And now I can't sleep AND YES I FINISHED THE FIRST ARC.
Everyone bask in the glory that is... this... chapter.
... ... ...
... It's written like this because I'm almost asleep and I CAN'T sleep. Just pretend it's stylistic choice, it makes me feel better. That's what I'm doing. :)
As per the usual... Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy are not mine; it is my sandbox, that is all. I only get to play for a little while before hopefully putting Nomura's toys back where they belong in more or less the same condition. However, the original characters do in fact belong to me. Especially the one with the kind heart. Please read and review.
AND BEFORE I FORGET!
Since I'm focusing on this story and another one called "Respawn" plus my secret project(?!), I'd like to ask you guys, the lovely, beautiful and probably handsome (if you prefer that) reviews for an opinion. I am considering opening another story involving "A Different Heart." Either an omake one with all the stupid ramblings I've ever had while writing this, or a gender bend. Yes. Xion will be a guy, Kairi will be a guy, Riku and Sora would be girls. Obviously number two would be verah sirious business (or however those stupid cats spell this). If you kiddos would like to read that one, please, go ahead and say so in the reviews. If not, express your opinion on a short omake series for Arc one.
Good night everyone! And good... morning?
Chapter Fourteen: A Girl Named Xion
Daisuke had known that his day was about to take a sudden turn to the weird when he saw the shooting star. But he hadn't thought that it would have taken this much of a turn.
He'd been hoping for maybe a wish but instead, he got to be a hero and save someone from drowning.
The girl from the star lies sleeping in the bottom of his boat, seemingly unaware of any danger that she might have been. She could have very well been sleeping in a princess bed or something from how peaceful she looks. Her dark brown hair is ruffled by the wind, the only signs of movement from her save the steady rising and falling of her breathing.
"Sweetie?" He asks again, poking at her shoulder. She doesn't respond but she looks okay, so maybe that was alright? It wasn't like he knew the signs of a concussion or a brain tumor or whatever prompts someone to fall randomly from the sky.
All around him, he can hear the shouts of his fellow fishermen asking what the hell was going on, but he focuses on the unconscious girl in front of him.
The armor is gone. The only evidence of it is a jagged plate of it that wraps around her throat like a choker necklace or whatever it was that some of the girls on the island liked to wear. He's pretty sure it's called a choker. Instead, she's wearing a long, black jacket that covers her from the collarbone down to the top of her ankles. And black boots. With a heel.
He very gently removes her shoes and then the jacket, wadding the second item up into a pillow and shoving it beneath her head.
"… good thing you're wearing underwear…" Daisuke mumbles to himself thoughtfully before removing his own thin jacket to cover the little nightgown that the girl had underneath her clothes. She doesn't respond to the joke, just as she didn't respond to him stripping her. But he does notice something on her arm, a series of words scribbled in black ink.
He starts to lift her arm, to read the message, just as the first boat thunks into the side of his.
"Daisuke, what's going on?" His friend demands but freezes on spotting the sleeping girl. His shocked expression is only surpassed by the sheer quantity of swear words that erupts from his mouth. It's so bad that Daisuke is tempted to cover the kid's ears to prevent the obscenity from entering her brain and corrupting her.
"Don't worry, she's alive," He proclaims cheerfully instead, earning his friend's glare and an exasperated sigh of annoyance.
"Dai, her being 'okay' is the least of our problems." The man snaps, rubbing his short silver hair in an attempt to gain back his patience.
Daisuke smiles and goes back to tending the little girl. Her expression shifts suddenly to a pained look, before reverting to her blank state. Paternal instincts immediately told him that she was having a bad dream or remembering something sad and to go get something to comfort her. It was in his amiable nature to help people. He scans the sadly teddy bear-lacking boat before sitting down next to her and plopping her down into his lap and holding her close.
She relaxes in his arms, even as Sora, his best friend, slams his hands into his head.
"Daisuke, she's not a puppy," his friend says in exasperation but is unable to say anything to the pointed grin that the brunet gives him when the girl nuzzles into him. He sighs and runs his fingers through his cropped locks again. "Is she okay?" He asks instead.
Daisuke nods and touches her forehead. Nice and cool. "Yup, she's fine, Sora," He proclaims with his little knowledge of medical juju. At least, she didn't have a fever and he couldn't feel any dents. "… Your armor must be made of some pretty hardy stuff, kid," He tells the unconscious girl with an amused grin.
The older Sora blinks and glances down at the girl in his friend's arms. "Armor?" The man asks before a third boat clunks into the rowboat.
"Hey, is everything okay?!" The fleet was getting closer, each one of the tiny boats dragging their small nets in what had to be a huge risk of getting them all tangled up. Each one of the men had to be worried sick and wanting to know what was going on.
"Hey, tell everyone that someone's been hurt and that I'm gonna take her to the mayor!" Daisuke shouts up to the newcomer.
Sora stares down at him coolly. "And who do you think is going to do your work for you while you're gone?" He demands in a joking way that would have seemed perfectly serious if it had been anyone else.
Daisuke claps him on the ankle, nearly sending him overboard and into the water. "Why thank you for volunteering, Sor," He says in a cheerful enough voice, though his face quickly becomes worried when the girl speaks softly.
"No… don't…"
And just as suddenly as she had spoken, the pain vanishes and she relaxes into his arms again.
"Get her out of here," Sor proclaims as Daisuke lifts her hand up to look at it, suddenly spotting these almost healed marks that curl up into the back of her hand. They look like burns, intense scorch marks from having to hold something. Someone had fixed them up for her, though, and it looks like they were healing well.
But who would want to burn such a sweet-looking little girl?
He looks down at her, suddenly having a sinking feeling that if he looked, he would find even more scars on her body. And even more abruptly, he knows that someone had been hurting this little girl… and that whoever it was, probably wouldn't stop.
He wonders if that by falling from the sky, she had tried to get away from the person who was hurting her.
Another surge of protective instincts has him look up at his friend and make him get out of the boat before setting up the oars. It was like someone had hurt Kairi or Selphie, some of the girls on the island that never walked past him without saying hello or good evening and asking about his day. No one should hurt a little girl, not for any reason! And even if she had been a boy, Daisuke would still have rushed her (er… him) to get help from the mayor.
There's something holding her.
She's being jostled around, like someone was charging forward with every little bit of speed they could muster. She could feel the pounding of his footsteps. Her face twitches as consciousness begins to return to her and after a moment, Xion is able to lift her head and look at the person who was carrying her.
"Almost there, almost there!"
He doesn't bother to ring the doorbell. He doesn't even bother to knock. Instead, Daisuke simply turns the doorknob and skids inside. The girl in his arms stirs briefly, just as she had when he was running down Main Street with every bit of speed his thirty-eight year old body could muster. But her eyes close again and so he just carries her inside.
He has a strange feeling that by taking her to the Mayor, just as someone had done to Kairi, that this girl would soon find her way.
"Mr. Hikari?" Daisuke calls out nervously, automatically wilting under the sound of the incredibly powerful man's name. As sweet as the guy was, he still held the power to fire him and send him into the poorhouse with his beloved wife. "Mr. Hikari, it's Daisuke Minami!"
A soft rustling noise signals the appearance of a girl in a pink dress walking into the hallway. "Mr. Minami?" Kairi, the daughter of the mayor, asks in a confused voice before spotting the girl draped over her friend's shoulder and arms. Immediately, she becomes much more focused and concerned. "What happened?" She demands in a more forceful way.
And that happened to be the million munny question.
And he didn't think a shrug would do.
"Er..." Daisuke stammers for a moment before glancing over at the kid dozing on his shoulder. "It's a long story, Kai," He comments before the girl leads him down the hall and to a living room, where he is quick to drop his breathing cargo onto a nice, comfy sofa.
Kairi shouts loudly for her father before leaving the two behind in the living room.
The man stares awkwardly at the comatose star-falling girl before taking her hand and patting it. All he had to do was wait, then he could get back to work (or maybe even sneak home?) and she would be all taken care of. Just like Kairi had been when she was little and came here.
He remembers that town meeting well, the awkward way that the little girl peered up at the adults that were ultimately deciding her fate. Daisuke had been part of a group of people who went to go look for a boat, to see if they couldn't find the family she claimed she couldn't remember. There hadn't been a storm or anything though, nothing weird but a meteor shower. But back in town, there had been a bunch of people who had been perfectly willing to throw the young Kairi into a foster home with little care about her needs until the mayor had stepped up to adopt her.
Daisuke is reminded of that now, looking at the sleeping kid.
Taking a sneaky look at her arms again, he notices the ink message again. He picks up one arm and inspects the words carefully.
"'Xion,'" Daisuke reads aloud, surprised at how blatantly she had written her name… Why would she write it like this, like a person introducing themselves to a stranger? The handwriting, a swirl of loops and curves… was actually kind of fancy. Like calligraphy. It looks a little like his wedding invitations had.
Then he notices the messy scrawl on her other arm, a much more normal chicken-scratch for a teenager.
Two people had written on her.
Meaning that at least one person knew that she was missing. Maybe even helped her disappear.
He suddenly feels the healing burns on her palms under his fingers. The girl stirs weakly before her eyes fluttered open. As she stares silently at him, a sudden memory flashes into his head. The same pair of dark blue eyes – just like his wife's – laughing and filling with tears, a frown that always ended up crinkling the boy's forehead in such a way that his dad always teased him about being an old man when he was only five.
"Xion…?" Daisuke breathes out softly in surprise.
His son.
He had a son.
She knew his son.
And he had a sinking feeling that there was a reason why Xion had been fallen on the Islands.
Xion blinks once, twice, before glancing over at her arm, the one that had the messy writing. She turns the pale appendage to examine it more closely, unknowingly revealing that yes, she knew how to read. That she had at least that much mental power. Her lips forms the words before she frowns, a strange scrunching motion that reminds Daisuke of an old man smoking a pipe.
"… Xion…" The girl murmurs to herself before her eyes flutter to a close again. An odd smile appears on her face, a hazy one that seemed to be full of half-remembered memories. "… Ven…"
And she falls asleep again.
"Dad!" Kairi shouts again as she jogged down Main Street, looking around worryingly for the little man that had adopted her. Out of the countless shops, she could see no image of her father. He might have been on the other side of the island as far as she knows. The image of the unconscious girl floats in her head and her feet automatically pick up into a run. "Dad! Dad, there's someone hurt!"
Finally, when she was about to give up hope, Kairi spots the all too familiar figure of her dad arguing with a shopkeeper about something or other.
The moment that he saw his daughter charging through the sand dunes that almost always covered some part of the street, Mr. Hikari immediately turns white and abandons whatever little discussion he was having and runs to meet her.
"Kairi? What's wrong?" He asks in his usual soft voice, clapping his hand onto the teen's shoulder in worry.
Panting, Kairi has to take a moment before she can answer. "Dad, there's someone hurt. She's in our house," She explains quickly.
The mayor's face hardens slightly before returning to his normal, jolly state. He nods calmly. "Yes… then I should attend to her, shouldn't I?"
Images flash through her head.
A boy shouting to her, trying to grab her as she fell.
Animals, twisting shapes of animals that couldn't be real, speaking to her and a man with frightening eyes reaching towards her chest and then suddenly the worst pain she had ever felt in her entire life flash through her body.
A horrible, terrifying lightness inside of her heart that felt like she had suddenly lost all feeling and emotion that she could ever have. The realization that she couldn't remember a thing about who she once was except for the things that were happening right at that moment.
A man in a black cloak and a warning whispered harshly into her ear to beware anyone dressed like this, the sudden sinking feeling that if she met someone who looked like this she would immediately die.
Her name.
Xion Osora.
Someone writing an important message onto her arm, to have her remember her name and how old she was… and her deciding that she needed to give her own message and her writing it with a soft brush onto her other arm.
"Xion… Xion…!"
The voice is insistent, forcibly dragging her back into more or less full consciousness. It was a girl's voice at first and then a man's joined it and slowly, but surely, Xion begins to open her eyes once more.
Sure enough, there actually is a girl there with her. An older girl, one with red hair and blue eyes and a frightening, gentle, and familiar face. It only takes Xion a moment before realizing she is seeing her own face reflected back at her, though older and more graceful than hers could ever be. The man on the other hand, is so familiar too that it hurts to look at him, like seeing an old friend that she had forgotten a long time ago and felt guilty about not remembering.
He runs his fingers through a shock of messy brown hair, smiling brightly at her when he sees that she is now able to completely focus.
"You've been sleeping for two days, Xion," The man informs her softly, his voice soothing her in a way that makes her relax and not attempt to sit up.
She couldn't remember any of the last two days; it was okay if she was asleep, as the man said.
The girl smiles at her. "Xion, my name's Kairi," She tells her and for the first time, Xion realizes there's a tense, afraid look in the older girl's expression. Like she thought Xion could give her something that she needed, though Xion knew that she'd never seen this girl in her life. "Um… that message… the one on your arm… do you know who it's referring to?" Kairi asks desperately, placing her hand onto the younger girl's forearm in emphasis.
Xion looks down to see two messages on her bare arms, one stating her name and the second…
"Kairi, your friends won't be coming back. Please forgive me. - A Friend. PS: It starts with an S."
It takes Xion a moment before turning her gaze back onto the terrified girl. There is such hope in her eyes that it physically pains her to admit that she had no idea who had written the message. It is in desperation that Kairi brings her a pad of paper and forces her to rewrite the message in the hope that it would force her to remember.
Xion's handwriting doesn't match the second message nor does it match the first.
The next few days pass in a haze for the amnesiac girl.
There are moments where she is practically glued to Kairi's side as the older girl showed her around the island and gave her half-hearted advice about shopping and eating and what routes to take to different places. It is clear that she was disappointed but still determined to help.
There are other times where Kairi seemed to relax and try to make Xion happy, like when she bought her an ice cream and they ate together on the docks watching the fishing boats in the distance. It didn't even bother Kairi when Xion insisted the ice cream was the wrong color and the wrong flavor: it only made her laugh and ask what it was supposed to be.
Other times, she would follow the man – Daisuke Minami – home to his wife and have a home-cooked meal with him and the mayor. The meals are awkward with long pauses filled with the mayor's attempts to find out where she came from and Daisuke's wife giving her too much food.
There was a town meeting the morning after she woke up where all the adults tried to decide who would get stuck with a teenage girl with no memory, no clothes, and possible mental issues that had yet to reveal themselves.
Daisuke immediately started yelling that he wanted to take her in and some man with silver hair slapped him in the head.
His wife cheerfully agreed and asked for donated clothes so that Xion could have a bit of choice besides her nightgown.
And just like that, Xion became a member of the islands.
She is sitting there on the dock, silent and contemplating what had happened to her with a seashell in her hand. Lifting it to her ear, she hears the ocean crashing inside of it and then a wave splashes her foot. The sun sets slowly in front of her with a small island floating in front of it.
It is familiar to her, yet she knows she couldn't have been here before.
And she wonders why she had come.