Remembering the Forgotten
By: Ellipsis the Great
DISCLAIMER: Kingdom Hearts and everything affiliated with it belongs to SquareEnix and Disney. All I own is the plot…although the original idea came from orangediscord's one-shot 'Left Behind.'
Summary: Sometimes, I thought I was the only person who remembered him…eventual Seiner, other pairings unknown.
Rated: M.
Spoilers: Takes place after Kingdom Hearts II; I dunno how much of the plot will be included yet, though.
Warnings: Yaoi and a little angst (probably). More warnings later if needed.
Chapter One: Effluo (to vanish, be forgotten, become known)
"I'm so tired but I can't sleep; standin' on the edge of something much too deep. It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word. We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard. But I will remember you…will you remember me?" –Sarah McLachlan, 'I Will Remember You'
I bit my lip as I wandered around the library, where the entries for the contest were being showcased. Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I carefully avoided going anywhere near my own painting, instead observing the rest. Some were actually pretty good—and I'm not just being an arrogant ass, there. My school wasn't exactly known for spitting out the best artists around, if you know what I mean. In fact, most considered us to be progressing backward in the art department. Miss Astor was all the time saying that I was probably the best artist to be in my highschool since…well, ever, actually. And while I was a very confident person, I accepted the fact that she was just happy to have someone around who was even moderately artistically inclined and was probably over-exaggerating quite a bit.
"Slim pickings as usual." I overheard someone sighing as they looked at a really bad painting of…an animal, maybe? Wait, it was supposed to be a moogle…? Jesus Christ son of the Virgin Mary, even a Kindergartner could have painted a better fucking likeness…they're fucking moogles. You just draw a fucking stuffed animal and give it an antenna. How do you fuck them up that badly?
Never mind. I probably didn't want to know.
"That painting with the funny Latin name is pretty good." Someone else said.
"Yeah, but it doesn't say who the painter is." The first person replied, then snickered. "I bet Miss Astor entered it so there would be something decent around here!"
"You think Miss Astor could do something that dark?" The second person asked skeptically.
"You think anyone else around here could?" The first person retorted, and then they walked out of my hearing range.
I felt myself scowling. Part of me wanted to just tell the stupid fuckers that it was mine, and of course Miss Astor couldn't draw something that fucking dark. The sensible part of me (which does, in fact, exist—no matter what the lamer and his gang might tell you) reigned that part in by saying that doing so would just alert my father to what I was really up to after school.
See, my dad was one of those judgmental dumb fucks who think all artists are gay, crazy, and/or overly emotional. In other words, he hated them and could never, ever find out that I painted. He thought I was Struggling every afternoon after school instead of painting, and luckily for me I was a fucking natural Struggler, which meant that I seemed to be improving even though I didn't practice much. But if he found out the truth…
That'd be a bad day at the Almasy household. Let's leave it at that, shall we?
The whole thing was over pretty damn quickly, and the results for the competition were to be announced the next day. Sadly, I was completely sure I was going to win. I say 'sadly' because I'm a competitive son of a bitch even when I don't want to be in the competition. To have no opposition at all just rubbed me the wrong fucking way.
Once I was sure everyone was gone, I drifted over to where my painting had been hung…
And nearly tripped over Hayner Duncan, who was sitting in front of it, knees brought up to his chest as he stared at it like a man possessed.
"What the fuck, chickenwuss?" I demanded angrily as I regained my balance.
"Watch where you're fucking going, Seifer." He snapped back, giving me a disgruntled look that was actually almost…endearing?
"Don't sit in the middle of the fucking floor." I said. "Dumbass."
He snorted, rolled his eyes, and looked back at my painting, an odd expression coming to his face.
I looked from the painting, to him, and back again a few times. "What? You got a problem with it?" I asked defensively.
"No, I just…" He cut himself off, looking down and worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. "Never mind. It's stupid."
I closed my eyes and counted to eight. I had been trying to count to ten, but that never really staved off my temper any so I almost always ended early.
"Just tell me what the fuck it is, lamer." I said, crossing my arms over his chest.
"I…I think I know the person in the painting." He said.
"You know him?" I asked incredulously.
"I told you it was stupid." He said, blushing.
I snorted and plopped down beside him. "So? What makes you think you know him?"
"Because I've…been noticing things lately. Weird things." He said, careful not to look at me "Like…something's missing, only I don't remember exactly what." He shook his head. "No, I know what. It's a person. Someone who…was really close to me. I don't remember a lot, just little things…like how he liked sea salt ice cream. And I remember his name. But I couldn't remember his face until I looked at this painting."
I arched an eyebrow at him. "The painting's smeared."
"I know that, you ass." He said, scowling at me. "I just…remembered what he looked like when I saw it, okay? I told you it was stupid."
"Right." I said. "So…what's his name, then?"
"His name's Roxas." He said.
It was like I'd been hit with something big, heavy, and hard…like a grand piano. Just like that, things started coming together in my head—who the Boy was…why he pissed me off…all that shit.
"He was…" Hayner began.
"Your best friend." I finished for him, eyes wide.
He jerked a little, looking at me with eyes even wider than mine.
"Did you paint this?" He asked.
I nodded jerkily. "I couldn't remember his name, but I knew his face."
"What a pair we make." He mused almost bitterly, leaning his head on his knees so that he was looking at me. "So what now?"
"What do you mean, what now?" I asked. "Who cares about this Roxas kid, huh? He's gone. He might not even exist, chickenwuss."
"But what if he does?" He asked. "And everyone's forgotten him but us. Doesn't that mean something? Anything?" He shook his head a little. "It's gotta mean something."
"Even if it does…why would I remember him? I hated him." I said.
"Maybe that's why. You hated him, and he was my best friend. We're the ones that felt the strongest for him, so we're the ones that remember him."
"There has to be a reason why everyone else forgot him." I pointed out.
"But that doesn't mean they were supposed to forget him." He counteracted.
"I don't even fucking care!" I exploded, clasping my head in my hands.
"If you didn't care, you would've fucking left already!" He yelled. "We have to go find him, Seifer. Or at least we have to find out what happened to him."
"Why should I?" I asked, jaw tilting up challengingly.
"Because it'll fucking bug you until you do." He said, voice taunting. "Plus, you're the leader of the Disciplinary Committee, right? That means protecting all of Twilight Town's citizens—even the ones you don't like and even the ones no one else remembers."
I made a face, but nodded. "Fine. But how in the fuck are we supposed to find him? He's not gonna be in fucking Twilight Town, obviously."
"The last time I saw him…he was making a big deal about that mansion just outside of town." Hayner said.
"The one that's supposed to be haunted?" I asked doubtfully.
He nodded. "We should start there."
I pursed my lips.
"We have to do something, Seifer." He said insistently.
"Fine. But you're really stupid, just so you know." I said.
"If we find something, you totally have to suck it up and apologize." He decided, standing and offering his hand to me.
I looked from it up to his face, then took it and allowed him to help me stand.
(PAGEBREAK,Y'KNOW?)
"I still think this is really stupid, lamer." I said as we looked up at the 'haunted' mansion. "What if we're having some kind of shared hallucination?"
"You don't even like to share air with me." He said. "You wanna think we're sharing some sort of weird hallucination? About a boy no less?"
"Hmph."
He laughed. "C'mon, Seifer."
He grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the door, the gate already open. I was really starting to get freaked out, and tapped his head gently (for me, anyhow) with the Struggle Bat I'd brought. He'd brought his, too—'just in case we need them,' he said.
"Oi." He said, frowning at me.
I looked pointedly down at our hands, and he blushed and jerked his away like he thought mine was fucking diseased or something.
I let out a small, dry laugh and brushed past him into the mansion, eyes darting around the place suspiciously.
"This place is a fucking dump." I said as we walked inside.
"It's been abandoned for ages, idiot." He said.
"Watch who you're calling idiot, lamer." I said.
"Then you'd just accuse me of stalking you, idiot." He said.
I started, blinking at him. "Excuse me?"
"If I watched you." He explained. "You would say I was stalking you."
I frowned.
"Well, you would." He said.
I rolled my eyes, suddenly catching sight of the stairs. "Upstairs, then?"
"Alright." He said, following behind me. Upstairs was just as ratty as down, with rooms that might have been even more ill-kept, until we reached the one at the end of the hall.
That room was white—eerily white. The only color came from the crude drawings scattered along the wall, which seemed to be telling a story…
"That's Roxas." Hayner said, pointing.
"And there's the kid that looks like him." I agreed, cocking my head to one side as I studied the pictures. "They're…are they supposed to be one person?"
"Something like that, I think." Hayner mused, suddenly giving me an odd look.
"What?" I asked.
"We aren't fighting yet." He said. "It's fucking weird."
"We're also looking at pictures of a boy who may or may not exist and his…counterpart, I guess?" I said, not entirely sure that that was the best one to describe what the brunette—Sora?—was to Roxas. "And we're apparently searching for that boy. And maybe his counterpart. I think we've officially crossed over into the Twilight Zone."
"Or the X-Files." He said, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.
I blinked, then shook my head. "You're right. This is fucking bizarre."
He actually laughed, then. His laugh was deep, from his stomach. My grandmother always said that you could tell a lot about a person by their laugh—she would've liked Hayner's. I did; it was almost a soothing sound, actually. I just didn't like him.
"So…what now?" I grumbled, scratching my head awkwardly.
"Let's go back downstairs and check out some of the rooms. Maybe there's something there."
I nodded, and we went back downstairs. We ended up in a library of sorts, and just for shits and giggles started messing around with the books—you know, like in those old horror movies? Where there's a switch hidden among the books and all that? Yeah, that was the excuse we gave ourselves for it. Mostly we were just bored.
Eventually, though, that got boring, too. So we did what all virile young men do when they're bored—we started beating the shit out of each other with our Struggle Bats.
And then things started happening, because I shoved Hayner back into a statue situated in a little niche on the bookshelf.
There was a small shudder of the earth beneath our feet, followed by some nasty grating sounds. We jumped out of the way, pressing ourselves up against the wall and exchanging a wide-eyed, 'holy shit' look.
Slowly, as the floor was replaced by a set of stairs and we realized that nothing was coming after us, we relaxed.
"To the basement?" Hayner suggested, already going downstairs without.
"This is usually the part in the horror flick when the baddie shows up and someone dies." I muttered darkly, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I followed warily behind.
"You're really fucking paranoid, you know that?" Hayner snickered.
"Doesn't mean people aren't following me." I said. A split second later, I grabbed Hayner's wrist and jerked him behind me, holding my bat out threateningly at a shadow that had just popped up out of the fucking floor. "Holy fuck!"
"What in the hell is that thing?" Hayner asked, fumbling with his own bat.
"I don't fucking know, but I know I'm gonna fucking kill the little bastard!" I said, lunging forward and hitting it hard with my bat.
It burst into a shower of munny, little green balls and bubbles (I fucking kid you not), the latter two of which made me feel a little better for some reason. Hayner seemed to have the same reaction as me, and we looked at each other for a long time before nodding (in fucking unison, as if things weren't spooky enough already) and continuing on. I kept one arm out a bit, stopping Hayner from passing me even though he didn't seem to want to pass. The other arm held my bat, obviously, and I kept jumping at every little noise and swinging it around blindly since the lights were so fucking dim I could hardly see the fucking floor, much less those weird shadow monster things.
"Computers." Hayner said suddenly, finally moving past me to inspect the electronic equipment that practically filled the room.
"No shit, Sherlock." I said.
"We should get Pence down here—he's good with this stuff." He said, ignoring my previous statement.
"Well la-dee-da for him." I said, still eyeing the shadows around us warily.
I heard him press buttons behind me.
"What the fuck are you doing, lamer?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder briefly.
"If I press enough buttons, something's bound to happen sooner or later." He said vaguely, still pushing buttons. "Doncha think?"
I looked up at the heavens like they could help me, then shut my eyes and shook my head with an annoyed sigh. The gods hated me, I was sure.
"Invalid entry." A computer voice said. "Please try again."
"Shit, what'd you do now?" I asked.
"Defense sequence activated."
"Defense—shit!" Hayner yelped when a beam suddenly shot out of the computer and hit him. He froze and seemed to have been covered in a green grid of some sort, and then he fucking disappeared.
"What the fuck?" I yelled, hitting one of the monitors with my bat. "Give him back, you piece of shit machine!"
"Second intruder sighted. Defense sequence activated."
"No fucking—" I began, but was cut off when the beam hit me.
Everything went black.
End Chapter One