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.
Warnings: Yaoi and some angst. More warnings later if needed.
Chapter Fourteen: Commoveo (to move violently, disturb, shake, upset)
"Fear is only in our minds but it's taking over all the time. You poor sweet innocent thing, dry your eyes and testify. You know you live to break me. Don't deny. Sweet sacrifice." –Evanescence, 'Sweet Sacrifice'
"Seifer! Seifer, wake up!"
I muttered something sleepily, swatting at the hand that was shaking my shoulder as I sat up.
"Fuck's happenin'?" I slurred, yawning and scratching my head.
"Unfortunately, no." I heard Cid's amused voice say. "We're here."
"And we can't get Hayner to wake up." Sora added.
I gave him a disgruntled look. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"Well, you've known him the longest." Sora said. "And…and I think he's having a nightmare, so he should wake up."
"Right." I said. I wasn't exactly the most articulate person in the mornings. I stood, shaking my head a little to clear it. (Not that that did anything but make me dizzy.) "Yo, lamer, wake up."
From his seat across the aisle from mine, Hayner made this funny half-groan, half-whimper of a sound. I sighed, exasperated.
"Lamer. Earth to lamer, wake the fuck up." I smacked his head. "Christ, and here I thought I was hard to wake up." I grabbed his shoulders and shook him lightly. "Oi, chickenwuss, get off your fat lazy ass and wake up before I fucking pour a bucket of cold water on you."
And then I saw something I really didn't need to see: a tear rolled down his face. Now, I know it's lame and weird and whatever else, but I cannot stand to see anyone cry. Seriously, if I saw that Squall bastard or even that stupid bitch the Queen start crying, I'd fucking bend over backwards trying to get them to stop. It's one of the very few weaknesses I possess—which means that if you tell anyone and I find out about it (which I will, mind you), you are fucked. And not in the good way, either.
"Oh, hell." I cursed under my breath. I leaned over him, putting a hand on his cheek to wipe the tear off but leaving it there for some reason best left unnamed. "Chi—Hayner. Wake up, man, you're kind of freaking me out now." I slapped his cheek lightly. "I said wake up, Hayner."
Hayner's nose scrunched up and he took a deep breath the way people do when they've just woken up. His eyes fluttered open, blinking for a moment before focusing on me. That's about the time I realized how fucking close our faces were. One of his eyebrows arched upward.
"I hate to break it to you, but I'm not Sleeping Beauty and kissing me won't wake me up." He said as apologetically as he probably could with the way his damn mouth was trying to suppress a smile. "I know I've just crushed all of your dreams, Seifer. I'm sorry."
Asshole.
"I've met Sleeping Beauty!" Sora spoke up cheerfully. "She's really nice!"
"Shut up, Sora." I said, straightening (And yeah, I know—bad gay joke just waiting to happen). "And you," I pointed at Hayner, "Are nowhere near cute enough to be Sleeping Beauty."
"And you're nowhere near hot enough to be my Prince Charming." Hayner shrugged. "That's the way of things, I guess."
I closed my eyes, trying really hard not to punch him like my fist was itching to do. And somehow, I managed to suppress the urge. For once. "Right, whatever. You have a nightmare or something?"
Hayner flinched and paled suddenly, though I don't think it had anything to do with me wanting to punch him. "Or…something." He murmured.
"Yeah? What about?"
"Nothing." He said, and changed the subject rather lamely. "Hey, are we at Radiant Gardens, yet?"
"Yes." I said irritably. "If it was nothing, why were you fucking crying, huh?"
"It's none of your business. Can I go, now, Mom? I need to talk to Aerith."
"You're the leader, remember? Do what you fucking want." I sneered.
"Don't tell me I hurt your feelings." He said, mimicking my tone.
"At least I have feelings." I said, letting my eyes drop to his chest.
He followed my gaze, face contorting as he realized what I was talking about. "You…you know what? Fuck you, you prick!" He took a swing at me.
"Not even on a good day, lamer." I retorted as I dodged his fist and turned to leave. "I'm going to go see if Tron has any information about the Queen. You go cry your fucking heart out to Aerith, and let me know when you're finished, oh captain my goddamned captain."
"Go to hell!" He said.
"As long as you aren't there, it'd be my pleasure!" I said, and stormed out of the ship.
And don't give me that look. I know it was childish. I knew that even back then. The thing is, I didn't fucking care. I was too pissed off and vindictive and just plain filled-with-teenage-angst to care. Just call me Harry fucking Potter—I even have a scar on my forehead.
I stomped—yeah, stomped, like a petulant five-year-old—all the way to that stupid damn castle where the computer was. And luckily for me, the Asshole (a.k.a. Squall) was nowhere in sight. I didn't want to deal with that son of a bitch on top of everything else.
"Hey, Tron, you there?" I asked, plopping into the seat in front of the keyboard.
"Seifer? You're still in Radiant Gardens?" Tron's mechanical voice asked.
"Just got back." I said vaguely. "Look, could you run a search engine for me?"
"I'm a defense program." His voice somehow managed to sound even more deadpan than usual.
"…That's a no, then?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Yes that's a no, or yes you can do it?"
"I'll get Yori."
I rolled my eyes and waited.
"Hello again, user Seifer."
"Hi, Yori. I need to run a search engine."
"That's what Tron said. What do you need to search?"
"The Queen."
"What Queen do you mean? That's a very broad search subject."
"Okay, fine, um…Snow White's stepmother. That Queen. I dunno her real name." I said.
"Alright, let's see…beginning search now…search finished. I'll put up an image—is this the Queen you meant?" She asked sweetly as a picture of the Queen showed up.
"Yeah, that's her." I muttered irritably, leaning forward in my seat. "Show me what you found."
Several windows appeared on the screen.
"Her real name is Queen Agariste. She truly is a princess, but secured her title as 'queen' through deception and dark magycks. About a year after her marriage to Snow White's father, she poisoned him and framed his most loyal advisor, executing him before any sort of defense could be raised. Then she attempted to have Snow White killed by a woodcutter…"
"I know that story well enough." I cut her off. "What happened after the dwarves chased her over the cliff?"
"She died."
I started to say something biting in response, but stopped myself. She wasn't being a smart ass; she was just answering my question. After all, no matter how real she had seemed when I was in that weird neon-world, she was still technically just a computer program.
"That can't be true, Yori." I said. "She's the one causing all of this mess right now."
"Her body was found later by the dwarves and burned. The ashes were sealed in the glass coffin Snow White had been kept in during her enchanted sleep and dropped into an ocean, weighted by rocks." Yori said.
"…Damn." I let out a low whistle. "Those dwarves don't fuck around."
"Of course they don't. Dwarves are asexual." Yori said.
I opened my mouth to say something, then thought better of it. There are some things I just don't need or want to know about. Instead, I redirected my attention at figuring out how the Queen could still be around if her body had been burned and sunk.
"What about her soul? And her heart?" I asked. "I mean, she was deeply involved in dark magyck, right? So she could have found a way to…y'know, stick around even after she'd kicked it. Is there some dark spell or ritual she could have used to keep herself from dying even after her physical body was gone?"
The computer made a loud whirring noise.
"I think I found something, but…it's so terrible…" Yori said, aghast.
"What is it?" I asked. If it was terrible, the Queen would probably know about it. And perform it.
"There's a ritual a person can do to…to relocate their heart and soul. But you have to…you have to use…another person's body. The spell involves…removing that person's heart and soul and replacing it with your own. And…oh, please don't make me read any more!"
"No, no, you don't have to read any more." I assured her. "Just put the window up on the screen and I'll read it myself, okay? And you can…go, if you want. I'll call you if I need anything else."
"Thank you, Seifer." She said as another window appeared on the screen.
"Mm." I grunted, already immersed in the article.
But I already knew all that I needed to know:
The Queen was one sick bitch.
(PAGEBREAK,Y'KNOW?)
"I know who the Queen is." I gasped out as I burst into the kitchen to Aerith's house a few hours later. Somewhat unsurprisingly, everyone (and by 'everyone' I mean Hayner, Cid, Aerith, Sora, René, Riku, Cloud, Merlin, Kairi, Goofy, Donald, and the Asshole) was crowded around the room, eating. Well, everyone except Aerith was eating. She was feeding them.
"Snmfrh?" Sora said through a mouthful of food.
"Chew and swallow, Sora." Aerith reminded him with a far too patient smile.
"Here, look." I said, slapping a piece of paper down on the table in front of Hayner even though I was still mostly out of breath.
"Breathe, Twerp." Cid said, clapping me on the back. "It makes life a lot easier, trust me."
"'S not important." I said. "Look, I found out who the Queen is. And I know why she's still alive even though the dwarves pushed her over that cliff."
"She used dark magyck to move herself into another body." The Asshole said.
"The fuck…? How do you know that?" I asked.
Everyone turned to look at Hayner, who suddenly seemed to try and shrink into his chair.
"Chickenwuss?"
"Remember that nightmare I had?" He asked softly.
"Do I look like Sora? I have a longer attention span and memory than that, lamer." I said.
"Hey!" Sora protested, though everyone else laughed forcedly.
"I…remembered more stuff." Hayner continued. "About my life…before. The Queen…made me help her with the spell."
"Then you already know how to beat her, too, huh?" I asked.
He blinked. "…Beat her?"
"Yeah. Do you?"
"No, I…must not have remembered that part." He said.
"Okay, well I figured it all out. Yori, Tron, and Ram helped—mostly Yori—but I know what in the hell is going on, now." I said, pointing at the papers I'd brought. "That spell she used? It was only temporary."
"Temporary." He echoed.
"It wears off over time, because the original soul can't be completely gotten rid of, especially if you do the spell as quickly as the Queen probably had to since she was going over a cliff at the time. So the original soul fights against the intruding soul. And eventually, since it's more attuned to the body, it'll take the body back. In order to stay alive, the Queen either has to keep switching bodies, or she has to do another ritual to make the spell permanent."
"Another ritual." His voice was tiny, that time; little more than a squeak.
"Quit repeating everything I fucking say, lamer. See there?" I shifted the papers. "The Queen needs fourteen souls. They're all marked down on this paper, see? Twelve of them are in a pattern like the face of a clock, only instead of hands in the middle, that's the Queen and the fourteenth soul. Now, I dunno about the first twelve souls, but I think that Sora's soul—Roxas—is supposed to be the thirteenth. It has to be a pure soul, see? And what soul is purer than the Keyblade Master's, right?"
"Right." He agreed weakly.
"Right! That's where you come in—that blue gem she gave you? It was sucking Roxas out of Sora really damn slowly, so he probably hadn't even fucking noticed yet when I destroyed it and broke the spell. That's why they never fully merged. And I think it's disrupted them so much now that they'll never be able to completely fuse back together. But that's not important right now. Roxas, the thirteenth soul, is depicted here." I pointed to another area on the page, a small dot below the circle. "This one acts as a sort of…barrier. It keeps the other souls from breaking free during the spell, since their magycks will be haywire during transit to the Queen."
"How does she keep this soul from breaking free?" Sora asked, looking a little pale.
"I…don't really know." I said. "I think it doesn't have a choice, for some reason. Maybe she uses another spell or a potion, or maybe something in the bead would do it or something. The point of the matter is that it keeps the other souls in line. Now, the thing is that we disrupted her spell by destroying the bead, but we didn't totally stop it. See, it won't be fully stopped until after the Blood Moon—that's the night she's gotta do it, the night of the Blood Moon. After that, all of the souls will be released from whatever hold she's got over them and she'll have to start all over again."
"Why does it have to be during the Blood Moon?" Merlin asked, peering at the papers curiously.
"I don't fucking know, because it sounds cool?" I shrugged. "You're the magician, Merlin, not me. All I know is that this symbol here," I pointed at the bottom corner of the page, "is a symbol for the Hunter's Moon—the moon directly following the autumn equinox, which was last month. That means that this bitch has gotta get the last two souls within the next week, or she'll have to start over like I said before."
"Who…or what…or, for that matter, where is the fourteenth soul?" René asked.
"I'm getting to that." I said impatiently. "Okay, so we have the thirteenth soul for now—"
"What do you mean for now?" Riku demanded.
"We aren't going to let her have Sora." Donald added determinedly.
"No fucking duh." I said. "But she's not just gonna roll over and let us keep him, is she? She's gonna fucking fight for him, dumbasses."
"I can protect myself." Sora said.
"Of course you can, Sky-boy." Cid said. "And we're gonna protect you, too, but that doesn't mean she won't find a way to get her grubby little hands on Roxas. She's a greedy bitch, but she's a smart greedy bitch."
"What about the last soul?" René asked again.
"I'm trying to tell you, if everyone would fucking shut up and let me talk." I yelled.
Everyone shut up.
"Thank you." I drawled. "The last soul is kinda tricky. It's this one here." I pointed to the marker in the middle of the circle. "As far as I can figure, it's like this: the spell takes a hell of a lot of magyck. That's what all of the souls are for—they're kind of like batteries that she's gonna sap of all of their life-force to feed her own magyck. The fourteenth soul is a sacrifice. She turns it into a kind of…essence of soul, or some bullshit like that, using a potion that she'll put in this cauldron. And then she drinks it, and that's what anchors her heart and soul into the body of her victim."
"That is so gross." Kairi groaned.
"All dark magyck involves this sort of thing, I'm afraid." Merlin said. "That's why it's dark."
"Right. And the thing is, the final soul's magyck has to be in perfect synch with the Queen's."
"Gawrsh…what does that mean?" Goofy asked.
"Basically, it means the soul has to belong to someone who's related to her by blood. A parent, a sibling, a cousin…even a kid, if she found someone stupid enough to impregnate her." I said, wrinkling my nose at the thought before turning serious again. "And there's one more thing."
"What?" Hayner asked, sounding sick.
"The fourteenth soul…it has to be a willing sacrifice." I said.
"Willing? Why would anyone be willing to…?" Kairi trailed off.
"If she was…the only thing that person knew." Hayner said. "I mean, the unconditional love of a child or something…"
"What do you mean, Hayner?" Aerith asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"A kid would do anything for its parent, wouldn't it? I mean, in most cases. And I'll bet…I'll bet she's been planning this for a long time, so…she made sure that she's the only thing that kid knows or loves or cares about."
"Well, we'll just have to find that poor child and save it." Aerith said determinedly.
"You don't have to look too far." Hayner said, his voice a little choked up.
"Why not?" The Asshole asked.
"Because…I remembered something else during my nightmare." He said, looking at me with the same wide, frightened eyes he'd had after the Heartless tried to steal his heart. "Remember when I was crying?"
"Yeah." I said, my heart filling with fear as I realized what he was about to say.
"I'm the fourteenth soul." He said brokenly. "The Queen is…is my mother."
And then I remembered and realized something:
I remembered that Hayner didn't have a soul.
And I realized that the Queen had it.
End Chapter Fourteen
A/N: Ironic that this is the fourteenth chapter, huh? Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm good. (It was totally unintentional, lol.) God, this story is getting so dramatic…:makes popcorn:
And to give credit where credit is due: the idea for the 'relocation' of the Queen's soul comes from a book called 'Golem in the Gears' by Piers Anthony. And the idea for the ritual the Queen is going to do is some sort of weird merger of my own ideas with ideas from the movies 'The Brothers Grimm' and 'Thirteen Ghosts.'
Also, for whoever cares to know: 'Agariste,' the Queen's name, means 'best woman by far.' I thought it was fitting, lol. XD My God, I put way too much thought into this…