Lea stared up at the ceiling, arms tucked comfortably under his head. The beds on offer here were equal parts huge and comfortable. He was seriously considering trying to steal it. Would anyone even notice one missing bed among dozens? He didn't think so.
The door to his room clicked open and Lea tilted his head just enough to identify Xion peeking in.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
"I'm trying to work out the best way to drag this bed through a Corridor." He patted the duvet. "Come feel how soft it is."
Xion pattered over and climbed up beside him. She let out a little 'oh' of comfort as she splayed out. "Maybe we could just take the mattress."
She sounded serious. He'd corrupted her. Isa was going to kill him.
...Unless they got him to try it too.
Xion rolled over so she was facing him and rested her head against his shoulder. Lea draped an arm over her. Something had been bothering her all day. More than just the lingering upset from the Incident a few days prior. There was a hesitance to how she'd been fighting that he'd never seen in her before.
"Everything okay?" he asked, though he wasn't expecting her to want to talk about it without a lot of prying.
"Yes," she said. "Just thinking."
He cracked a smile. "Don't hurt yourself."
A pointy boot kicked him in the knee. Yeah, he probably deserved that.
"You wanna tell me what you're thinking?"
Xion hummed in a way that could have been a yes or a no. "You want to be a Keyblade Master, don't you?"
"Well, yeah," he said, surprised by the question. "Didn't work this hard just to quit halfway." It would probably take him a good long while before he'd be ready to take the exam, but Lea didn't mind.
Xion tilted her head up to meet his eye. "Why?"
Lea held her gaze for as long as he could before the embarrassment had him turning away. He'd never actually explained to anyone except Kairi why he'd really insisted on joining the Magic Key Club. When Roxas and Xion had come back in the Badlands, there hadn't been time for more than a Spark Notes version of what they were in for. By that point, they'd already known he'd gotten himself a Keyblade and the only thing he'd bothered to add was that he'd wanted the excuse to stay plot relevant – he couldn't very well make good on his promise if he got lost in the footnotes. Not that he'd managed it in the end anyway.
And that had been true. But not the whole truth.
"Old Yen Sid didn't want to give me a Keyblade, you know," he told her. "Pretty sure he only did to make me stop bugging him about it."
He could feel Xion watching him. Lea could tell without needing to see her face that she had no idea where he was going with this, but she was patient.
"I told him the same thing I told you two: that I wanted it so I'd have a reason to hang around. But that was only half of it." Lea forced himself to look at her. "The real reason was because it made me feel closer to you and Roxas." He'd thought it was only Roxas at the time – his memories of Xion still lost – but looking back on it, he'd always known something (someone) was missing. "I got my Keyblade and I got you and Roxas and Isa back. The least I can do is see it through all the way, right?"
Prove to himself that he really deserved to keep it. (Keep them.)
Xion was silent for a long while, considering his words. "So you're not going to let the fact that the Keyblade didn't choose you get in your way."
Lea shrugged as well as he could without dislodging her. "Hey, just because the Keyblade doesn't have good taste doesn't mean I'm gonna sit on the bleachers, got it memorised?"
She smiled, hiding it in his jacket.
"What about you, Xion? You wanna be a Master?"
There had to be a reason why she was bringing it up. It felt like she was looking for advice. What she wanted advice for, however, remained a mystery.
"I don't know," she said quietly. She stretched out a hand like she was going to summon her Kingdom Key and then closed it into a fist instead. "I think I want to, but it feels like it would be a lie if I did."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up a second," Lea lifted himself up onto his elbows, forcing Xion to sit up too. "What would be a lie?"
Xion clenched her fingers into the duvet. "My Keyblade isn't real, so I can't really be a Keyblade Master."
Her Keyblade wasn't what? Lea bit back a sigh. Poor Xion. Even after everything, she still had doubts. The Organization had really screwed her over. If its members weren't already faded and gone, he'd be sorely tempted to finish them off himself.
"What makes you think your Keyblade's not real?" he asked carefully.
"It's a copy of Roxas'," she said, like it was obvious and he was just stupid.
"I'm gonna need more than that."
Xion stared at him incredulously. "It's a copy. Like how I can copy Lunatic and Eternal Flames. It's not the real thing."
Lea gave her his best disbelieving frown. "Tell that to all the bruises it gave me."
"Axel."
"Xion." He sat up properly. She was really insisting on this, huh. "So your Keyblade's a fake, huh?" he challenged. "Well if we follow that logic, then Roxas' can't be real either, seeing how his is a copy of Sora's. From what I hear, there was only ever supposed to be one Kingdom Key."
Indignation rose up in her like an inflating balloon. He wasn't done yet.
"And that's not even considering you. Are you a copy, Xion?"
She hesitated and Lea was suddenly inexplicably angry. He poked her in the chest, right where her heart was.
"Whose heart's in there?"
Xion looked away. "Mine."
"Sorry, what? Didn't quite catch that."
"It's mine," she repeated, louder this time.
"Right. Yours," he agreed. "Is your heart a copy?"
"No."
"No," he nodded. "You grew that all by yourself. Maybe you started out with someone else's building blocks, but what you made with them is all you."
She nodded, still refusing to look at him. It felt more like she was agreeing to get him to shut up than actually believing it. It was a tactic that had never once worked for Isa; she wasn't going to get away with it either.
"It's the same for your Keyblade. Maybe it started out as just a reflection, but I'd bet you a month's worth of sea-salt ice cream that it's no fake now." Lea held out a hand. After summoning Flame Liberator for the first time, he was confident he knew what the real deal felt like. "C'mon, let's see it."
Xion blinked at him, before hesitantly calling on her Keyblade. Lea twitched his fingers expectantly and she held it out for him to take.
He gave it an experimental swish, inordinately pleased that he was able to hold it without it vanishing. It was warm, almost like he was holding her hand. "Feels like the real deal to me," he said. "But if you still don't believe me, we can go bully Yen Sid."
"No, don't," Xion grabbed his arm, dragging it back down so she could reclaim her Keyblade.
"If I'm wrong, and it is just a copy," he passed it back to her, "then it's a perfect copy. In which case, there's no difference anyway."
Xion rested Kingdom Key across her knees, one hand on the grip and the other resting on the teeth. Lea couldn't tell from her expression what she was thinking.
"When I fought Riku and lost, he told me that my Keyblade was a sham," she confessed quietly.
Ah, Lea was starting to understand Roxas' grudge. "Are we really going to trust Riku's judgement? Mr Plunge-My-World-Into-Darkness-Because-Some-Guy-Told-Me-To? Really?"
She whacked him in Riku's defence. "That's different."
Okay, it was a little different, but Lea thought his point still stood.
"Here," he shifted so he was facing her fully and called on Flame Liberator. Getting her to hold it wouldn't do anything to convince her, since her replicating powers would let her use anything, but he had a better idea. With his free hand, he grabbed one of hers and placed it on the handle, and then slowly let go until she was holding it by herself.
He still remembered the words Yen Sid had spoken for his own bequeathing. The fact that it rhymed helped, although that wasn't the reason why.
"In your hand, take this Key," he began, trying not to laugh at the confusion that immediately settled on Xion's face. "So long as you have the makings, then through this simple act of taking, its wielder you shall one day be. And you will find me, friend – no ocean will contain you then. No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love."
"What?" she asked, corners of her mouth twitching up even as she continued to frown at him.
"It's the Official Keyblade Bequeathing Poem or something," he shrugged. "Yen Sid recited it at me when he agreed to give me a Keyblade."
"Then..."
"Yep. Consider yourself bequeathed." If her Keyblade hadn't been real before, she'd be able to summon a real one now. Not that she'd probably notice the difference.
She gave him back Flame Liberator and after a moment's hesitation resummoned her own Keyblade. It looked exactly the same as it always had.
"It feels the same," she said.
Lea grinned at her. "Must've been the real deal after all then, huh?"
There was a tiny smile on her face as she examined it. It reminded him of a smaller scale version of the joy she'd felt when she'd remembered how to summon it way back when. Come to think of it, that was probably when she'd gotten the potential for the real thing; waving around Roxas' for as long as she had had probably negated the need for the poem.
There was another knock at the door and they both turned as Roxas poked his head in. Isa was standing out in the hall beside him, a plastic bag in his hand. Roxas was all roughed up, like he'd been doing more than just training. He glanced briefly at Xion's Kingdom Key with tired eyes until she dismissed it.
"We brought ice cream," he announced instead of whatever it was he'd been thinking.
Lea and Xion squished up closer together to make room for them. Isa passed them the bag as he took a seat on the edge of the bed. Roxas climbed up beside him, only to immediately flop onto his side and bury his face into the duvet.
"This bed is so soft," he sighed. "How come you get the soft one?"
"There's only two ice creams in here?" Xion peered into the bag.
"We already had ours," Isa told her with a glance at Lea that said more than words ever could. Something had gone down then.
Lea made a mental note to ask about it later.
"We have to steal this mattress," Roxas announced, eyes shut. "I need it."
"We are not stealing anything," Isa reprimanded.
"Sorry, Isa," Xion said. "But it's three against one. Democracy rules."
Lea let out a startled laugh. Since when did she know about democracy, of all things? Ienzo, probably. Damn, he had a feeling this was going to come back to bite him.
"Democracy still has to obey the law," Isa countered, looking a little frazzled by such an unexpected statement.
Lea grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him down face-first onto the duvet. He didn't immediately get up.
"...Perhaps we can ask where they bought it," his muffled voice reached them.