Late Summer turned to late Autumn.
Dyme's increased contacts with Ruldo had only strengthened their friendship, and inevitably the Internet chats made them both hungry for a face-to-face meeting. The 'mystery person' Ruldo mentioned in only fleeting detail also prodded Dyme to finally announce to his friends and family that he would be flying over to England to speak in person to the old gambler. Denise had protested at first, but after having both Ale and Arlene assure her Ruldo was a trustworthy man, she had allowed her little brother to go on the condition he called everyday.
He'd been gone two weeks now, and though he kept calling every afternoon (or night as it would have been in Britain) Denise still found herself moping around. She might not have been so lonely had her father not also left the country to attend to his own dear father in India who was apparently very ill. She got so lonely that she readily accepted Ale and Arlene's offer for her to stay around their house until either her brother or her father came home. Amber was delighted by this arrangement, and not one day of her summer break was spent without her auntie. Andrea popped around occasionally, looking rather subdued without her friend around, but she did a fine job of cheering Denise up with her usual remedy of shopping sprees and late nights out.
Arlene's stomach grew rapidly and she was now seven months down the line, the twins becoming unbearably restless some nights. She'd often lie awake, so exhausted, but completely unable to sleep, envying her husband who was happily snoring his heart out, unaware of her discomfort. Not that he could have done much about it had he known. To her embarrassment, he'd gone back into his 'over-protective' mode – he'd done it before when Amber was still in the womb. He'd keep opening door for her if she even LOOKED close to heading in that direction, he'd insist on carrying her out of the car and setting her down on her feet, and once even offered to do all the housework for her.
Another week passed since Dyme had left. It was a lazy Sunday morning. Ale was still in bed sleeping. Arlene and Denise were chatting idly at the kitchen table whilst Amber was sat in the lounge watching repeats of cartoons that had been shown in the week. The phone rang. By the way the ringing stopped quickly, it became apparent that Amber had picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hello…? Who is this?"
"My name's Amber."
"Oh Amber, darling. This is Grandpa Diego. Can you get Mommy on the line please?"
"She's talking to Auntie Deni right now."
"Ah, well in that case, get me your Auntie. No wonder she wasn't answering the phone at our house."
"Okay Grandpa." Amber pulled away from the phone and yelled with enough volume to wake up her father upstairs, "Auntie Deeeeeniiiiiiiiiiii! Grandpa wants to talk to yoooooooooouuuuuuuu!"
"Dad?" Denise poked her head out of the kitchen and took the phone off Amber, who was busy being scolded by her mother for shouting so early on a Sunday morning.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
"Denise… it's your granddad…"
"Granddad Tahlari? What about him?"
There was a short, soft choke, then her father mumbled faintly, "He's on his deathbed."
Denise closed her eyes: as much as she hated to admit it, she had known that was coming. Tahlari was not the nicest of men, but as far as her Dad was concerned, he was a hero, a true gentleman in the harsh and strange eastern culture of India. The head of a prestigious family, Talhari, though strict and sometimes very nasty to his children and grandchildren, was still willing to let his second oldest son Diego fly out to America (his accidental birthplace) to live out his dreams to create music. Most dominant men in that time period and in that area would have kept their sons close at hand, ready to pass on their wealth and marry them off to bear sons. Of course, when Dyme was born, there was a slight lapse into traditional values, and from a young age Dyme was treated both strictly and kindly by the old greying man, as the single heir of the proud family name. But, of course, the West and East hold different values, and though overlooked by her grandfather, Diego never once disregarded Denise as the 'rightful heir' to the family name.
Man of pride, or man of strict tradition, Granddad Talhari was nonetheless Diego's hero, and Denise knew that despite her own views on the man, she had to offer her sympathy to her father.
"Oh Dad… is there really nothing that can be done?"
"The doctor says he has around another couple of days to go…Denise…"
"Dad….. it's okay, alright? I'm here for you whenever you need me. Okay?"
"Your… your granddad wants Dyme at his side… his death wish is for your brother to come over and be there. But Dyme's in Britain right now. Denise… what do I tell him?"
Denise sighed. Typical of her grandfather: always wanting Dyme. She remembered the day Dyme was born. At the time, she was too young, too jealous to understand. But now she knew exactly what it had all been about.
---------------------------
"It's a boy."
That strangely innocent statement instilled the room with a deep almost foreboding atmosphere that the three-year-old Denise couldn't help but notice. All the adults fell silent, though their faces split into wide smiles. Her father, who had only just walked in with the bundle in his huge arms, looked expectantly at her grandfather, who was sat, tall, dark-skinned and greying in the corner of the room. Everyone was now watching the Great Talhari, awaiting the next move.
He rose to his feet. Everyone held their breath. He took exactly seven paces towards his son. Extended his hands almost as if ordering the bundle to be passed over to him. It was done.
From where she sat on the cold plastic chair close to the door Diego had appeared from – behind which her mother was recovering from the labour – Denise could see her grandfather adjust the bundle in his arms to better grip it. His dark brown eyes bore down onto the newborn, who weakly raised a naked arm up, looking for something to grasp. It found the Indian businessman's little finger, and clung firmly. It's first firm contact within this world.
Tahlari raised his heavy, sagging gaze to Diego. He nodded, then kissed the infant on the forehead.
The heir to the Tyko's had received the family blessing.
All Denise wanted to do was sneak into the room with her mother, take her high-heeled shoes and stab that baby – the one that would leave her neglected and ignored for what she thought would be the rest of her life.
-------------------------------------------
Over the Atlantic Ocean, oblivious to the drama happening abroad and back home, Dyme was seven hours ahead, stood on a cliff overlooking the sea. Beside him, Ruldo stood only half a head higher, leaning heavily on his walking stick. There was very little actual difference between Ruldo and his nobody: only a very subtle darker shade of blond hair, and a slightly deeper voice. It was clear from the first moment Dyme was greeted at Heathrow airport that the old gambler must have grudgingly insisted on keeping the same style of facial hair, and his ears were still adorned with silver. Life had been kind to the man, despite the horrific car accident that had robbed him of a leg: he had a comfortable income, a prestigious position lecturing at a university, a loving family and still had a sense of fun. Even as the two men watched, his family enjoyed themselves on the beach below, laughing, healthy, the sun shining down upon them from above the ruins of the old abbey on the cliff further down the coast.
Lloyd – Ruldo's son – took very much after his father in appearances, but had not inherited the man's daring and cunning nature. Instead, the four year old was rather quiet and shy. Extremely well spoken for a child of his age, but as he barely spoke, it had taken Dyme a while to see it for himself rather than rely on Ruldo's insistences.
His wife, Georgia, was also fair-haired. To say she was a large woman would have been a lie, but still Dyme found it refreshing to see someone whose waist didn't require the tightest belt affordable – living in the world of celebrity had made him rather depressed at the constant idea that thin was beautiful. Recently he'd often caught himself in the mirror and wondered if it was really so healthy to be that thin, pinching his stomach and feeling sick when he realised how little fat was there to pull.
The beach was busy. Lloyd seemed to be shying away from the other families and sticking close with his mother, who was trying to coax him over to join her in the shallows of the sea.
"A family is a wonderful thing, Dyme," Ruldo broke the silence between them finally, shifting his weight from foot to foot – he did that a lot as his prosthetic leg itched at the joint rather often. Dyme looked over to the man, wondering what had brought that up.
Ruldo just glanced at him and smiled before looking back down at his family. "You're still young… you still have time, you know…"
"I'm not that much younger than you. There's still under ten years between us."
"Ah, but still… let's face it, at my age right now, I'd not have much luck with the ladies if I were single."
"You have always been a lucky man," Dyme smirked.
"Heh… Luxord may have been, but… me? It's running out."
"I don't know about that. You're damn lucky to be alive right now."
"Hmmm, true. I suppose getting off with my leg torn off was a little better than dying."
The two men stood watching some more. Then, Ruldo gave a grunt and hobbled around to face away, face in a grimace.
"Your leg?" Dyme sighed knowingly, turning also and putting a hand on the guy's shoulder. Ruldo nodded. "Blasted thing… it's a bugger sometimes…"
"Hey, you go sit down on that bench, I'll go fetch Georgia and Lloyd."
"Ah no, don't spoil their fun, I'll be fine. I'll just call Chanté to come drive over and pick me up so Georgie still has the car for Lloyd."
Dyme smiled. 'Chanté' had been the 'mysterious admirer' Ruldo had teased him about online. She was the family's cook, nursemaid and general all-round helper. However, her previous job had been surprisingly similar to his own past job – she had been a nobody. One of his very own Dancer nobodies to be precise.
Of course, when Ruldo first introduced them to each other, Dyme was confused as to the identity of the young curly raven-haired girl, and swore they'd never met, despite Chanté's insistences and babbling about how terrific it was to meet him again, and how she had longed for another chance to see him. However, once Ruldo explained with a smirk who Chanté used to be before getting her heart back, it didn't take long for the 'master' and the 'servant' to become good friends.
Before losing her heart, Chanté had grown up in France, and was a young ballerina when the heartless got her. Now she had her heart back, she wanted to travel the world. When she bumped into one of her old 'superiors', she found herself a new ambition, and that was to find 'Demyx'. Now she had found the somebody of her master, she had claimed how life possibly couldn't get any better, and decided she would settle down once and for all with Ruldo's family, continuing her servitude, despite Ruldo's insistences she needn't do so.
"Non, monsieur!" she had protested. "Please, I want to be somewhere with zose I knew before! I have no family… my petite soeur has moved on, and I need to be with zose I know. Please, monsieur!"
"Alright. Hey, I might as well come back with you, I wanna ring Deni. I'll just go tell Georgia we're going back."
"Right you are, me old mate. I'll give Chanté a ring to get her arse over here."
Dyme laughed and nodded, leaving the other man idling on the bench with his mobile phone whilst he ran down the concrete slope that led to the beach.
He found Georgia hoisting Lloyd up and getting him to 'jump' over the waves – in actuality, the boy wanted none of it, but was picked up and dropped again after each wave.
"Ello Dyme! Come to join us?" the blond woman smiled, putting Lloyd down giddily on his feet.
"Heh, love to but I'm afraid poor old Ruldo's leg's acting up again. I'm gonna go back home with him once Chanté comes. Just wanted to let you know where we were."
Her face fell. "What on earth am I going to do with that useless husband of mine, eh?"
"Mister, can I come home too?" Lloyd whined moodily. He never referred to Dyme in any other way except 'Mister'. He was still suspicious of Dyme's accent, despite his parents' attempts to explain to him Dyme was from a different country, so spoke with sharper pronunciation on his vowels and mispronounced the names of places, such as 'Nottingham' and 'Edinborough'. Sometimes he still accidentally called 'Whitby' 'White-be', despite having spent almost four weeks there now.
Dyme just looked to Georgia, who rolled her eyes, her face red and sweating from the running around. "Go on then, you blasted terror," she said eventually. Lloyd jumped in the air – the first exercise Dyme had seem him willingly do – then tore off up the slope to sit with his father.
"You going to stay here?" Dyme asked the woman.
"Well I've got to pop and see Diane at the pub for that lunch I promised her ages ago, so I might as well stick around until then. I'll be fine, you run along and keep an eye on me boys, you hear me?"
"Yes ma'am!"
"Good. Now clear off with ya, you young Yank."
Dyme just laughed and obediently ran after Lloyd to keep the two males company until the black ford focus pulled up beside them and they piled inside.
"Oh, monsieur Dyme, there was a telephone call for you at ze house," Chanté said politely as she pulled out of the thick crowds and began guiding the car through the town centre. "Eez your sister. She said it was very important."
"Oh no, what's happened now?"
"I do not know, monsieur. I'm zorry, but she just asked me to tell you to call her bac- Master Lloyd! Kindly stop kicking my zeat, s'il vous plait!"
Lloyd fell still with a look of rejection.
Beside him in the back seat, Dyme sighed and thanked her for telling him, though now he was starting to worry. Denise would never call him unless something had happened… and she was staying with Ale. Oh no, what if something had happened to little Amber? Or even worse, Arlene and the twins…
"I'm sure it's nothing to be worried about," Ruldo announced firmly, spotting Dyme's look of mild panic in the signal mirror.
"Yeah… it's probably nothing big."
--------------------
Ale sauntered into the kitchen half-dressed and still half-asleep.
"Did someone scream…?" he mumbled, rubbing his head as he slumped down at the table.
"Yes, someone did," Arlene sighed, glaring at Amber before scolding, "See? I told you you'd wake your father up! Apologise!"
"Sorry Daddy…"
"Uuuuh… meh…" Ale just waved a hand before running it through his hair. "Where's Deni?"
"Phone," his wife replied, not turning away from her magazine as she sipped her coffee. "Sounds big. She got a call from Dad, then instantly called Dyme. He wasn't in, but she's still trying every few seconds…"
"Eh…" Ale really wasn't awake enough to reply suitably, so simply poured himself a drink and sipped it thoughtfully. Amber sat bored at the table, a little moody that no one was paying her any attention. So when the post came through the door, she happily kicked off her chair to go fetch it, leaving Ale and Arlene alone in the kitchen.
After a short pause in which they heard Amber struggle to shift something stuck in the letterbox, Arlene put down her magazine and sighed heavily.
"What's wrong?"
"Something's been bothering me about Andrea," she mumbled, face creasing into a frown. Ale nodded thoughtfully: it was odd how Andrea seemed to be popping around every other day, asking if they knew when Dyme would be back. With each visit, she'd look paler, and yet she seemed perfectly fine, laughing, nagging and being her usual flirtatious and barmy self.
"I'm sure she just misses Dyme," he said after a while.
"Exactly."
He looked up at her. She was staring at him, biting her lip.
"They're best friends, and band-mates… of course she's going to miss him," Ale said slowly, a hint of firmness in his voice.
"It's just odd that she's constantly enquiring when he's coming back, and every time we ask why she's so concerned, she changes the subject."
"Arlene, please… I'd know if there was something going on with Dyme, okay?" Ale sighed.
"You didn't know what was going on when Lumaria had him… did you?"
That was a low blow, and he quietly voiced that aloud. She just fell silent and stared out the window. There was another pause in which Amber finally came back with a thick brown envelope and some bills, putting them on the table. Ale made to reach out and sort through them when Arlene suddenly got up and mumbled, "I'm just going out."
"Out? Out where? It's 9:20 on a Sunday morning, no shops are gonna be open."
"I need some air."
She breezed past him and he heard the front door open and shut. Ale frowned, then looked back at Amber. The little girl just pouted and said rather scoldingly, "Were you fighting again?"
"No… I… I guess she just wants to be alone today," he said, bewildered, turning back to his drink.
Little did he realise that approximately one hundred and five miles away, something was about to happen that would tear his life in two.
---------------------------
There was blood everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, all over their clothes. Bloodied lumps that used to be bodies littered the floor. Slumped on his knees in the centre, drenched in hot crimson liquid, Kazz quivered.
"What… what happened…?" he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper as he stared at his red hands.
Stood casually behind him, Lumaria sighed in distaste as he wiped some blood off his jumpsuit. "I tempered with the rage inside you… you almost turned into a Heartless for a second there."
Kazz was silent for some time, never looking away from his hands. After a while, he hissed, "What the fuck does that mean?"
"I brought out all your pain, and anger, and hatred for your brother… and the darkness in your heart began to boil over. You momentarily lost all humanity and broke us out of the cell, and slaughtered the guards who came running to stop you." Lumaria could barely contain his smirk. "Just as I planned all along. We're free. Now, with you at my side… we can find your brother… and make him wish he'd never been born."
Kazz didn't move, knelt with his back to Lumaria, amidst the bodies he himself had torn to shred with his own hands. He still had piece of flesh under his torn and bitten nails.
Then, without warning, he burst into laughter, holding his sides and cackling, his head skyward, tears coming to his eyes.
"Kazz is back!" he screamed in delight to no one in particular.
Lumaria just smiled.
Oh yes. Ale was as good as dead. And Arlene, with some persuasion, would be as good as his.
And with Kazz's help, he knew exactly how to get from A to B. And once the psychopath was passed his use…
Lumaria pocketed a gun one of the corpses was still clinging to, looking at it affectionately before looking to the still-laughing Kazz.
Another person to add to his list.
------------------------------
Todd was sat in bed, idly watching TV. He'd been out of hospital for a while now, but still couldn't quite shake the 'fuzziness' as he called it. He'd been having a lot more panic attacks lately, and even threw up violently once. But when he calmed down, he could never remember what had him so spooked in the first place. Jake had been keeping an especially close eye on him, though Todd did once overheard Jake talking to a man at their door who sounded like Ale, threatening various nasty things if Jake didn't look after his friend. Todd had enjoyed that. It made him feel loved.
It was almost lunchtime, but he didn't feel like getting up. It was part of his routine now, to stay in bed until the afternoon on weekends. And once Todd went to the trouble of adjusting his routine, it'd take a heck of a lot to break him out of it.
He lazily flicked through the television channels, and settled for the news. He liked the news. Firm, strong, solid facts, no screaming actors who he couldn't tell if they were happy, sad or angry. Occasionally they'd interview someone on the news who was very unhappy, but Todd could only assume that because they were crying, and then of course there were always tears of joy, apparently. He winced: even thinking about expression made his head hurt sometimes.
On the news right now, the reporters were laughing about something. One of them had made a comment on how another's clothes looked or something, he wasn't interested in idle chatter. He wanted the news, not socialising.
Suddenly, everything became serious, and the male reporter shuffled his papers and stared right at the camera, right at Todd.
"Hold on, we've just got some breaking news… okay, it appears the Lowen State Prison has had a breech of security. We're getting reports of gunshots being fired… there seems to be a prisoner uprising… we have Jenny live outside the prison, Jenny can you tell us what is happening?"
The screen flashed quickly to a dizzy looking ginger-haired woman with an earpiece outside the building of interest. Behind her, police cars were surrounding the perimeter, and officers were running around with guns and reflective clothing.
"Well Kyle, it started when police got a distressing call from the prison's chief supervisor. We can't present the call before the watershed, as it may be too disturbing for some viewers of nervous disposition, but the call only lasted a few seconds before gunshots were heard, and the line was disconnected. Police rushed to the scene, and as you can see behind me, they are doing their best to secure the area, and are ready to use force should it be necessary."
"Any idea what may exactly be going on inside those walls?"
"That is what some of the finest minds in the service are trying to determine, Kyle. But we did get clearance to announce the suspected inmates who started this uprising… a Lumaria Brady, convicted last year for various charges, including assault. He is rumoured to be currently leading the rebellion with a violent and notorious rapist, Kazz Tailor, who was convicted some twelve years ago…"
Todd wasn't listening anymore. Todd wasn't even properly breathing anymore. That name was one he'd never be able to hear without having a fit. Literally. He seized up, wheezing for air, his eyes rolling into the back of his head in sheer terror. Over and over and over in his head, he heard Kazz's voice.
'Spazz. Spacker. Piece of shit. Worthless waste of air. Die. Die. Die. Fuck off. I'll kill you one day. You fucking freak. I'm going to kill you. You don't deserve to live. Stay away from my brother, freak. You should have been killed at birth.'
By the time he came round again, he saw the news reporters looking horrified in the studio. The female reporter was actually sick and chanting 'Oh my God. Oh my God.'
The half of the screen that had been reporting live from the prisoner was red… at first Todd thought it was a colour filter of some sort… until it started dribbling away down the camera, revealing 'Jenny' slumped dead over the police tape that had been behind her, two brunettes – one taller than the other – leaning over her. One of them was finishing plugging bullets into her lifeless body, whilst the other approached the skewed camera, smiled and promptly punched the lens, shattering the footage and breaking the connection to the studio.
Todd started screaming, and didn't stop until Jake came home an hour later and witnessed the man pass out in horror.
______________________________________________________
A/N
Don't own KH.
I own Denise, Amber, Jared, Diego, Kazz, Imogen, Andrea, etc
