x

A big marble monument decorated the entrance hall of the castle. It vaulted inward to create the intimacy a memorial needed. In honor of those we have lost but not forgotten, it said at the very top, followed by columns of names of people that had fallen victim in the First Fall, the War, the Second Strike and the battles that had taken place recently. Only victims whose death could be certified ended up here. Those who still hoped and searched had to settle with bulletin boards around the city.

The Restoration Committee was meeting up in the Grand Hall to brief each other on the multitudes of problems they were encountering in each area of responsibility they accounted for. It was the weekly custom; one which Cid was growing wearier of with each meeting. He walked up to the monument, a small bouquet of flowers in his hand that he placed by the third column from the left. Shera's name was still hard to look at, like a blow to his chest every time he heard her name resonate in his head when he saw it in the corner of his eye. Cid lowered his head as he whispered a familiar prayer to a God that once had governed in Radiant Garden with the same power and strength as King Ansem, but that now seemed to have been forgotten with most of His churches in ruins. Only the brick left made an impression on desperate citizens, while others, those who might remember Him, stayed away in fear of being attacked by the thieves that made the ruins disappear one brick at a time.

Shera's murderers were still free. They walked these halls as if the castle still belonged to them. They shamelessly made demands, asked for resources that they had no right to; it was obvious that they had been conditioned to a life within the castle walls, with King Ansem as their waiter.

"Cid." Leon's voice echoed in the entrance hall. He stood a few feet away with Cloud by his side, both looking like they hadn't known a good night's sleep for days.

"Were you dragged here by horse?"

"We've had a major breakthrough, Cid." Leon pulled Cid in by his shoulders, both for support and to not have to speak too loudly in a place where the walls had ears. "Saïx finally put the last nail in his coffin."

Cid eyes widened. "How?"

"Murder for one, and he escaped his office. We've got him now."

"We've got officers and guards searching Radiant Garden for him," Cloud added. "Justice will be done."

A smile cracked on Cid's face, wider than it had since Xehanort's downfall. A chuckle followed as Leon gripped his shoulder tightly and shook him gently, pride clear both on Leon and Cloud, even through the exhaustion clouding their eyes.

"If anyone could do it, it'd be you boys," Cid said and cleared his throat from the accumulating emotions that threatened to spill from his eyes.

As the three of them entered the Grand Hall where the rest of the Restoration Committee was already waiting, Cid glanced up at the wall ahead that was decorated with a large golden crest; a shield with two stags on each side, and the symbol of God in the middle. For a long time, Cid had thought that God had abandoned them, but as he took his seat amongst his comrades, he felt God smile at them again.

-x-

Despite the years that had gone by, the house was in an eerily good state. Some floorboards needed changing, some walls needed refurbish, most things needed dusting, but all in all, the house was in good condition. Isa spent the first half hour walking from room to room, glancing up the stairs to the second floor when he passed it by, still not ready to go there. He found a broom in a small closet underneath the staircase, and before he knew it, he was sweeping the floor in the diner where he had spoken with Xigbar. Xigbar was, fortunately, nowhere to be found. Isa could enjoy the silence and space of the house until the dust he stirred became too much and he started to sneeze.

Isa opened a couple of windows and left the front door wide open with the help of a sturdy rock. He swept out all the remaining dust outside. Garbage, such as cans of inedible food and leftovers that had turned to soil, Isa put in bags that he had found in a cabinet to throw them someplace appropriate later.

Once the air was mostly free of dust, Isa walked into the common area, down the hall from the diner. It had an open fireplace on the leftside wall, the furniture that had been here at some point in time were long gone, and Isa had swiped the remains of woodchips out the door. He lay down by the fireplace and stared up at the ceiling, faint memories of having run up and down this room with Lea chasing him around sounding in the back of his head.

Lea. Isa's face flushed red. The sudden warmth that spread throughout his body contrasted against the cold of the floor and made Isa aware of his reaction. It was one that had grown stronger and more obvious since he crossed a line last night when a sudden urge washed over him with an intensity he had only known as a teenager. It had been ingenuous to think that a universe could be put out completely. A spark surviving was enough, enough to ignite a new universe and have it cannibalise the remains of the old one.

Isa's shame was as great as whatever had possessed him to touch himself when there had only been thin wall between Lea and him. Isa's regret had been immediate, but neither shame nor regret was enough to quench the small and insistent flame that was burning inside Isa's chest. His only comfort was that this feeling would go away over time. If not, he'd learn to bury it again; hide it from himself until he could say with certainty that the feeling was gone. It went against his pact of honesty with Dr. Even, Ienzo, Aeleus and Dilan, but considering what had happened the last time he embraced feelings of this kind, dishonesty seemed like the right course of action.

Voices overlapped each other. Laughter, cries, whispers, arguments, sounded in Isa's ears as he closed his eyes for sleep. None of it worried him. He knew the voices. They resonated within him and awoke a sense of familiarity he hadn't thought he could feel. They belonged to this house as much as he did. Isa rose to his feet groggily and moved to the staircase in the dark, his eyelids half-closed. His bedroom was the first to the left on a narrow hallway that only led to one other bedroom. The door creaked. A strong light passed through his room. The sound of a bell rang in the distance. But Isa only had eyes for the small space that had been his.

The roof slanted on one side, above his bed. The closed window had protected the room from nature, but something had knocked Isa's telescope over, and he almost stepped on it on his way to the window. The telescope looked fragile, as though it would break in any grip that wasn't gentle enough. Isa put it back on its legs as carefully as he could. His heart beat hard as he looked around in his room. Old drawings of the sky covered his walls. Notebooks and loose sheets of paper lay spread on his dusty desk, depicting his UFO-sightings and theories regarding aliens. Amongst his notes, Isa found doodles of deer and books on deer herding with countless notes in his handwriting.

Isa rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as the light passed through his room again, casting shadows of the tree tops. He sat down on the floor with his notebooks, and slowly looked through each and every one. The seriousness behind his accounts of UFO-sightings were amusing, innocent, and revealed a thirst for knowledge. There was nothing there that told of any personal tales. If his notes were to be of any scientific value, he couldn't let emotions interfere. Fortunately, Isa hadn't been as good at hiding his emotions when young. He had left a small notebook at the bottom drawer, underneath a fake bottom. The first entry lacked time and date, but was representative of an issue that seemed to have no end:

Will I go to Hell for loving Lea as I should a woman?

Had anyone described to him in vivid detail the hell that had laid ahead of him at that time, Isa was certain that he wouldn't have listened. He had lived through hell with a long path left to go, and yet here he was, nursing a heart that, despite it all, had yet to learn its lesson.

-x-

Most of Radiant Garden's security force had been sent out in the frantic search for Isa. According to video footage, Isa had disappeared around noon the previous day. The obvious suspects had been brought in for questioning first; Ienzo, Aelous and Dr. Even. None of them had anything that helped the police find Isa any faster. After the Restoration Committee's weekly meeting, the Keyblade-wielders had been notified. Ventus and Riku came to assist Lea and Roxas in the search, and though they had all combed through every inch of Radiant Garden and the slums, they had come out empty-handed.

Lea walked into Isa's cell. He had been there three times during his search already. He was there for the diary that he had found under Isa's mattress. In it was a house that he mentioned. Lea remembered it, but he couldn't remember where the house was. None of his memories of rich shrubbery, high trees and greenery as far as he could see concurred with what he saw of Radiant Garden now, and maybe, Isa had disclosed its location in that notebook of his.

Lea was almost by the bedside when he heard the familiar wobble of a portal of darkness. He turned around just in time to see Isa walk into his cell with a weary look.

"Isa, where the hell have you been?" Lea walked up to him and inspected his eyes closely, relieved to see that there was just as much cerulean blue as there had been the last time they had been together. "We've been looking all over for you!"

"I was home," Isa said. "My house is still standing. I cleaned it out and looked around. I guess I forgot about the time. Is that a crime?"

"Are you serious? Isa, in case you haven't been paying attention, these people have been looking for a reason to lock you up for good, and you're handing them that reason on a gold platter. They have soldiers out there, armed to their teeth searching for you! Citizens are scared out of their mind, thinking there's another attack of Heartless coming."

"In case you haven't been paying attention, they have my life in their hands. If they truly believed I was that big a menace, they could've solved that with one push of a button. I just went to see my house." Isa walked past Lea and sat down on his bed, turning his attention to the window, though there was nothing to see.

"Leon is building a case against you, Isa."

"I'm not surprised."

"They think you are working with Xigbar and that you're behind the sightings of Heartless. They have the shopkeeper from the shelter as witness and the guards that were there with you. And they have footage of you hiding evidence."

"I told you that I met with Xigbar and why. He's in no shape to conspire against you Keyblade-wielders. Besides, I told Ienzo and Aeleus, too. It wasn't a secret. They have nothing."

"Did you open the portal of darkness?" Lea sat down on the coffee table and looked firmly at Isa.

"No."

"Look at me, Isa. I'm trying to help you. Let me. Please."

Isa clenched his jaw and fixed his attention on a spot on the window, determined to not give way, when Lea, in an attempt to soften Isa's heart, placed a hand on his knee to complete his plea. Isa rose to his feet at once, shoving Lea's hand away as if it had been a frightening spider. He walked over to the window, his arms crossed, and his back turned to Lea.

"I don't possess that kind of power anymore. Xigbar must have opened it for me."

"For what purpose?" Lea saw Isa glance backward when he heard Lea get up and turn to him, the sound of his shoes against the floor making it seem as if he had taken a step closer.

"I don't know. Maybe he got a reply from Ienzo and wanted to keep his end of the bargain."

"Which was?"

"Help me remember."

"That'll be tough to sell," Lea said. "Where did the portal lead?"

"Home."

"Which is where, Isa? I need a location to show Leon. He's not just gonna take your word for it, that this place exists."

"I can't tell you. I don't know where it is, and even if I did, I wouldn't want them to know."

"Do you realize how suspicious that sounds?"

The door flew open when Roxas ran inside, Lea's name on the tip of his tongue when he saw Isa by the window and the frown on Lea's face that he read as danger. A shadow sprung in from behind Roxas, leaving a trail of black thorny smoke as it climbed the walls erratically. In the distance came the unmistakable, clicking noise of Heartless. Roxas didn't wait for an explanation, he didn't need one. Life in Radiant Garden had come to a halt because Isa had fled and endangered everyone within the city walls as a result. His Keyblade materialized in his grip in a split second.

"Roxas, take it easy. We're just talking," Lea tried to get Roxas attention, but Roxas didn't let Isa out of his sight. If any Heartless jumped out of the darkness, it would be on Isa's command. His grip on his Keyblade only tightened.

"A group of soldiers found someone they thought was Saïx in Sector Seven," Roxas began with a scowl. "But by descriptions, it was Xigbar. He killed three soldiers before Dilan could interfere. Xigbar escaped. The three soldiers that were murdered were witnesses in the case against Saïx. I'm pretty sure that whatever you were talking about, isn't the whole truth."

"What?" Lea looked back at Isa in utter disbelief. Whenever he thought it was safe to trust Isa, something came along to monumentally disprove him. Isa had admitted to have gone to talk to Xigbar. It would've been easy to leave out certain implicating details while making himself seem honest by having confessed to the conversation ever taking place.

Lea summoned his Keyblade, keeping his focus on Isa. He may not be armed, but even so Isa was dangerous. The Heartless scratched the invisible wall holding them back, their clicking growing louder. Lea asked no questions and gave no explanations when Isa turned to face them. Secrecy and convoluted plots to overthrow enemies was Isa's specialty. To think that Isa would stop now was nothing short of ludicrous. Isa paled at the sight of them and stumbled forward, a move that Lea mistook for the initiation of an attack directed at Roxas. He launched forward to block Isa, but before he could move, Isa fell to the floor and the shadow dissolved.

-x-

Time elapsed in fragments. The voices around him were elongated, stretched out until he couldn't make out where the words ended or where they began. Isa was stuck in his cell, the sound of the summoned Keyblades echoing in his head like feverish nightmares and it urged lucid memories of his battle against Lea and Roxas out of dark corners of his mind. They were paralyzing. Ienzo had told him that battles as fierce as those Isa had been part of were usually forgotten due to the adrenaline. "Your brain will try to protect you," he had said. It must have been a lie for he felt every impact, every searing attack that had burned through his flesh.

By the time Isa came to his senses, he stood by the corner of a small, dark and humid cell. Light came in from a slit of a barred window high up on the wall that flickered when a group of guards marched by outside. For a split second Isa feared that everything had been a dream, that he was still in the dungeons, waiting to be experimented on, but a look at his dark green sweatshirt with the pine trees dissolved him of doubt. He had been arrested for murder or accomplice thereof, he couldn't remember.

Isa sat down and leaned against the humid stonewall. He curled up, his knees against his chest and tried to fall asleep. Accept what you cannot change, that was the mantra, and if he had ever needed it since coming back, it was now. Isa dozed off, but opened his eyes quickly when brutal images of battles flashed behind closed eyelids and made his stomach turn. He placed his hand over his left shoulder and rubbed it absentmindedly. It didn't help much. Isa woke up repeatedly during the night until a guard entered his cell early in the morning and barked at him to get up and out of the cell. Every joint ached, his body stiff from having been in the same position for hours.

The cell had been one for detention. The guard informed him loudly that he was to be taken to another cell that he would share with a cellmate. He listed countless of rules that completely escaped Isa as he was made to strip naked for a hosing down with ice cold water. Another guard brusquely checked Isa's hair for lice while Isa sat on a small wooden stool, chattering his teeth.

The reality of this didn't sink in until he was led through a heavy door with two large security locks. The smell hit Isa the second the guard opened the door. If Isa hadn't had his feet and hands chained together, he would have run back to the detention cell. The prison was full of former Dusks and various other Nobodies. Isa pulled back. The guard pushed him forward. The lack of proper nutrition had cost Isa a few pounds; he wasn't as strong as he had been. The guard could easily handle Isa and lead him ahead through the prison where the inmates would stop what they were doing to follow Isa with their spiteful stares as they identified him.

"I can't be here," Isa told the guard, his voice breaking as he looked around.

"Sorry, princess," the guard said mockingly. "This is where the scum of the city go, and with your history, I'm sure you'll be crowned the Queen of the Scum in no time at all."

The new cell had a bunk bed and a toilet. The stench of urine was the only smell worse than the collective darkness from the number of former Nobodies. Coupled with the insistent flashes of Keyblades chopping at him and the stabs of phantom pains, Isa could barely keep himself on his feet.

The top bunk was already taken and the person up there tossed around when he heard the guard slam the door shut and chuckle as he walked down the narrow hallway. Quietly, Isa sat down in the upper high corner on his bunk and rubbed his wrists where the chains had left marks. His heart was racing, setting his breathing out of rhythm. Every sound made him jerk his head in that direction to make sure that no one was sneaking up on him. Some inmates were yelling for him, loudly announcing every detail of his imminent and gruesome death, inspiring each other. They dragged whatever they could find against the bars to add to the noise.

Isa looked for the black stone Lea had given him. It was hidden in an inside pocket of his otherwise hole-stricken pants. The guards hadn't thought of looking there. Isa dragged his thumb across it in hopes he'd get his mind to focus on something else, like the drawings of UFO:s and the house that was waiting for him once all of this was over.

The sound of bare feet against the floor had Isa's eyes fly open. The cellmate had awoken and jumped off his bed to inspect his new companion. His eyes were dark and his skin a paleish yellow. Judging by the smudges of dirt on his skin and clothes, he was a construction worker. He looked strong enough to break through the bars keeping them here, but Isa feared there was someone else he would rather use his strength on.

He inspected Isa with disdain and reached for a cigarette he had balancing behind his ear. The flick of the lighter made Isa jolt as his intense focus on the man in front of him broke.

"You were caught at last, huh?" The man mumbled around the cigarette. "There's been rumors," he said and waved his cigarette around as he blew the smoke out his nose. "Rumors that you were here in Radiant Garden, planning another attack. Struck me as odd, y'know? The rumors."

The man flopped down on the floor and took a deep drag off his cigarette.

"You're one of 'em – what's it called – one of 'em," the man snapped his fingers. "Bluefaces! I can tell. You have the eyes. Bet you don't remember me though. I didn't always look like this. Name's Frank. You know me as Berserker number 8." Frank laughed and coughed at the same time at the last part, undeterred by the frightened look in Isa's eyes. "I fell the first time. Before you went nuts on us. So you can relax. I'm not the one who wants to put an ice pick in the bull's eye," he said and pointed to the ridge of his nose.

Isa gripped his stone tightly and observed the man named Frank in silence until he coughed again.

"What's a Blueface?" Isa asked.

"A Blueface!" Frank said, as if repeating the word would make its meaning obvious. "Y'know, the deer-loving treehuggers. Y'all were always wearing a set of dark blue clothes with colorful frills and the weird as fuck hats year 'round. Some of y'all caved and went to live inside the city walls, but then there were the stubborn Bluefaces that had to 'take a stand against the King'." Frank made a face and stomped around with his feet while remaining seated and made himself laugh again. "What's your last name?"

"Svonni." Isa tried the name as something that belonged to him. His throat nearly closed on him as if he was practiced in denying it instead of admitting to it.

"That's the name of a Blueface, alright." Frank's mocking smile softened and he stared out into nothing as he took another drag. "Y'know, back when I was Berserker number 8, you'd come out to us and wash us off from grime and whatnot after every mission, and sometimes, you'd hum a tune that one of my buddies used to sing when we were recruits in the army. The song was in whatever language you Bluefaces speak, but it reminded me of home."

"Why did you have a specific number?" Isa had read through countless reports, several times, and had never seen anything about the lesser Nobodies having an identification system.

"You named us. Said it'd be easier to tell us apart. I got an eight carved onto my helmet and onto my weapon. We were approximately thirty Berserkers at first, but then came those spaghetti creatures. The Dusks. And ID:ing everyone was too much of a task, but most of us in the first squadron stuck around for a long time. I wasn't taken down until those kids broke into the castle. Tell you what, though. For all the things I've heard said about you, you weren't half as bad as they make you seem. Ten years at war does things to a man. To his head, his way of thinking. You put up a fight and you hung in there for longer than I ever could. I was put out of my misery – you, with the eye thing you've got going, I'm guessing you're still fighting."

Frank put his cigarette out with his fingers and flicked it into the toilet with confidence. Isa slowly slid off the bed and sat down on the floor in front of Frank. Anxiety was still weighing heavily on his chest, but the prospect of an old ally, eased his mind slightly.

"Frank, how did the song go?"