step of the way. Just, be careful, okay? Don't rush it."

"...our hearts?" Isa's voice cracked slightly. Drops dripped down his face. He couldn't tell if it was drops of rain water, drops of crimson or teardrops that fell, only that it ached to know that Lea could be without a heart as well.

"We're bound together, remember?" Lea smiled weakly. "What you lose, I lose too."

"No..." Isa shook his head slowly and swallowed the growing lump in his throat. "No, it's not − it wasn't supposed to be like this. Lea...Lea, I'm sorry."

Isa hadn't accepted the idea of being heartless. He knew that it was still in there. It had to be. If it wasn't, he'd be more than just a heartless. He'd be dead. The idea had been easy to reject when Xigbar had imposed it, but hearing it from Lea had taken the abstract idea and concretized it in the reality that was supposed to be different from the grim world Isa came from.

The red string.

Isa reached for Lea's hands, hoping to see the red string with the habit of glowing around him. It was a relief and a horror not to see it. Relief because maybe Isa had a heart after all, and horror because maybe Lea didn't. Isa looked down with a gulp, waiting for the string to burn him, but by the time he had convinced himself that he could feel anything through his numb fingers, Lea was gone.

"Lea...?" Isa sobbed softly.

On the empty spot where Lea had sat, stood an empty jar of glass with a label across it; Memories.

It was clear to Isa what he had to do. The warnings and rules of moving around in the world of color were forgotten in favor of reclaiming what had been taken away from them. He stepped out in the pouring rain and walked ahead with no intention of stopping until he came across the desirable spheres.

~o~

Shadows were born in water. They lurked by every road, behind bushes and trees with only their clicking noises as an indication that they were nearby. Isa felt them watch his every move. They stayed afar until Isa started to come across spheres lodged in the mud. They used the water to teleport themselves from one spot to another, snatching the spheres right out of Isa's hands as they cackled around him.

Isa hadn't expected to grow tired anytime soon, but the raindrops weighed on him as if they clung to him instead of draining away and absorbing into the ground. Whenever he reached for a sphere it seemed like he had to push through a wall of dense matter before he could squeeze his fingers around it.

Three Shadows appeared around him just as he took a light blue sphere and put it in the glass jar. Isa looked up slowly, struggling to breathe through the heavy weight that always seemed to settle on his chest.

"Go away."

No Shadow would have dared to approach him in the grim world, not with the intention to mock him, anyway. The piles of Shadows that Isa had left behind in alleyways and open streets had served as a warning, it was just that it hadn't been Isa the Shadows had been afraid of, it was Saïx.

The Shadows swirled around him, scratching in the air and screeching in morbid delight when their claws cut through his skin. Isa ran his arms around the glass jar protectively and lowered his head as the Shadows swirled faster and their screeching grew louder. He wanted to protect himself, but he couldn't make himself move the way he wanted over his cold and shaking limbs. Even his grip around the glass jar felt weak despite holding it as tightly as he could.

The screeching attracted Shadows from everywhere. They appeared from pools of water and from crevices in the trunks of trees, eager to see what their likes had stumbled upon. It didn't take long before they pried the glass jar from Isa's weakening grip, tilting it over to closer inspect the spheres where they lay scattered on the muddy road, some getting caught in small currents of water.

Isa's attempts to move across the mud to get the spheres back before they were washed away by the rain made the Shadows screech again with glee. The raindrops fell with the weight of rocks.

"Lea..."

Isa tried to find some strength in the name of the person that had managed to show him a night sky full of stars and to fill his worlds with colors and scents that had been kept from him, but in the aftermath of Isa's actions and what they had cost them both, it seemed nothing short of ungrateful to expect Lea to save him from this, too. He struggled, but Isa could barely reach the sphere closest to him.

The ground shook. The shockwaves reverberated in the pools of water. The screeches turned into metallic shrieks, and for a moment, Isa was sure that the Heart Station was collapsing. He opened his eyes just in time to see a pair of large cylindrical legs lift off the ground and straight toward the horde of Shadows. Four giants dressed in thick armor and carrying a large claymore each, chased off the Shadows with ease.

In the moment that followed, when the the Shadows' screeching was replaced with nothing but the sound of running water, Isa thought that he had been left alone once more. The rain had eased ever so slightly. As Isa closed his eyes, the pulsating aches on his body lulling him to sleep, a giant picked him up and walked through the landscape, leaving a mark on the ground with the claymore that it dragged behind.

~o~

Isa looked at his reflection in the armor of the giant. He had been brought to safety. They both sat underneath an overgrown Dandelion in a glade of miniature pine trees. Isa had been resting against the stem of the Dandelion when he came to. He hadn't tried to talk to the giant yet. His attention had fallen onto his reflection that reminded him of the aches he had fallen asleep to.

The raindrops had made a ripple effect on his skin in different shades of purple. It was darkest in the middle of each bruise where the drops had hit. The rings around it faded into each other in a pattern. The scratches that had been made by the Shadows ruptured that pattern in thin gashes that had stopped bleeding, but left a trail of disruptive red.

The giant moved its arm and pointed behind Isa with a large finger. Isa looked up at it, trying to catch a glimpse of its face inside that thick helmet, but he couldn't see anything, so he turned around to see his glass jar, still in one piece. The giant hadn't been able to gather all of the spheres that Isa had lost to the Shadows, but the ones it had gotten to were there.

"Thank you." Isa turned back to the giant. His voice was hoarse, his lips were chapped, and his throat dry. For a minute he thought of drinking the rain water, but his reflection quickly reminded him of what the rain would do to him.

Isa pulled his knees closer to his chest and tried to find the least painful way to rest his head against his knees. He didn't try for long before the giant nudged him gently and pointed to the stem of the Dandelion. The water that accumulated in the flower, ran down the stem in small harmless drops. Once Isa had drunk the water and washed his face, he sat back down in front of the giant, curious as to why it was here and why it had helped him.

"Are you in there?" Isa asked and pointed to the armor.

The giant nodded.

"Can you come out?"

The giant shook its head.

"Do you want to come out?"

The giant drew a heart on the left side of its chest and pointed to it with a shake of its head.

"I don't have one either. But, at least you're strong. The rain doesn't hurt you like it hurt me." Isa tried to smile. "I have one like that in the other world." He pointed at the claymore. It was difficult to maintain a conversation with someone that couldn't talk, and yet, just having the giant there, put Isa at ease.

"...I want an armor too. I want to be strong, and make things right." Isa looked himself right in the eye through his reflection.

His thoughts short-circuited as they traveled through his fractured grid. They culminated into this moment where a series of unfortunate events came together to lay ground for a drastic measure of defense. Isa was in a place where no one could hear him no matter how much he called. He knew where he wanted to go, but the roads there were cluttered with mines and barbed wire that he just couldn't manage to go through without help.

Isa put his hands against the cold metal. His eyes were fixated on that of their reflection. The reflection blurred on the sides. The doors to the grim world had been ajar before, and Isa had been scared of what it would do with (to?) the world of color, but now he realized that there had been a reason for those doors to stand ajar; he had to go back home to fix what he had broken.

And at home, he wasn't Isa.

The armor that Isa had been resisting, grew around him and wrapped him in dark layers of blankets until he was safely hidden away where the rain couldn't hurt him.

It was the first time Isa found himself not caring whether he'd ever be able to return to the world of color or not.

~o~

The conference room at Oblivion was a room of mirrors and windows. The sight outside was a building identical to the one they were in. The room was duplicated in the mirrors, both in the conference room and in the building across from it, making it seem as if they were caught between universes, all depicting the same thing.

"Saïx."

Isa turned to face the gray-haired man that sat across from him. It was odd to wake up in a place like this. His armor usually dealt with the mundane everyday tasks like reading mission reports and assigning missions to their employees. Meetings rarely brought any new information to light, but with the arrival of a new member into the Organization, Isa had been brought from sleep more often.

"Has Axel given you a report on how the mission went at the castle?"

"No, sir."

Xigbar laughed and leaned onto the table with the shiny surface. Whether Isa was in his armor or not, Xigbar always managed to make the blood boil in his veins with anger. Xigbar had the tendency to look at him as if he was a mouse caught in a maze, frantically trying to search for his way out only to get caught in the traps that electroshocked him as punishment.

"You might wanna shorten his leash, Chuckles. He was recently seen in Twilight Town with Number Thirteen. He clearly doesn't respect your authority − or maybe some things are just that much more important," Xigbar sneered.

Xemnas rarely interfered when Xigbar diligently made comments to upset Isa, and when he did interfere it was subtle − a small gesture with his eyes that didn't say stop, just not now. To Xemnas, Isa was a mouse caught in a maze, and he watched Isa struggle with fascination, his fingers on the buttons that delivered the electric shocks, but Isa thought that maybe there was a purpose for it. Xemnas was, after all, the Man on the Moon. He held the power to bind people together and to tear them apart.

Isa had been in doubt at first. He preferred not to think about Xemnas's abilities, but when the spheres disappeared from his apartment, one by one, he felt the need to know where they went. Isa had waken up one day, his chest clenching around the empty space between where his heart had been and where the black dust had settled. He had been standing in a white room. On the other end, Xemnas stood next to a marble table where he had put the glass jar. He picked up one sphere after another, watching them melt in his gloved grip.

He had looked up at Isa with neutral expression and said, "That would be all."

Isa learned later that they were rebuilding the Moon. She was still lost and needed help to come back home. The spheres played only a small part in the rebuild, but according to Xemnas, it was a sacrifice well-received. In return, the Moon would give every heartless their heart back, and only then would the Man on the Moon be able to create strings between Isa and Lea.

"The traitors have been taken care of, though," Xigbar said with a shrug and leaned back into his chair. "I haven't got an exact number on the body count, there might have been some collateral damage, but we'll get the figures when Axel works up the will to talk to Chuckles."

Isa's eyelids were feeling heavy. He blinked slowly as he felt the comforting layers of darkness wrap around him and slowly turn into the armor and shield that all of these people called Saïx. Xigbar's words became fireworks in the distance, Xemnas' voice in turn became the bustling crowd on a spring festival. The cutting doubt that Xigbar successfully planted in Isa's mind about his importance transformed into a strange, but completely logical yearning that Isa wanted to take care of before he fell asleep.

"Sir," Isa began in the identical stern ways of his armor. "I have a request to make."

"This oughta be good," Xigbar said with a sneer while Xemnas simply looked back at Isa, waiting for him to speak.

"I'd like a potted cactus."

~o~

Saïx was, by all means, a very protective armor. He hid Isa far away from what he thought Isa could get hurt by, but as much as he tried to keep Isa safe, Isa too struggled to keep part in the occurrences of their life. It wasn't merely out of morbid curiosity, or even control; hurtful things could still penetrate through the armor, and when they did, Isa would get hurt. He'd wake up with wounds and no recollection of how they'd come to be, and he didn't like what his mind filled the blanks with.

In one of their many talks, Isa made Saïx promise to keep a diary. The entries were short, straight to the point, and most of the time void of emotion. In a way, Isa was grateful for that. It made the events of everyday easier to accept when they were presented as facts. Facts were indisputable and left no room for doubt; they gave Isa a foundation to build a survival strategy.

It was late at night. Isa sat on the middle of the floor in his living room with his potted cactus nearby, and Saïx's diary by his feet. Most of the wooden floorboards had rotten away with the constant flooding, and all that was left of the living room floor was the ugly concrete. The lounge suite had been shoved up against the wall to cover the windows and the grim view they offered. The living room was the room he used the most, and it teared faster than any other part of the apartment.

Isa was in nothing but underwear and a tank top to air old wounds that had not yet healed. Being locked up wasn't ideal for recuperation, and Isa seemed to gain wounds faster than the others could heal when he spent most of the days in his armor. He massaged his calves absentmindedly as he looked over his knees to read the new entries in the diary.

Axel RTC'd three hours later than expected. Roxas and Number Fourteen came soon thereafter. Axel asked for conference tomorrow afternoon.. The reports were filed and new have been issued for next week's missions. There's food on the counter.

Isa looked back to the counter and saw the shape of a plate turned upside-down on top of another from where he sat and made a grimace. The food Saïx left for him was rarely appetizing. It was usually mashed bananas with a glass of milk. Isa couldn't remember if it was something he had enjoyed at some point in time, but he sure hated it now. There were lots of things he could eat that were soft and easy to swallow, but Saïx had it in for mashed bananas.

"At least we know why my legs feel sore today," Isa said to the cactus.

Isa had asked Axel to be on time with the mission reports. Every mission had been sorted by difficulty level and expected time of completion. Each mission was handed to the employee that was best fit for the job. Most finished right before expected time of completion, others soon after. Axel and the two he was bound to were always late by at least three hours.

Saïx had to wait for them until they came back. It was his job to keep tabs on everyone, make sure that they were in the castle before curfew unless there were missions to deal with, and he needed to have a complete file of mission reports to hand over to Xemnas at the end of the day.

When a portal of darkness finally opened up in the main lounge, Isa would wake up to the distant sound of giggling as the blankets holding him in place inside his armor clenched around his chest tight enough to completely wake him from his sleep. Saïx would struggle to usher him into a dark and far off corner in their shared mind, but he failed once their mind could only focus on Axel's quick glare their way before he turned back to the child and the tin can to shush them. They'd immediately fall into a silence with neutral expressions on their faces as they followed Axel's lead and reached their mission reports to Saïx.

It only had to happen a few times for Isa to decide that he would teach himself to sleep through those moments, too.

Isa reached for the pen that was bound to the diary with a yellow string and decided to scribble a note to Saïx. He wondered what Vexen would have to say about this. Vexen hadn't been fond of his compulsive washing or his eating habits, but what had frustrated him the most was Isa's relentless insisting that there was a difference between Isa and Saïx.

It's okay to sit down. The couches aren't solely there for decorative purposes.

"Don't leave notes to yourself. Only crazy people do that," Isa was sure Vexen would have said.

Too bad that Vexen had become one of the many mines cluttering their road.

Crazy or not, Isa knew that he had to create a distance between himself and Saïx. It was the only way he could maintain his armor and remain strong enough to keep working towards his goal, but given how things were developing, he knew it would come a day when he would no longer be able to ignore the cracks that had emerged in his defense.