Disclaimer: Characters are copyright to Square Enix.

Warning: Rated T for now, later chapters will be M rated for language, violence, sex and disturbing themes.

A/N: Chapter 3 for you! Many thanks to everyone who reviewed - thanks so much for your support, and hope you enjoy this update. :)

BONE OF CONTENTION

ISA, THE BOY WHO'D SHATTER

- eleven years before death -

Apparently, that one-time invite into my house was a lifetime pass, because you started to invite yourself over every day. Each weekday after school, you waited at the gates for me, announced you didn't have to be home until teatime, and proceeded to lead the way. As soon as you went in, you got drinks and carried them (along with my crutches) without being asked. One time, you broke your promise and burst out laughing when you saw me climbing the stairs by scooting up them on my arse. You proclaimed you knew all along I used this method, and then you ran down to join in.

I wound up getting told off a lot because of you. My cousin complained about your overbearing voice; my uncle criticised me for constantly having you over. My aunt was still cross with you for spilling orange juice on the landing.

You were tactless, pushy and oblivious of your tendency to inconvenience others; you behaved spontaneously and liked to change subject without warning or reason; you enjoyed asking nosy questions and laughing at your own jokes.

There were many reasons to dislike someone, but I had yet to find one about you.

-x-

One Friday afternoon, you didn't show up. Until it happened, I never thought it possible. But there I was, in a playground completely deserted save for three pigeons and a stray cat eyeing them. I flew into a panic, unsure whether to stay or go, teetering between obstinacy and acceptance.

I felt a rush of silliness, having wittered on about star charts and the excitement of planets in retrograde, convinced they were enough to keep you; I felt so stupid, for actually thinking someone as active and energetic as you had time for a disabled loner like me.

I stood still, chewing my shirt sleeve and coming up with scenarios and reasons to justify your absence. Perhaps my cousin had got to you, and being friends with me wasn't worth the hassle. Perhaps my shy admittance that I might be psychic had made you scoff and run. It was fun while it lasted, though, I found myself thinking.

One whole hour of waiting later, I felt awful for doubting you.

You ran out of the school, cursing. I was cold and hungry and ever so bored, but what a small price to pay to see that grin!

"Detention!" was the first thing you shouted. "No warning whatsoever. I told the teacher I had a place to be, but he just doubled the time and accused me of lying."

I returned your smile, but it was shaky and forced. I had to start walking in order to shield my eyes and you followed, scratching the side of your head. "Are you cross with me, Isa?"

I shook my head, unable to even begin. How could I explain to someone who had it all? For one dreadful hour, I believed it was all over; the thought of losing what – who? – I had become so comfortable around made me sick to the core. I was still reeling from relief and gratitude that you had showed up, still struggling to contain gladness at being proven wrong.

I kept my voice level, concentrating on using the crutches. "How did you earn detention?"

"Falling asleep in class," you answered, unabashed. "It happens a lot, so next time, go home without me, all right? Wait for ten minutes tops and then go home. I'll catch up with you there and ask your aunt nicely to come in. Tell you what," you added, guilty. "We'll do something different today. Are you starved? Because I am. I know, let's eat out."

And just like that, I flew into my second panic of the day. Out? Where? I stuttered a hasty refusal, but you made no acknowledgement of it. I should have told you sooner that I was a recluse and only enjoyed the outdoors when no one else was around. I didn't like crowds or noise or unpredictability, because the only thing predictable about it was that I'd come back hurt.

You leapt in front of me and started to walk backwards. "I'll take you to one of my favourite cafés."

"One of?" I repeated incredulously.

When we arrived at your café of choice (mercifully close, as I was exhausted from being on crutches), I had to reconsider my initial view of you as a boy spoilt rotten by the affluence of his family.

You knew everyone, from the old couple in the corner to the waitress serving us. I could tell that for years on end, you had worked hard to weave yourself into their memories, into the heart of Radiant Garden itself, such that when you waved at another customer falling into the café, tired from work, he waved back and asked how your sister was; such that when we made our order of afternoon cake and juice, the waitress pinched your cheek and said she'd apply the usual discount.

I was certain that everyone here – including you – regarded you as someone who wanted to be remembered; but I could only see you running the same course as me, as someone desperate to find where he belonged.

We exchanged some light banter about which cake to have. You suggested your favourites but then backtracked and insisted I try out the newest, extremely high calorie chocolate gateau slice. When our food arrived and we ate, we fell into a minute of silence, where you downed your juice and asked for more, and I stared into the table to watch the reflection of the ceiling fan.

I had worried, given the frequency of us meeting up, that I'd soon run out of things to talk about and you'd grow tired. I had also fretted that I was a boring person altogether, and had resolved this by distracting you with the plethora of information astrology offered. I told you, amongst many other things, the basic personality traits of a Taurus and explained the twelve houses of an astrological chart. I had always hidden behind the shield that was my hobbies and now, in a bright and bustling café with you sat opposite me, there was nothing to hide behind, and the only logical – and long expected – topic of conversation was my disease.

"…What's it called again?"

"Osteogenesis imperfecta, Type I."

"Have you had it long?"

"Since I was born."

"What about a cure?"

I almost smiled at the hope in your voice. It was one of the first questions I had asked too. "There isn't one. I have a doctor and physiotherapist who make things better, but OI is for life."

Telling you about OI wasn't like telling other people.

I had once been part of an astronomy club. My mother had urged me to mingle and socialise, and it was the only club I found remotely interesting. In the first lesson, I handed my note about the disease to the club leader, and she relayed the message to the other students 'to be nice to poor Isa here'. And they were. They helped me when I couldn't lift my telescope, and they pinned the upper corners of my star chart when I couldn't reach. But they asked questions – how did it feel to break a bone? was OI why my eyes were so strange? did OI mean I couldn't jump or run or later, even have sex? – which by themselves were tolerable, but they also wore that certain look, one I hadn't seen you pull yet, one of relief that said, I'm so glad it wasn't me.

I never returned to that astronomy club. In fact, that very first lesson, I shattered my wrist on purpose so that my mother had to be called in to take me away.

Telling you about OI, as I said, was nothing like this. You barely seemed interested, as though you were asking the questions to be polite; it took you little effort to cast off my symptoms as trivial and unworthy of attention.

"So your bones will always be breaking?"

"Yes. And I'll always be weak muscled and easy to bruise and well…imperfect, I guess. It's called osteogenesis imperfecta for a reason. It's all right," I added hastily, because I didn't want you to feel sorry for me. "I'm less likely to break the older I get. I'll probably start to lose my hearing, but it's all right," I reiterated, uncertain whether I was trying to convince you or myself.

I didn't elaborate, but you could tell anyway: I really, really did not want to go deaf. I did not want to feel any more isolated. Having one of my senses snatched from me would be more than I could bear. It wouldn't be the same with a hearing aid or a cochlear implant, to have to rely on machinery lodged in me, so that I could hear like everyone else. And while I fretted and worried over my fate, you just threw down your fork and grinned.

"It's a good job my voice is so loud then!" you replied happily, and to further your point, you shouted, "Bill please!" and all heads turned.

I shoved my hands under the table so you wouldn't witness them shaking, so that you wouldn't see that I found your kindness as unbearable as my years of pity and teasing and ignorance. I only knew now, through you, that compassion could be so, so painful; and the funny thing was, you were not even aware you were doing it.

You were, in all honesty, spoiling me rotten. You were giving me everything I had ever wanted and more, filling in the hole my mother had left after she died. Someone to walk back from school with, someone to read my horoscopes to, someone to share my chocolate bar with, someone whose life I could discover and be part of, a small slice of this world I could call my own.

The question wasn't if there was a catch to you, but how I was supposed to repay such an enormous debt.

"Listen," I said, trying to sound spontaneous. You stopped playing with the ice cube in your mouth, and it rattled against your teeth. "We could hang out this weekend as well, if you like. We haven't done that yet."

It was the best I could do. I felt like apologising to you afterwards, for the poor extent of my social capabilities, but you were tapping your chin in thought, your bright green eyes wandering upwards.

"Well, my grandparents are coming over for the weekend." You barely gave my heart the time to sink, before adding, "So yeah, let's hang out! Take me away already!"

"A-are you sure? I mean, if you have relatives to—"

You pulled a strange face, as if I had somehow insulted you. It suddenly occurred to me, that coming over mine – for three weeks on end and now, during weekends too – did not necessarily stem only from the need to see me. You were leaving something behind, consciously making yourself scarce from your own home.

"Don't you like your family?"

"I do," you said, quick to reaffirm. "We're just all wrapped up in our own stuff. It's a bit like this." You took our plates and forks, setting them out in the space between us. You created a cluster of cutlery in a circle, but not one of them touched another, as though every item had a repelling magnetic field around it. "We're together, though not really. It's just a bit busy, that's all. There's too much going on and no one wants to hear about professional athletics anyway. But hey, it's all right," you said, mimicking my words, "I get a lot of freedom."

Somehow, when you reassured yourself, I felt a little better too. I wasn't alien to your situation, to feel neglected, to be aware of it and still, bitterly insist on remaining the same. We were two extra pieces who had given up trying to squeeze into a completed jigsaw, two hard boiled sweets who accepted they were in a cookie jar, two lost boys who had found a makeshift home in one another because nothing else would offer.

We talked for three hours straight. I tried to cover a variety of topics, abruptly changing subjects the way you did, but I always somehow edged back into my comfort zone that was astrology. Nevertheless, I discovered that your whole family – bar yourself – had aspirations in law. Your mother had been in probate and your older sisters were working to be a mediator or a lawyer. I also learned that you had that annoying ability to do well in school without trying, and you frequently missed morning lessons and played in the park instead. Through our light argument about who would pay our café bill, I found out that you spent money frivolously because your father was too busy and too rich to notice or care.

At seven o'clock, you walked me home, talking excitedly about the prospects of tomorrow, merely to fill in the silence. I only spoke to you when I got to my front door. Feeling silly, because I was unconsciously behaving like I was back from a first date, I tapped your arm and said, "Thanks. I had a nice time."

"Me too. See you tomorrow then," you replied. I caught you before you could dash off, reaching for that part inside you – your heart perhaps? – that had been ignored and ached to be noticed.

"Also, Lea. I think you should go for it. Being a professional athlete, that is. Imagine the look on your dad's face when you get gold medals and sponsorships."

You treated my rehearsed, shamefully monotonous compliment as though it was a gift. You grinned and hugged yourself, teetering on the spot. "I can try. Here," you said, reaching into your back pocket for a pen, "is something for you. Prepare to be amazed, Isa."

You scribbled something on my hand, waved goodbye and ran off. When I glanced down to decipher your scrawl, I realised that it didn't even take ten seconds for me to start missing you.

imperfecta = i am perfect

SAÏX, THE LUNA DIVINER

- eight days after birth -

Every day, I wake up knowing exactly who you are, but nothing about who I am. I didn't know amnesia could be so clean cut and selective. Or maybe, this is all there is to me.

I want to see you.

Eight days have passed – dull, eventless, repetitive days that, in this castle of perpetual night, I can only separate by each call to dinner – and I have not been allowed.

"Your memory is currently very fragile," Vexen had said to me on my first day. "Contact with Axel will undoubtedly affect and tamper with the accuracy of what you remember. For now, keep to yourself and rearrange the fragments of your mind so that you control your memories, and not the other way round. Here, this will be of assistance. Consider it a diary of sorts. Write anything that crosses your mind – no matter how trivial or senseless – and fill up all the pages."

Vexen thinks otherwise, but I believe it simply isn't possible to note one's stream of consciousness in such a way. I think faster than I write and I really cannot keep up with the pace at which I'm running. From mindless instinct to conscious thoughts, I jump and revert and make up and digress and forget, with no indicator to tell me where to start, where to end, or if any of it is even real.

My first page is this:

My name is Saïx. I don't like it very much. People have to say my name three times before I realise I am being spoken to. Taurus and Virgo are very compatible signs. I have to sleep in a certain position because my joints often slip out of place. If a javelin breaks while being thrown or in the air, the throw still counts. You taught me how to laugh until my ribs hurt.

It's all right.

Today, I will break one femur, one arm bone, four ribs and a wrist. My arms ache. I wrecked your career with a single word. There are seventy-eight cards in a Tarot deck, but one day I woke up with fourteen less. I love you. I love you. I love you.

"Am I writing the wrong things?"

"There isn't a right or wrong answer. It's not even an assessment, more so an exercise that assists in unravelling your uncertainties into something comprehensible. Separating these thoughts from one's mind has proved particularly helpful in relieving pressure, in both your case and my own."

I have only ever dined with Vexen – I use the term dine loosely, as it's just me eating while Vexen does a cross examination of my diary – so it is a slight surprise when tonight, I am joined by the Superior. He cuts an impressive figure in the seat next to me, flicking through pages and pages of nonsensical writing with enough ethereal talent to make his boredom look elegant.

"You are finished?" he asks of my meal tray. I nod and set it aside. He snaps his fingers and a lithe creature twists and slithers, as if swimming through the air, to take the food away.

I'm slowly getting used to the mechanics of the castle. Those creatures are called Dusks; they are servants to the Superior, whom we only address by that name or Sir. We all have a uniform, a name, an allocated room and a number. The days are mainly dedicated to nursing me back to health – both body and mind – as I continue to write until my hand seizes up. I wonder if I am in an asylum or a jail. Neither prospect seems to worry me. I know that if you're around, then wherever I am, I'm home.

"You wrote an unfinished phrase on this page," says the Superior, and I glance down at the book, at handwriting I fail to recognise. At some point, I have scrawled in the centre, at least, and left it at that. "What is its significance?"

I shake my head. I'm still rather wary of meeting the Superior's calculating gaze. For most of the evening, I have used reflective surfaces to sneak peeks at him, wondering (only afterwards) why his sunset eyes and silver lashes are so compelling to look at. "I don't know. The more I read what I have written, the less I'm convinced I wrote it."

"That is progress, in some way. Effectively, what you are doing is drawing a distinction between this life and the one you dream about. A distinction that is there, before you suggest that I am indoctrinating you," he adds with a small twitch of his mouth, not unkindly. In fact, the Superior has been anything but unkind. He has been patient, despite my every other answer being, "I don't know," and he has worked hard to help me untangle the mess of my mind. Or should I say, Isa's.

"Vexen told me these memories aren't mine."

"And what do you make of that, Saïx?"

"…I don't know."

If I disclaim them, then I will be disclaiming you. And I can't do that because you are all I have, but it makes sense, it makes so much sense. I'm contorted and broken up into little pieces so that I can twist myself into Isa's shadow. I shouldn't have to do it, not when Isa is dead. He screwed up somewhere and now, I'm living out his punishment for it.

I can't remember how I died.

"That's expected," the Superior says of it, still scrutinising my diary. "We repress what hurts us, convinced that if we cannot remember it, then it never happened. Don't overexert yourself. It has been eight days, the estimated time for settlement," he remarks, correctly guessing my train of thought, "but progress is recognised over accomplishment, and you are promising."

When I ask him if I am promising because you're not, his lips thin and he says that actually, you've exceeded his expectations.

I smile inwardly, because it is unwritten law that you always reach the finish line before I do, so that you can pull me across the threshold. Wait just a little bit more. I'll catch up to you.

The Superior stands up, flicking a wrist to suggest I follow. "You have worked hard today, Saïx. It is not easy to accept who you no longer are when it is natural to believe otherwise. Follow me, and I will take you to Axel. He may be the stimulus you need."

-x-

The Superior is a third of the way down when he realises there are no footsteps behind him. He turns round, glances up, lifts an eyebrow. "What is it?"

Suddenly, I have found myself unable to move.

We're only on a staircase that snakes down the castle wall, severe white against the windless and lightless night wrapped around us, but I freeze up as if any further movement will be the end of me.

"I don't know."

And I really don't. Something has me rooted to the spot, like an invisible pair of hands weighing my ankles to the floor.

Isa?

The Superior walks back up to stand next to me, and his golden gaze flickers between my face and what lies ahead.

Stairs. These are stairs.

"I don't do stairs."

"Are you afraid of them?" he asks, more curious than convinced.

"It's Isa. He won't let me."

I know it doesn't make sense, because Isa's dead—no he's not, I am Isa—no I'm not, I simply want to be him—no, I am him, his vessel at least—or is that too much to ask for—

"Will this do?" says the Superior. He carries on walking and somehow, the stairs have gone and in the blink of an eye, I am standing at a skyway, a sloping, zigzagging ramp that will take me straight to you; and it will do, because my muscles relax and I am – or Isa is? – no longer so worried.

I go down the ramp slowly, carefully, still unable to comprehend the change. Moreover, shouldn't I be careering down this?

With you, yelling from the freedom and me, shouting because I have never gone so fast.

On wheels, I mean.

"Saïx," the Superior calls, to remind me who I am. I come to a hallway and Xigbar gives a small wave in greeting.

"Axel is just finishing up," he says. He twirls a sniper's gun round his wrist. It's a little strange because I can promise you he wasn't holding it before. "Check him out. He's not quite on Xaldin's level, but he's pretty vicious. This one, I'm guessing, is still just pretty." And Xigbar uses the gun tip to tap my shoulder, a sneer working its way onto his face. He skilfully twists it into a smile. "But in time, eh? No point in rushing and risking you damage before you've even been put into the field. Or are we moving him forward now?" he asks the Superior.

"We're moving Axel forward for now. Saïx will join but serve as a variable."

"Oh, smart," says Xigbar. "We can see if he'll miraculously curb his element when there's something there he cares about. Come on, Saïx. Take a look at what difference eight days has made."

I approach a half wall, another viewing platform from which I can observe the dark tunnel the castle sits upon. However, when I glance down, a training ground comes into view and there you are.

You're not quite on your knees, but Lexaeus is piling the pressure. The earth shakes and you get thrown off balance; you summon back a silver wheel and it protects you in the nick of time, just as Lexaeus sees an opening. I watch you use your arms to bring up a torrent of fire, the flames erratic and out of control; I watch you leap and dash and struggle and battle on.

It has been eight days, and you have developed the body of a warrior, with fire at your command and two wheels that cut through air with the same searing force of your glare.

I have a book of nonsense.

"It's because unlike you, Axel knows who he is." Xigbar leans on the sill, idly examining his gun. Then he aims and shoots, yet the purple dart dies as it collides against your makeshift shield of fire. You don't even acknowledge the disturbance. "He's definite, unmoving, stubborn as a bull."

"Taurus." The thought just comes to me.

"What?" Xigbar says. He shrugs and continues. "Axel has made a decision on who he is, but you still waver, don't you? Who you are and who you want to be – these are two things that don't coincide, and you keep being dragged back to this problem, desperate to find a solution. That's what hinders you, prevents you from assigning yourself an element and uh, how to put it nicely, actually being useful to the Organisation."

At some point, the Superior has stood at my left side, and I ask him, "Organisation?" Yet the Superior looks too bothered and agitated by something to answer, and not even your blaring columns of dancing flames are enough to tear his gaze away from the sky.

"We're the Organisation," Xigbar replies on his behalf. "We all have a common goal: to retrieve what we're missing, what we're incomplete without."

I stare back at him, amazed at his coldness, and I know that we're oil and water, that we don't –and never will – mix. How can Xigbar miss the same that I am missing? He didn't sit in a room for eight days and thought of you more than anything. He doesn't stand here right now and wish to leap into that fire and drag you into his arms.

Because it doesn't even take ten seconds for me to start missing you.