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 Six: Tentatio-onis (trial, attack, duration, temptation, judgment)
"This may never start, tearing out my heart; I'd be your memory. Lost your sense of fear (I'd be your memory), feelings disappear…can I be your memory? So get back, back, back to where we lasted, just like I imagine, I could never feel this way. So get back, back, back to the disaster, my heart's beating faster, holding on to feel the same." –Sugarcult, 'Memory'
"Shit." I said as a heartless—a gigantic fucker that looked far more human than a heartless should—brought itself up to its full height. Not eager to find out what it planned to do, I turned around and wrenched the door open. I found myself face-to-face with a surprised Hayner, who blinked at me before his eyes widened, seeing what was behind me. I started to push him back inside, but could only cry out as the giant heartless grabbed me, startling me into dropping Hyperion. "Shi-i-it!"
"Oh my goodness!" Aerith exclaimed behind Hayner.
I tried to yell at my gunblade, in hopes that it would come when summoned, but instead yelled, "Hayner, run!"
He looked like he wanted to, but the little chickenwuss was too stubborn or proud or something to listen to whatever common sense there was in this sort of situation. Instead, he grabbed Hyperion from where I had dropped it, obviously intending to fight as the others surged out of the house behind him.
"I said run, you fucking idi-oh!" I yelped as this huge-ass sword flew out of nowhere and cut off the heartless' arm, sending me and it to the ground. The arm dissipated; I bruised my ass.
"Here." Hayner grabbed one of my hands and yanked me to my feet, pushing Hyperion into the hand he had helped me up with and crouching into a fighting stance. "Let's kick some heartless ass, shall we?"
"You're a dumbass, you know that?" I rolled my eyes as we went back to back, facing the circle of heartless that had surrounded us.
"And you're a smart ass." He retorted. "We make a good pair, yeah?"
Before I could answer, he threw himself into the heartless, pummeling them. Now, don't tell the lamer I told you so, but he can fight damn well with his fists. He's shit with a Struggle Bat, mind you, and I could always beat him when I had one, but when it was a hand-to-hand battle I'll admit that he was better than me. Mostly. Whenever I won those, it was due to sheer brute force or the fact that he lost his head when he got pissed. I was better at channeling my anger than him.
In any case, the point of all that is to let you know that he kicked the shit out of those heartless bastards without needing any sort of weapon to help. The rest of us did, however…though I'm not sure if Merlin's magic could be considered a weapon, technically.
But that's not important.
What's important, though it rather pains me to recall it, is what happened a few minutes after the battle began.
As I was fighting one of the more humanoid heartless—not one of the big ones, but the ones Aerith called 'Neoshadows'—I heard Hayner yell for me to look out. As I whipped around, ready to take out whatever was attacking me, a blur appeared out of nowhere. A giant fucking key buried itself in the attacking Neoshadow's head, and it exploded like the heartless did whenever you destroyed them with a cloud of smoke and a disappearing heart.
I looked at the person who had thrown it, but the spiky cinnamon locks and friendly smile were almost immediately replaced by windswept blonde hair and an angry scowl. The sight of the person who had set this whole mess into motion struck me immobile for a moment, and that moment was all it took for a heartless to skewer me from behind.
I screamed, my back arching as the area surrounding the heartless' hand burned with a cold that spread throughout the rest of my body so quickly as to seem instantaneous. I half-blacked out, disoriented as memories began to impose themselves on me; things I had most definitely never seen before, in this life or the life I had led pre-Ansem.
Through the pain of the attack, I could see one of the Neoshadows shifting and morphing into Hayner, accepting a heart with a greedy smile on his face before it melted into the easy smirk I knew so well. Along with some instructions that I couldn't hear (as it turns out, the heartless are deaf), he was given a small blue marble, which I realized with a start was one of the crystals from the Struggle Trophy. Then Hayner disappeared, and the memories shifted into broken ones of the kid who was and wasn't Roxas attacking countless heartless with that giant key weapon of his, then to an angry boy with silver hair, and—
Then, suddenly, I gasped as the memories were abruptly pushed out of my mind. I coughed and choked as my body struggled to reorient, shivering so uncontrollably that I couldn't breathe. I felt someone put a blanket around me, followed by a set of arms, and I practically threw myself into the soothing warmth the embrace provided. People talked around me, the voices sounding borderline frantic, but I couldn't make out the words. I was shaking too hard, my teeth chattering and causing a steady, noisy commotion in my head.
"Shit." I finally said, stuttering a bit since I still hadn't managed to warm up.
"He's talking!" Someone said.
"You think?" Hayner's voice drawled. "You okay, Seifer?"
I muttered something, burrowing further into the warm grip of whoever was holding me. Later, the fact that I had done something so vulnerable would rankle, but at the time I was too focused on getting warm to care.
"Yeah…how about repeating that so that humans can hear? Goofy isn't around, so that whole 'talking so softly only dogs can understand you' thing isn't gonna work, dumbass."
"I said: no I'm not damn well okay, because I feel like someone dumped me in a fucking pool of goddamn ice, you shit headed son of a bitch. 'M fucking cold."
"Does he always curse this much?" Someone asked. This is a different someone from the first someone, mind you—I got the feeling there were several of them.
"Only when he's pissed off." Hayner said. "Which, admittedly, is most of the time."
"Shut the fuck up." I finally pulled away from whoever it was holding me, shaking my head and blinking my eyes open and closed rapidly to try and clear them. "Inconsiderate bastards."
"Better now?"
I glanced at Hayner, who was the one who had been hugging me. His head was cocked to one side as he regarded me worriedly, and I stifled my instinct to burrow myself in his arms again.
"I," I drew myself up huffily, "fucking hate being cold."
Hayner snorted. "If that's all you have to say, you're fine. Idiot." He shoved Hyperion at me. "Here's your damn sword."
I frowned at the gunblade. There was something niggling at the corner of my mind. A sword? No, but something similar to it. A…a bat? A Struggle bat?
"The Struggle Trophy!" I blurted as the heartless memory rushed back into my head.
"Excuse me?" Aerith asked, since I had been facing her when I remembered.
"The fucking Trophy!" I said, like she was supposed to know what in the hell I was talking about. I looked around wildly for a moment before I saw who I was looking for—the boy who wasn't Roxas (and whose name I kept forgetting). "You! What's your name?"
"…What?" He asked, blinking, obviously startled.
"Your name, you stupid shit!" I said. "What the fuck is it?"
"Sora!" He said, still looking stuck between confused and flabbergasted.
"Yeah, Sora." I said. "You still have that crystal from the Struggle Trophy I gave you?"
"…Yeah, why?" He asked suspiciously.
"Do you have it with you?" I demanded.
"Yes." He said slowly.
"Do you have the one from the alternate Twilight Town, too?"
"How do you know about—?"
"Don't ask me fucking questions! Do you have the damn crystal what-the-fuck, or don't you?"
"Yes, yes, here!" He said, pulling a pouch out of his pocket and fishing around in it for a moment. He pulled out the crystal (how he knew it was the one I was talking about when it was a perfect replica of the other, I don't know) and threw it at me.
"Seifer? The fuck?" Hayner asked.
I ignored him, standing and tossing the crystal up into the air before slicing it in half with Hyperion. The two halves glowed for a moment, then turned black and fell to the ground, shattering upon impact.
No one spoke for a moment.
"Yeah, that? That was weird." A girl with red hair, wearing a pink dress with a god awful amount of zippers, broke the silence. "Like…really weird."
"What exactly was that?" Asked a guy with long silvery hair.
"That…was me, destroying a crystal that may or may not have been cursed." I said evasively.
"Seifer." Hayner said. "How did you know to destroy it?"
"It…when that thing…when it…y'know." Damn, it really was hard to talk about that shit—Hayner hadn't just been acting like his usual lame self. "I saw it. Up here." I tapped my head, none too articulate. "The Queen gave it to you after she gave you a heart, so I figured it was bad, right?"
Hayner shrugged. "Probably. I don't really remember anything about…about before."
"Before what?" A guy with spiky blonde hair not unlike Sora's (well, besides the fact that it was blonde, of course) asked.
I stared at him. "Maybe…introductions, first?" I asked, waving a hand at him and the other two newcomers.
"Oh! I'm sorry, how rude of us not to introduce anyone." Aerith said. "They already met Hayner. Seifer, you know Sora, of course, so these are his best friends, Kairi and Riku. And this is one of my dearest friends, Cloud."
"Right, okay. You came to Twilight Town for a while, right?" I asked Kairi.
She nodded, frowning a little. "Not by choice, but…yeah."
"Enough distractions." Leon said. "What, exactly, is going on with you two? I know what's up with you, mostly." He pointed at me. "But the rest of it…"
"We don't know, exactly." I said. "I mean, neither of us remembers a lot from before we were in Twilight Town. We remember some from the other Twilight Town, but…" I shrugged.
"You already told us where Seifer came from." Hayner said, twiddling his fingers together the way he always did when he was nervous (don't ask why I know that). "But we…we found out where I'm from this morning. When I…when that heartless attacked me."
"You want me to tell it?" I asked. He was trembling again; not as bad as either of us had been at first, but still trembling.
He nodded jerkily, wrapping his arms around himself.
"Hayner…Hayner's a heartless." I said.
"What?" Everyone around me yelled.
"Was a heartless." I corrected myself. "He doesn't remember it, not really, but when those things start stealing your heart…they have a shared memory, and you start sharing it, too. I don't know what he saw, but it was enough for him to know what he is. I saw him getting a heart from the Queen and then she gave him that crystal to give to Roxas."
"But he didn't give it to Roxas." The silver haired kid, Riku, pointed out. "He put it on the Struggle Trophy. Right?"
I gave him a dry look. "Roxas is—was—the Keyblade Master's Nobody, right? So of course he would win the Tournament, dumbass. All Hayner had to do was make sure Roxas entered the Tournament and took the crystal off of the Trophy."
"That's why I got so upset when it seemed like he forgot." Hayner said, blanching.
"It's not your fault, chickenwuss. It—"
"How isn't it my fault, Seifer?" He asked. "I chose to be this…this…whatever I am!" He squeezed his eyes shut, tears streaking down his face. "Shit, I don't even know what I am."
"You're a person." I said.
"No, I'm not!" He said. "I'm a heartless!" He laughed bitterly. "I'm not even one of those, am I? I mean, I didn't know what I was doing to Roxas the whole time I was doing it! I could still be working for her and I wouldn't have any idea! I could be trying to kill you, or—or something else and I wouldn't know until it was too late!" He jerked suddenly and clamped a hand over his mouth. "I…I think I'm gonna be sick."
He stumbled to the sink and vomited, coughing and crying as he continued to gag, dry heaving when what little breakfast he'd been able to eat was gone.
No one said anything as I walked over to him and put a hand on his back.
"Lamer."
He hiccuped loudly.
"Hayner, look at me." I said, moving my hand up to his shoulder and squeezing it when he didn't look.
Finally, he glanced at me, hiccuping again. "What?"
"D'you want to kill me?" I asked.
He balked. "No! Of course I don't! I don't want to kill anyone!" He insisted.
"Then you won't." I said. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, okay?"
"I'm not gonna have a choice, Seifer!" He said.
"You always have a choice." I snapped. "And I have the scars to prove that you have never done anything you didn't want to do, no matter who told you to do it."
"I got Roxas into the Struggle Tournament, didn't I?" He asked sullenly.
"Yeah, because you love Struggling even if you suck at it. I could have told you to enter that tournament and you'd have done it, because when you want to do something you'll do it no matter what. And when you don't want to do something you don't do it no matter what." I said. "You made Roxas enter the tournament because he's your best friend, which is also why you got upset when he forgot. It had nothing to do with you being an ex-heartless."
"But I—"
"Nothing. To do. With. It." I repeated. "So suck it the fuck up, lamer, because I am not wiping your damn nose every time you decide to wallow in self-pity, got me?"
He hiccuped again, sniffled, and nodded, strangely subdued in spite of my barbed words.
I opened my mouth to say something else, hoping to get him out of this sudden (though not surprising) funk he had gone into, when my stomach let out a loud, demanding growl. My mouth snapped shut again as I blushed ever so slightly.
"I'll make brunch!" Aerith said with forced cheerfulness, gathering up the still food-laden plates. "I don't think anyone got much breakfast, and this food's already cold."
I reached forward and turned on the water, wrinkling my nose at the remaining bile in the sink.
"I have a question." Riku asked as Hayner and I sat down. "Who is this 'Queen' person you were talking about? The one that gave Hayner a heart and all?"
We exchanged a glance, then shrugged.
"All I know is that she apparently controls the heartless, somehow." I said. "They call her the Queen."
"The only person I know of who controls the heartless was Maleficent." Sora said, frowning. "But I don't think she actually controlled them, just…directed them, I guess. Guided them."
"The Queen definitely controls them." Hayner said.
"What'd that Maleficent woman look like?" I asked.
"Well…she had green skin and horns, and—"
"That's not the Queen." Hayner and I cut Sora off in unison.
"Here, lemme have a piece of paper and a pencil." I said, accepting them from Cloud when he brought them. I did a quick sketch of the Queen as well as I could remember her: the spiked golden crown, the long cloak with a ridiculously tall collar, the purple dress with exaggerated, fur-lined sleeves, and the statuesque expression that made me feel cold just remembering it. "This is the Queen."
"She's pretty." Kairi said.
"The only thing that's pretty about her is her face." Hayner practically spat, surprising all of us with the acidic tone in his voice. "Even the heartless hate her as much as they can when they don't have hearts. I…I would rip my own heart out and give it to a heartless rather than spend one second near her. She's a monster and I hate her!"
"Don't you think you're overreacting a little?" Leon asked.
"I am not overreacting!" Hayner yelled, his eyes flickering to yellow and then back again. "You have no idea what she's like!"
"And you do?" Leon asked. "I thought you didn't remember anything?"
Hayner let out a frustrated sigh and gave me a helpless look.
"The memories are there." I said. "Just…muffled and scrambled, and you can't…can't just bring them to the forefront of your mind whenever you want to, like with normal memories. You just know…I mean, they're just there. And maybe they…maybe they spring forward sometimes, or maybe you know something that you don't remember knowing, or feel something for reasons you don't remember, but that doesn't mean they aren't real. Or there. Or…whatever."
Hayner nodded, drawing his legs up into his chair and wrapping his arms around them. "Can we talk about something else, now? My head's starting to hurt."
Leon snorted, but Aerith took pity on us and changed the subject, asking Sora what he and the other two were doing in Radiant Gardens. I probably should have been listening to the conversation, but I was too busy wondering how long these memories would tumble around in Hayner and my heads before we both went insane.
End Chapter Six