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: Sorry for the long wait! There was so much I wanted to cover with Isa's section and Saïx wasn't cooperating with his half. Anyway, do enjoy and many thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter!

BONE OF CONTENTION

ISA, THE BOY WHO'D SHATTER

- eleven years before death -

I was aching all over and in constant agony, but when I rolled up to the school gates in my clunky wheelchair, your waving me over was the best pain relief I had ever experienced.

"Here, Miss," you said to my aunt, "I'll take it from here."

I didn't faze you at all. No matter how much intensity I put into my glare – because at this point, I hated you so much – and no matter difficult the wheelchair was to steer, you simply didn't care. The nonchalance with which you always carried yourself made you oblivious to the crowd of staring school kids and my displeasure. You headed for the indoor ramp that looped round the building to the first floor. It was horribly quiet inside. In the still hall of this hairpin ramp, we both realised how shallow and disgustingly throaty my breathing was. You stopped at the corner, hit the wheel lock and walked round to face me.

"I did some reading over the weekend," you said. "I went to the library and took out some books on wheelchairs and broken bones. I know that it hurts to talk when your ribs are done in, and I know you're going to get cranky and restless. But look at me, Isa." You bent to my height so that I had no choice. "I'm not just your carer, I'm your friend too. And I'm going to look after you, no matter how cranky you get."

I resented your tenacity and how it could render my anger powerless. I wanted to scream at you to go away and leave me alone, but through the glass confines of my wheelchair, I had relented a long time ago.

I wouldn't fight you, even if I could.

-x-

You joined me for every lesson at school. We sat together, shared textbooks and copied one other's answers. I discovered that you were ambidextrous, preferred to write while balancing your chair forwards on two legs and could twirl a pencil round your fingers. At breaks and lunchtimes, you wheeled me over to the nurse's office so that I could use the bathroom without your company; and when the school bell rang to signal the end of the day, you whisked me back home and nattered about our lessons and classmates.

I still don't know how you did it, really. I had reached a point where I couldn't picture myself without you. Even in the dark confines of my room, when transferred from chair to bed, I thought I could feel you next to me. Soon, you developed a talent to relay my thoughts with frightening accuracy. As you moved me from place to place, you shouted in my defence when people held up by us tutted. You did everything on my behalf and because you did – and because you were so good at it – the wheelchair became my sanctuary and the perfect reason to bind you to my side.

You simply became an extension of me.

-x-

You pored over the dessert menu with your tongue between your teeth. "I fancy something hot," you decided. "What do you think? Raspberry sponge or apple crumble? I've tried everything else."

You counted out your father's change and your breath escaped in smoky wisps. We had only managed to get an outside table and though there was a heater beneath the translucent awning, we were still shivering.

"I'm sorry about this," I said, when your chattering teeth became impossible to ignore. I patted the arm of my wheelchair. It was hard work pushing me around, and all the warmer cafes with cushy indoor seats were higher up the Garden.

"Forget it," you said warningly, "this place is fine." You waved for the waitress' attention. "I'll have an apple crumble please."

"Coming right up," she replied. "And what about your friend?"

I flushed, trapped in the chair and boiling in the hurtful stigma.

You turned to the waitress, picking up on the annoyance that had left me speechless. "I don't know what he wants," you answered truthfully. "You could try asking him."

She stammered out an apology and gave me a simpering smile. "Oh honey, I'm so sorry, I just assumed—"

"—that because I'm disabled, I can't do anything," I finished for her. "Don't worry, everyone does it."

It was a testament to how far I had come, really. I myself had grown up on that very assumption; and now, it was the silliest thing I had ever heard.

-x-

Sasha Barnett was the most popular girl in my class. She was second tallest in the year, and had a set of teeth so slightly bucked that whenever she smiled, it was inexplicably cute. In October, she handed round invites to her birthday party and to my surprise, she ducked down by my wheelchair with an invitation in her hand.

"Here. It's this Friday." She offered her unusual smile, which I was not accustomed to seeing in such proximity. "It's a disco, but I thought you'd like to come along anyway. See you there?"

I had never received a party invite before. I wasn't sure how to react except stutter my thanks. You, however, leaned forward in your seat hopefully.

"Um…is Lea…?" I tried to ask Sasha without sounding spoilt. "It's just that—"

"Oh, it's addressed to both of you!" she clarified, and she snatched the blue envelope and turned it round. "To Isa and Lea – see? You know, since you come as a pair."

She grinned and carried on handing round invitations, her curly hair bouncing off her shoulders. You took the envelope and tore it open for me. "So…do you feel like going?"

I fidgeted, uncertain how much fun a wheelchair kid could have at a disco.

"Oh, loads," you said loudly, when I muttered this concern. "There's always a food table at discos. I can push you along it and you can try and pick up as many cheese platters as possible."

I snorted, feeling a little horrified afterwards at how strange my laugh sounded.

"Or you could raid the dance floor," you suggested next. "You can point out the bad dancers, and we can run over their toes with this mean wheelchair."

I liked that word – we.

I never spoke to Sasha Barnett again after the party; her family moved to the other end of town in a move that surprised and upset everyone. Her words lasted, though. It was her idea first – that we came as a pair.

-x-

One day in summer, you decided to make use of the deserted school grounds and practise for the five athletic teams you were picked for. ("Only five out of eight," you had complained. "I wanted to do them all but apparently, it's not fair on everyone else." You didn't seem to understand the concept of place hogging.)

You positioned me a couple of metres from the track, did up your trainers and from your bag, took out a worn sports encyclopaedia. You flicked to a bookmarked page and set it carefully in my lap. "That's how I'm meant to look when I hurdle. You see how the lead leg is meant to be near straight, and how it snaps down after so I don't waste time in the jump. The trail leg – that's the funny leg that follows – should be as close as possible to the hurdle."

I was quite unwilling and shy at first, but you were determined to get me involved in something as uninviting as sports. Our afternoons ranged from me comparing you to your encyclopaedia to taking times with your stopwatch. I felt quite free, watching you run, despite never moving from my chair. I fully appreciated the lengths you went to make me still feel I was standing in this world, but that afternoon with the hurdles, a frown crossed your face.

"You're bored," you interpreted randomly.

"What? I'm not bored," I said. I had only gone for a little snooze in the warm rays of dying sunlight.

"It's a bit boring, huh," you insisted. You stuck your face in your towel, viciously wiping your sweat away. When you threw the soiled item aside, I expected you to berate me for not showing enough gratitude to your efforts. But you smiled a conniving smirk I had never seen before. "Are you jealous, Isa?" you said. "Do you want to run?"

Without waiting for an answer, you wheeled me round and began to push me off the school field. Twice I asked you where you were taking me and once I demanded you stop, but my voice just fell on deaf ears. You eventually brought me to the school's main block.

"…Do you want to go home?" I guessed. You shook your head.

"You know, from here, it's a straight line. I usually run this length when the relay team have stolen the track. It's about two hundred metres, and it goes from this side of the block, over the ramp next to the gym, then the sports shed and then it hits the field."

"What about it?"

You gripped the handles of the wheelchair. "I'm going to make you run down it."

I had underestimated your strength. Of course, I was aware of your tendency to trample over everything that stood in your way – either by a smile or a half-hearted shrug – but it had never struck me until now, the level of your ability in keeping us going.

You were my driving force, who required little input on my behalf to function.

You seemed to know – and were exceptionally talented in providing – everything I wanted. I wanted to run, to have my forehead coated in sweat and my limbs shaking in a perfect cross of fear and power.

When you pushed me down that clear path, taking delight in my panicked screams as the school and the grass and the tarmac rolled by, completely out of my control, that was the first time you left me breathless.

-x-

Re-learning how to walk was such a gruelling and humiliating experience that it still makes me redden at the very thought. After weeks of in-seat physiotherapy, my doctors began to rebuild my leg strength enough for me to be able to stand. From there, I took my first step, clinging onto padded bars and panting with effort. The doctors and you – when my therapy didn't conflict with your sports schedule – stood on the sidelines and encouraged me. You all called out reassuring, positive phrases, but I still felt like a labouring woman or a greyhound being pushed beyond its limits.

"You can do it, Isa. Very good, well done. Keep going. Take a deep breath and focus."

On some days, I cried – simply because I was too tired to do anything else. On other occasions, I smiled at my progress and begged my doctors to let you try out the treadmill too. And on rarer, darker days, I screamed and screamed until I lost my voice, until your face went white with fear at what you were seeing.

"One more step, Isa. You can do it."

"I can't!"

"Yes you can. One more step and you've reached the end of the bar."

"Please," I begged, "I can't. I can't do it."

"Yeah you can." You pushed past the doctor, positioned yourself at the finish line with open arms. "Come on, Isa, I know you can do it."

"I can't, how many times do I—I can't do it." I collapsed, and I moaned so pathetically when my legs gave way like a tower of playing cards and a stray breath. "I'd rather be dead than walk another step."

"You don't mean that." You recovered from your flinch at remarkable speed. "You did really well. Maybe we'll call it a day, and I'll take you home."

I nodded, aware that my crumpled form on the sponge walkway was hardly a position I wanted to remain in. "Take me back home, I want to sleep. I'm so fed up of being weak."

You approached, nervous and careful, taking my hands and waiting for me to shuffle my feet. "What are you on about. You're the strongest person I know."

SAÏX, THE LUNA DIVINER

- twenty days after birth -

No one really talks to me, but I know that at every moment of each day, someone somewhere is disappointed with me.

On most occasions, I think it's you.

-x-

Days roll past. They bleed into one another like stained sand in an hourglass. Things change and move on and develop. There's routines and reasons and reports, but you go on ahead in an acrid cloak of fire.

I remain safe behind the start line, shoved into the spectator's seat.

(I can't run unless you're pushing me.)

"Those are nice." Xigbar pushes himself up off the sofa and he takes three easy steps to you. They've always been there, but he gestures to the tattoos under your eyes as though they've just materialised. "I'd get a nifty set like that too, but I don't quite meet the criteria."

You offer a half-grin, rolling your eyes and resuming your work of wiping grime off your chakrams. "I don't think anyone knows what you're on about, Xig."

"Yet you act as if you do."

Few of us pay attention to Xigbar's smirk. Zexion stops trawling through reports to give a brief, impassive glance; Xaldin looks away from the window with a raised eyebrow. No one looks particularly bothered, because Xigbar is just being Xigbar – but you take the bait and jump to your feet with a low snarl.

"Do you have a problem with them?"

"Me personally? Not at all." Xigbar waves his arms, bathing in his chivalry. His gaze wanders over to me. "How about you though, Saïx? What do make of them?" He scratches his head in thought, although nothing has ever looked so planned. "You remember him getting them done, right?"

I don't. You would have been too young for tattoos while we were in Radiant Garden. The memory of ink bleeding into your skin must be in the foggy years I can't decipher and understand.

"I had them done in Traverse Town," you confirm. You sidestep Xigbar and reach for me. "I was drunk and stupid."

"Interesting choice of design," remarks Xigbar, so light it even stings me.

"I presume you are referring to insinuations of gang culture," Zexion contributes. He doesn't look up from his pile of reports. "Traverse Town may be the leading world for travellers, but I don't doubt it has its own horde of tribal organisational structures. Tattoos are merely a pretentious way to make one appear to have a semblance of depth and meaning, yet in particular cultures, they promote the usage of tattoos as the signposts and achievements of life. A teardrop tattooed under your eye means you've killed someone. Two teardrops – that means you regret it."

You scoff. The chakrams whirr and dematerialise, and your hands now scrabble for my shoulders. "One might argue you're reading into things a little too much," you reply loftily.

"Or you're just glossing over everything," Xigbar says. You give a derisive snort and say nothing else. Your grip on me tightens, and then you steer – borderline push – me out of the Grey Area, barking that we're going for a walk in the city.

"What was that about?" I ask.

"Hell if I know. They're just making shit up because they're bored." You nod with determination, but the way your fingers dig into my shoulder suggest you're not completely convinced. I wince at the steady ache, and I know this tingling feeling as you stand beside me, seething and bristling. I used to know what came next, but again, crucial knowledge about you slips out of reach.

You walk faster. I struggle to keep up. "You know, they can say what they like. You're not so fucking stupid that you'd actually fall for it, that you'd listen to them over me."

I wriggle as best as I can out of your painful grip. "I like the tattoos," I comment, and I lift a hand to trace one of the markings and feel your sharp cheekbone. Without warning, you whack my offending hand aside and spit at me, "Stop that, you never even fucking noticed them until someone pointed them out. Do people have to do everything for you, tell you what to say and what to do? Why are you always so weak?"

"I don't know what you mean—"

I remember what comes next now. I stiffen, hold my breath and brace myself. To my surprise, however, you slam a hand against the wall, channelling all your fury into that, and then hold me flush against you, and you're as safe as ever.

"This is exactly what they want," you mutter into my ear (although I know you are talking to yourself). "They want me riled up, to mistrust you enough to compel you to switch sides."

"They'll have to try harder than that." I reach for your tattoos again, careful to quash any hesitance I might have. I push my thumbs to the purple blemishes and smoothen your cheeks in a pretend attempt to wipe them away.

"A gang? Really?" I cradle your face.

"What do you think?" you respond. I think about kissing you (somewhere deep in me, I know that's the perfect answer for everything) but you duck to press your lips to my inner wrist.

I let my mind linger on blurred, treasured memories of blind faith (me) and innocent overconfidence (you – always you).

"…Well, the Isa and Lea I remember, they don't seem the type to fall into something like that. A mouthy and skinny athlete, and a nerdy astrologer with a bone disease."

You fold your arms behind your head and say, "Exactly," and there is just enough conviction in your voice to cause me to forget why it ever mattered.

-x-

You're such a show off. You behave as if the world's centre stage was built especially for you, as though your role in life is to bleach your surroundings of beauty and worth and drag it into yourself.

I should be frustrated (because what can pale, deathly blue do against a backdrop of scorching, insurmountable scarlet?) but I like your obnoxious nonchalance. It makes you and me a perfect match.

In the murky depths of the city, you uncurl your firsts to create fire, and before Neoshadows can melt into the concrete and flee, you burn them from their ankles up. You boast rotating columns and whirring pinwheels of destructive flames. It rains down hard on us, but you barely acknowledge it and once again, the world bends to accommodate your performance.

"It's only a matter of time until I learn to summon corridors the way they do." You snap up a fist and the fire coughs out its last breath. The ends of your hair begin to succumb to the pouring rain. "I've already mastered fire. Once I learn how to open corridors, you and me – we're going to escape."

You grin, and suddenly aware of how the tattoos mar your face, for that split-second I don't recognise you at all.

-x-

I have tried to make myself accept I will always be in your shadow, but dissatisfaction niggles at the back of my mind, eating away at sanity like crumbling ash. It doesn't help that when I dream, it nearly always starts and finishes in the painful bite of dancing flames.

On day twenty, when you are away on a mission, the Superior tells me to describe Isa.

"He was a Virgo."

"Perhaps you could be more specific."

"In all fairness, your question was equally vague, Sir." I pause for a second and ready myself for any consequences when I ask the one question that has been bothering me the moment I was born. "Is there something wrong with me?"

The Superior glances up from his work for just a second. "It's likely."

I sit forwards a little in my designated chair. It's an ornate seat, putting me only twelve inches from him. "It's my twentieth day. I mean…eight days have been and gone. I should have recovered but there's nothing from me. I don't have an element or a weapon I can control. I don't even have a full set of memories."

The Superior sets down his pen and steeps his fingers. "That's why I asked about Isa."

"Well, he…I don't even know where to begin. I can't remember much at all. Lea would know, he's—"

"I'm rather convinced Isa may have been someone who liked to bide his time," the Superior cuts in. "Rational, patient. Isa's life was tainted by disease and perhaps, with the assistance of this forced backseat approach, he was a practical, questioning individual, able to see all sides, from subtle beauty to every ugly truth. That you have pragmatic thinking at your core is likely to be what delays – not prevents – your progress."

"You give me too much credit," I reply, "but the fact remains I serve no purpose in the Organisation."

"Pragmatism doesn't merit punishment," the Superior answers. He clicks off his pen and sits back. "But if you are concerned as to why you still have a seat in the Organisation, then let me explain my position to you."

He summons a portal. More than once, I find myself glancing back at the elegant, imperious hand. "This way."

I follow him through the portal and there is the familiar smell of rotting wood and rain.

Walking through the city with the Superior is nothing like walking with you. The street doesn't erupt in red light and curling smoke. The Neoshadows don't follow in our wake, curious about the Superior's strength; they steer clear and slink into the recesses of empty buildings. The neon signs stop flickering, the rain dissipates, nothing moves and all that breathes is me and the Superior.

He doesn't turn beautiful things into ugly marks.

"Before your arrival, we had assumed we were the only ones. We were born right here, in this dark world, and we fashioned it into a home as we embarked on a journey to regain lost knowledge. Most days have been spent reading and striving for more facts and figures about the worlds and everything in between. Then, out of the blue, Zexion detects two more Nobodies in the city."

"Nobodies?"

"We call ourselves Nobodies," the Superior clarifies. "Mere extensions of the past and what could have been. It interests us, that you and Axel have lost your way and found us instead. We all want to know who you are and why you are. To most of the Organisation, you are a study and a fresh reminder of the reason we keep searching for knowledge."

He stops at a crossroads, toeing the edge of the pavement in thought. We have walked quite far; yet, when I look up and behind me, the Castle still looms over us as a great white shadow.

"I want to see how you react to this world, Saïx. I want to see you take your first steps and stand up without crutches, to make your own decisions and choices, to dismiss every boundary you had in the past, to discard your history altogether. I want to see your reaction, your suffering and triumph, away from the shadow of Isa and in a light of your own."

The neon street signs start to flicker, abruptly buzzing with life and effort. His face flashes in the green and orange glow. "You're the ant I've thrown into water," he finishes, so light it's almost a whisper. "Learn to swim."

You will probably argue that his approach is one of manipulation. You will clench your fists and jaw all over again when you discover I am treading the track just beyond the start line. But it's all right – I promise. I'm not walking away from you.

My thoughts pause on an awkward note. Amidst the grey blur of the Superior and the cloudy sky, there's a dull admittance within me. I cannot decide on its permanence – or if it's even worth mentioning. I can't admit it to you: that an escape from this Castle has all but slipped my mind.

As I stand under a gathering storm, the hem of my uniform flapping against my ankles, I realise I might not join you if you attempt to run. Out here, in the city without flames, the air is unburdened; and I think, has it always been so free beyond your reach?

A/N: Again, apologies for updating so late. I've hit a major writer's block and haven't pulled out of it since like...June or something crazy. Feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated. Otherwise, thanks for reading!