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: I am so sorry I take such a long time to update my fics. I'm a train running out of steam but I can't bear the thought of (more of) my fics being unfinished and deserted, so I'm trying to plug ahead with this one. Many thanks to kind reviewers in the meantime, your encouragement is very much appreciated.

BONE OF CONTENTION

ISA, THE BOY WHO'D SHATTER

- eight years before death -

Just one time, when I was probably about six, my mother took me to the beach. It stretched for about a kilometre in a graceful bend, boasting lengthy shallows and scalloped edges of foamy waves. It was beautiful, but my knees wouldn't stop trembling at the vast expanse of ocean, and the thought of standing in it at its mercy made my heart pound like a crumbling drum losing tension.

My mother took me to the east end, where the parade of blue and yellow striped parasols thinned out and the sun beds were vacant, and she got to her knees to untie my shoelaces. I remember gripping her shoulder as tight as I could with my bruised hand, and I remember how hard I fought back nervous tears, and I remember how my mother coerced the tears to come and then took them away. She rolled up my trousers, shook off her sandals and led me, step by step, to the water's edge.

I was terrified. I kept playing awful scenarios in my head of my mother being swept away to leave me ankle-deep in the water, chained to uselessness by my disease. But she always was so sturdy, and as the disrupted sand swirled round her calves, she ventured another step away. She persuaded me to follow. "You're not going to fall," she said. "I dreamt it. Everything is all right, Isa."

I took a big step, wincing at the icy-then-warm feel of the frothy waters. As the waves ebbed and I walked towards my mother's outstretched arms, I glanced behind me with a shaky laugh at the footprints I had left in my wake, and although they only lasted as long as the next rolling wave, they were sure, continuing proofs of my existence, no matter how flawed or broken I was.

I remember how easily the words escaped, a train of six words simple for a six year old that would otherwise be choked by age and pride.

"I love you so much, Mummy." And then she drew me flush against her side and I wrapped my arms round her so tight it ached. I could have been knee deep in restless sand and water, but I was still in the safest spot in the world.

-x-

Five days before your birthday, I started to feel unbearable pains in my left leg, and no matter how hard I willed and berated myself to curb the agony, I simply couldn't heal.

The orthopaedist soon confirmed my femur hadn't recovered as well as he had hoped from that fall three years ago. My aunt and uncle were whisked in, presented with a leaflet on rodding surgery as an automatic yet useless form of courtesy, and then I was booked in for an operation on your birthday.

I was in too much distress at that point to even talk, let alone ask to delay the operation to a less significant date, so you took matters into your own hands.

"You don't want to go?" You swung your legs off the table as the teacher on lunch duty opened his mouth to shout at you. "Come on Isa, it's the beach. We've never been together before and I don't want you to miss out."

Megan pulled out the chair next to me, shifting my set of crutches aside. "Fill me in?" she said.

"Isa thinks the beach is too good for him."

"I don't," I huffed immediately. I felt colour rise to my face. "I just don't want to go."

"This is my plan." You wriggled in your seat and leaned forwards to cut me out. "Isa can't come to my birthday meal tomorrow because he's got that operation. So, I suggested us all hanging out after school today and going to the beach, as a kind of joint celebration of my birthday and wishing Isa luck. However, he's being difficult about it."

Save for a small intake of breath, Megan didn't react much at all. "He's on crutches," she said plainly. "Or did you forget? He's only been using them for the last five days."

You wrinkled your nose, apparently insulted by her tone. "Yeah, so? They're only to keep the weight off his bad leg in the run up to the op, and we can accomplish that between us if we take a shoulder each. You know what else the doc said?" You slid your front back off the table, swinging your full weight back into your seat and almost toppling over. "He said you should be at your most relaxed, Isa. What's more relaxing than the beach?"

I pursed my lips and concentrated on finishing my lunch. I could have told you that it was no easy – not to mention relaxing – feat to hobble on crutches from the school to the beach. I could have pointed out that I was limited in what activities I could do. I could have admitted the truly childish reason that held me back was that I didn't want to go to the beach without my mother. I could have told you I much preferred to stay with you than go to an operating theatre and have a telescopic rod jammed into my thighbone.

You grinned at me, shrugging off my worries as if they were painfully trivial, and everything I wanted to say clogged up at the back of my throat when faced with that simple gesture. "You need to stop hiding behind your disease." And you spoke like your own disappointed father.

Something inside of me burst. I couldn't stand up quickly, not with my leg's current state. I couldn't glower or glare, because my face had frozen over. I couldn't do much at all to show you just how much you irritated me, except to counterattack your statement with a hurtful one of my own. "You need to stop telling me what to do!"

You flushed a brilliant shade of red as though I had just struck you.

-x-

I trudged home hating you.

I dragged myself back with the click-thud, click-thud rhythm of my crutches, and though I absolutely detested you for constantly making my decisions for me, I could still only care about you.

As such, despite how the very thought of you made my insides bubble with furious rage and affront, I still ambled my way down the promenade to find you a birthday present.

I had never resented OI so much until now. Growing older was supposed to quell the frailty of my bones, and while this was true to some extent, the infrequency of bone aggravation meant that when complications did finally arise, I wasn't quite ready for the pain.

"Agh…Ow." I hobbled through the sliding glass doors, but one of my crutches got caught on the edge of the doormat.

"Careful, careful!" The shop assistant dashed forwards and he held out his arms in a circle that didn't quite touch me. "Are you uh…sure you're in the right place? This is a sports shop, kid."

"I know I'm in a sports shop, I don't just walk into places by accident." I gritted my teeth and expelled the searing pain of my leg as a terse and probably unwarranted scoff. "I'll be fine now, thank you."

I took deep, steadying breaths and limped over to the corner furthest from the shop assistant. I was met with shelf upon shelf of colourful equipment, of which I couldn't decipher either the sport or function of most. I bit my lip and concentrated on this dulling pain rather than the ache of simply standing up.

"Can I help you at all?" the shop assistant asked finally. He pushed his fringe back into his cap and approached me slowly, as though I was a tetchy dog on alert. "Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

I assumed he was trying to narrow my search in fear of me accidentally swinging a crutch and knocking down a shelf. I thought about scowling and telling him to show pity on someone else, but I wasn't in a position to take this arrogant liberty. I had to find you a gift in a giant shop specialising in a field I knew nothing about, and somehow have enough energy left to struggle back home.

"…I'm just trying to get a birthday present," I muttered. "He's an athlete."

The assistant tapped his chin. "All right. Well, this section's for water sports, so come this way." He led me to a rather narrow aisle and began to list items I could consider as a gift, from flashy watches and wristbands to heart rate monitors and joint supports. They all sounded perfect and ideal until my eyes scoured the yellow price tabs that marked up the shelves.

Considering the only source of my money was the life savings my mother had put aside for me, I had little to spend. I swallowed, gripped my crutches tight by their handles and uttered, "Actually…I think I'll give it a miss."

"Out of your price range, huh," said the assistant, not sounding too sympathetic. "You could always try the sale bin. It's right by the door."

So I limped over there next, and I cursed under my breath when my knees began to shake from the effort of pushing my weight along. I stuck my arm in the bin of junk, feeling past the fraying sweatbands and odd socks, and right at the bottom, I retrieved a pair of discs. Their surface was somewhat scratched and ever so slightly dented, but as soon as I turned them over in my hand to see the comical image of grinning fire, I felt a smile work its way onto my face. They were the exact shade of your hair, they had the same wild façade pasted over a fragile heart too shy to admit its existence.

They were cheap, second hand, and you deserved so much more than a simple pair of frisbees, but I couldn't seem to let them go. I cleared my throat and wrenched my upper body round. "…I'll take these."

-x-

Your birthday rolled round.

I was flat on my back, staring up into six pairs of eyes, slipping into the blurred pages of a storybook I had ready for myself. I had the vaguest sensation someone might have been holding my hand, but that was impossible because I didn't know anyone here, and even if I did, I would have been too frightened to initiate contact.

I pretended I was bound tight and safe next to you, and on the blank canvas in the freedom of anaesthesia, I sculpted a vibrant dream and imagined it was real and honest and plausible. I untied you from your scarf, and you untied me from my disease. A hungry wave rolled up to our feet, as quiet as a whisper. We held hands on the beach, and we watched our problems sail away from reach and sight.

For some reason, I woke up screaming.

-x-

Before my operation, I had politely asked you to not visit me until three days after the surgery. Despite our sour parting regarding the beach, I had been expecting you to disregard my request and visit early to spite me. However, you waited out the three days, and I forgave you for everything because of it.

You wandered into the ward with your face hidden behind a large bouquet of flowers, and you dropped them on the table with an audible grunt.

"Those are from my mum," you said, and set down a small tub, "and this is a slice of birthday cake from me. It might taste a bit stale – three days after all – but I kept it airtight and come on, it's chocolate, so it's going to be nice regardless."

"Thanks, Lea. And thanks for coming along."

You pushed your flowers to the centre, taking extra care to knock back other items that occupied that space. Your fingers lingered on the tag that labelled the flowers from your sister Lara, and your eyes fell on the get well soon card Megan had carefully stuck into a handmade basket of fruit.

"…I guess it was only me who listened to your three day rule," you remarked. You smiled, but it didn't quite reach extend to your eyes.

"I didn't ask them to wait three days," I admitted. I wanted you to at least sit down. You cut a surprisingly daunting figure, standing at the foot of my bed, but you appeared to have frozen.

"I know, Megan told me," you said finally. "She saw you only a few hours after your op and suggested it was good that I had stayed away because I'm 'too much'. Her exact words. I mean, it's hard to believe, but I do actually know how to be quiet." It ached to witness you behave so nonchalantly about something that was clearly bothering you.

"Lea, you're reading too much into it. The thing is…after surgery, I wasn't allowed to shower until this morning and it also takes a while for the pain and painkiller routine to kick in so I get pretty nasty. I didn't mind the others, but…I didn't want you seeing me looking gross and behaving foul, not if I could help it. That's all there was to it." I hit my remote to push the headrest of my bed up a little. "I'm feeling a lot better now that I'm properly drugged up."

The tenseness left your shoulders. For a moment, I thought you were going to shout at me but instead, you worked a shaky grin on your face and sighed. "I thought maybe I had done something wrong, or upset you in some way. More to the point, it doesn't matter to me how you look or behave. I think I'd cut you a bit of slack, given you've just had metal drilled into your bone."

"It matters to me."

You folded your arms slowly, as though you were embracing something invisible and pulling it into your heart. "Was the operation all right?"

"Yeah – the doctors said it's looking good. I'll be out in a few days and on crutches for the next three months. How was your birthday?"

"All right, except Elenar kept whinging about how there was nothing but prawn in the menu and wanted to go somewhere else. Dad said no, so she was in a sulk for most of the evening."

Finally, you sat down. You fidgeted with the drawstring pulls of your trousers, trying to paint over your nerves with a lofty voice. "So uh…I'm sorry about pressurising you to go to the beach. You know how I get ahead of myself. I wasn't trying to order you around, I promise."

I didn't quite know where to look that wouldn't make me ache with my own guilt, and I settled uncomfortably on the sharp point of your chin. "It's all right. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm sorry too."

I tried to dissect your expression and pin down your current emotion, but you were surprisingly unrelenting, preferring to wear an impenetrable mask of detachment.

An uneasy silence wriggled between us, and you used the time to pick dirt off the side of your shoes.

"Oh, I had almost forgot," I said after a moment. "Uh…there's a paper bag inside my overnight bag just down there." I pointed to my left. "It's your birthday present. Sorry, I couldn't wrap it."

"Don't be silly," you said. You yanked the zip and retrieved the crinkled brown paper. "This?"

You lifted up the frisbees and I strained to fix my gaze on you. I waited for disappointment to flit across your face before you masked it as your default of nonchalance. However, you never expressed any form of unhappiness.

"Brilliant," you breathed, and you rounded on me. "Do you know I've been dropped from the discus team? Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous! They put me on as a sub as if I wouldn't mind being second best, so I quit! These look more fun anyway. Hey, how fast d'you reckon these can go?"

You seemed to have forgotten you were in a confined hospital ward. Before I could stop you, you took one frisbee, swung your arm back and hurled it. It shot away, severe and scorching red against the pale skin of the room, and it smacked into the striped blinds with a colossal thud. I watched, in a perfect cross of horror and awe, as the blinds rippled and then slowly fell apart to scatter on the floor.

You burst into a quick and embarrassed laugh, and I realised with a sharp intake of my breath just how much I had missed our grins. You fidgeted with your remaining frisbee. "Whoops."

SAÏX, THE LUNA DIVINER

- thirty-one days after birth -

While I'm locked away in unconsciousness, my thoughts stumble over a pair of elegant items in the wreckage of my past. The stickers on them are dry and worn at the edges, and the plastic is dented from their overuse. If I remember right, they're deceivingly fast and damaging.

When I open my eyes, most of my vision is obstructed by something white. I try to blink it away.

"Don't move." Zexion's voice hovers above me. There is a forceful push to my chest, and it effortlessly renders me immobile. "I don't want you jeopardising my work. Stay still while I finish up."

I feel like I have been asleep for days.

There is a bitter smell, like old medicine or antiseptic. Zexion's hand comes towards my eyes, blotting out the light. Then, he starts to peel back what I think is my skin, until I realise it's not painful enough and what has happened instead, is that he's simply removed a gauze from my face.

"You can sit up now."

He gives the explicit order, but I find I can't. From this angle, Zexion cuts a tall and harsh figure. His visible eye rests on me without a trace of care. "I've minimised the damage as much as possible. You will, however, have a scar."

I try to touch the stinging pain between my eyes, yet my nerves make no confirmation my hands are there. I'm numb, frozen.

"Oh. You might feel a little drowsy," Zexion says, around a lazy smile. "I had you anaesthetised in order to treat a small error in your body. The Superior had noticed you were walking with the slightest limp, so I took the liberty of rectifying it. I had this removed."

And he holds up a bloody, telescopic rod between his fingers. It teeters in the idle grasp, and then Zexion sends it to the stone floor, out of my sight.

It screeches on impact. It breaks.

And to think, I once relied on that.

-x-

When you watch a frisbee, you know it doesn't just fly, it soars. It cuts the sky into two with a thick, bloody arc and when you watch it sail and spin, you often feel your own feet have lifted off the ground too.

When you throw a frisbee, you don't have to catch it. Despite its simple structure, it's durable, withstanding. It can get stuck in trees and skid into ponds and pick up dew and grass and it will pull through with the most minor of scratches.

When you see a frisbee, you tend to reach for it anyway. Most times, it knocks the tips of your fingers and leaves a stinging ache in the wake of that split second impact. Other times, it hits you straight on your chin. Every now and then, you fall over in a failed bid to keep up with it.

I've often wondered – why do we chase after the things we know aren't good for us?

-x-

There aren't any mirrors in the Castle halls. I suppose, as wandering ghosts of this secluded palace, we are not keen to be reminded we still have a shape. Xigbar stares for an unusually long time. He has just come back from an errand and is wringing rain out of his hair, when his yellow eyes linger on my own. He might look stunned for just a moment, but I'm convinced I have imagined it for he quickly breaks into an amused grin.

"Hey, Saïx." He wanders over and the point of an arrowgun rests comfortably on the bridge of my nose. "Careful where you look. Anyone would think you're provoking us."

I move the gun away with a lazy arm. "I'm looking for Lea."

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Xigbar answers. "Axel's being treated by Vexen at the moment. There's something wrong with his left arm and he needs it seen to. I see you've recovered well from Zexion's treatment."

I vaguely recall the sinking world of my unconscious, of being flat on my back, oblivious to the errors of my body. I look down at my legs and try to recall if I have limped at all since leaving the treatment wing. And then I rewind further, to remember Zexion's fingers on my face. I had sustained an injury there, too. Xigbar's eyes roll towards the long line of windows, and I spot my reflection trapped in them.

"They did you well and proper, didn't they?" Xigbar favours me with a lopsided smile, murky and distorted in the rainy windowpane. "Still, at least it's nowhere prominent." He snorts to himself but I am barely paying attention.

At the sight of the fresh scar, I remember the prickly silence that had followed the searing pain of impact. I remember how you had looked more shocked than me. I had stood outside with blood running down my hands, but it was yours that had been shaking.

I turn back to Xigbar. He's still making comments about my face, so I cut him off midway. "What's wrong with Lea's arm?"

"You're asking the wrong guy." He gives an affable shrug. "He's been complaining that it hurts and is affecting his fighting. Vexen actually offers an olive branch and the next thing we know? Axel's hollering for us to leave his damn arm alone. The guy's a walking contradiction."

Xigbar exhales and waves his arms in a dramatic gesture to shrug off your enigma. He might not understand, but I'm already quite acquainted with your tendency to say one thing and mean the opposite. I can delve into the core of your childhood and retrieve barbed memories of occasions when you had grinned because you were angry, laughed because you were frightened, hurt because you cared.

"Hey, Saïx," Xigbar says after a moment. "I told you Axel was training. You're not allowed to interfere with that. Your job is to sit out. Superior's orders."

I ignore him and by extension, the Superior. I end up biting my tongue and flinching because there is something acidic in his words.

"Yeah, great chatting to you too, Saïx," Xigbar calls after my silence pointedly. "Always a barrel of laughs."

I fix my hood up to protect me from the rain, and then I head down the walkway that snakes round outer walls. There's a large hall at the east end of the Castle, buried in the three-sided niche of a gallery that is suspended from the spotless ceiling. The floor is sectioned by giant snowy columns, spliced by the deformed shadows of Dusks and Nobodies.

This is where you normally train with Lexaeus, and though I find you, you are barely training at all. Instead, you are perhaps letting Lexaeus vent his frustration by bruising every inch of your body. Your coat has been thrown haphazardly onto a table, where it drapes like an ugly, hollowed out carcass. Lexaeus delivers blow after blow, his large hands unbelievably adept, and your body twists from the strain.

"There is most certainly some lazy work on your left side," remarks Vexen. He sits on a chair away from the fight, poking at a computer keyboard. "Normally, we'd let that slide, but it seems such an unusual attribute for someone who thinks he is ambidextrous."

"I. Am. Ambidextrous," you manage between sharp breaths. Lexaeus goes for your temple and you throw out a chakram to defend yourself. Lexaeus retaliates by knocking it out of your grip with a single backhand.

"You shouldn't be so reliant on your weapons," Vexen says idly. "Control yourself. Find your strength beyond your element and chakrams. You need to become familiar with the raw essence of who you are before you can utilise your elemental attribute at its full potential."

"Yeah, well, at the moment I'm only getting familiar with Lexaeus' raw essence." You elbow him weakly, abruptly ending the training. "Fucking beast."

"Perhaps tomorrow then, since Lexaeus has done you in for the day," says Vexen. He clears up his desk and excuses himself with a gruff mutter. Lexaeus passes you a towel and then nods at me. "Saïx," he greets. He heads off to the showers.

Your shoulders tense as you turn round. You spend a few seconds training your gaze to settle on my eyes and not the scarred space between. Then, you sling your towel over your shoulders and beckon me over.

"Xigbar said your arm is giving you trouble."

You circle the shoulder in question and push a hand through your hair. "Vexen calls it a phantom ache," you reply, somewhat too evasively for my tastes. "You know, my thinking it aches is making it ache, basically. It's fine though, look."

You toss a chakram up and catch it a few times, and the spinning wheel skids dangerously close to awkward reminiscence.

"It's not like you to be weak," I comment. You don't say anything, and because you don't, I start to wonder if this is a fatal assumption I have made before. I have always hidden behind the toughness of your arrogance, letting you phrase my emotions and thoughts better than I ever could. No one knows me better than you do, and maybe the burden of being my keeper has created fractures, driven cracks of uncertainty into your empowering overconfidence.

Slowly, as though wordlessly telling me I can step away if I want, you bring a finger to trace my scar. Your touch is coarse and it stings, a nettle remorseful of its talent. Your mouth contorts and you manage to squeeze an impressive amount of fury in a single blink, but no words leave you.

I lean across and kiss your left shoulder, and I feel your muscles relax in response to my forgiveness, and that's all I need. You don't have to apologise because you don't mean it. What had happened was a spark of true and honest reaction. You had struck me to protect me from the Superior, and I can forgive you for that instinct.

I don't, however, forgive the Superior.

-x-

There's a page in my book of written consciousness that doesn't make sense, no matter how I adjust its orientation and try to think outside the box. It isn't like a star chart, which, unless it is held at the right angle, will always be a spatter of random dots. It appears to be a cross between text and pictures, spanning six pages, the ink spilling right to the edges of the paper in curious letters, symbols and angular markings. I remember scrawling this text, treating it like a language I had created and nurtured myself. I remember idly thinking just one wrong letter, an extra space, and the entire sequence is ruined – but I'm not sure why. The more I try to harness my runaway thoughts, injecting some consciousness to them, the blurrier they become.

There are a lot of things I don't understand about myself, and it frustrates me to think all the answers are with you, so tantalisingly close. It should comfort me, that I have such an efficient keeper, yet I cannot seem to get past the callous possibility that being ignorant of the truth is exactly what is rendering me useless. You know more than I do and, like always, you take the hits more than I do. You behave like you're the sole barrier between me and a destructive storm, and maybe you are, but what you are doing isn't doing either of us any good.

You want to protect someone who doesn't want it.

I want to protect someone who doesn't need it.

It's an odd place, the Castle. Whenever I admire the stark architecture, flawlessly beautiful with its limited palette, it's only a little later that I realise it's all done by the Superior's hand. That he has crafted the Castle and all her inhabitants is a simple fact I seem to struggle to acknowledge. I suppose I have never been fond of architects and their need to build, as though just being sand or clay or granite by itself is not enough to impress.

I stretch across the vast surface of the half wall. The suspended walkway over the Castle's east wing shivers in the wind and for a moment, I think you're standing with me, in it together, two pairs of feet in the wet sand, two pairs of hands pushing out the raft.

I grasp the thick handle of the urn. It's an adornment on the rocky walkway, until I snap it by the base and it becomes unhinged from the newel post. It almost sings when my fingernails flick its bulbous belly. I set the urn on the wall and look below me at the vast expanse of the east wing's corridor. The Superior and Xigbar are buried in the darkness with their coats, but I only need to close my eyes to listen as their footsteps echo a change from the concrete tiles to the metal grills in the centre.

"I don't like being told what to do," I explain, and then I push the urn off and watch it dive.

A/N: Thank you for reading this far. This fic is single handedly responsible for me unloading my temptations for all things purple. I tend to waffle on a bit with this fic, particularly with Saix, but I hope you enjoyed this update all the same. Comments and feedback, as always, make for a very happy author. See you next time!