Treasure of my Heart, a Kingdom Hearts fanwork: Sibling Challenge by Inmate XIV, written by Raberba girl

Arm (theme 57) [rough draft]

Summary: Van & Sora's polar opposite personalities can be a bit jarring.

A/N: Same universe as Welcome To Our World; probably takes place shortly before that story.

This fic is short, but I had to do a lot of research for it before I could post... X'D

o.o.o

Sora sat in the aisle seat. Beside him, Van lounged with his eyes closed and his earbuds in. Sora had tried talking to the other riders, but they either ignored him, frowned at him, or smiled and then looked away and wouldn't look back.

The bus stopped and two young women got on. After they'd paid their fare and sat down, they turned to each other and began gesturing intricately. "Uh!" Sora cried in delight as he recognized their unspoken language. They ignored him like usual, but he'd learned that if he waved his arms or touched them, they'd always look at him and be his friends. He lunged across the aisle and managed to pat both of them before Van grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him back into his seat. "Hi!" Sora signed as he was dragged. "I'm Sora! Nice to meet you!"

The women looked happy, as he knew they would. "Hi! I'm J-a-n-e-t!" one of them said, then made a sign that looked like 'notebook.'

"I am Re-i-ko," the second woman introduced herself, spelling it in yubimoji in case the child didn't know kanji. "You are deaf or hearing?" she asked curiously, noticing a lack of hearing aid devices.

"Hand talk people! Friends! 'You want to make a snowman? Let's play! I never see you, you left! We were friends a long time ago, but now we're not!'"

"You watched F-r-o-z-e-n?" Janet realized.

Sora, who recognized individual letters but couldn't spell many words, and also had trouble following fast-paced conversation of any kind, stared blankly for a minute. Then he tugged urgently at his brother. Van shoved him away without bothering to open his eyes. "Vvvv!"

"What, Sora?" Van snapped.

Sora signed before he could close his eyes again, "What did they say?"

"Leave me alone."

Sora patted him urgently and insisted, "What did they say?!"

"Ugh, Sora!" Van glared at the women and signed, "Say it again."

"You're his brother?"

"You two look exactly alike!"

Van's glare grew fiercer with irritation. "Just tell me what you ***ing said to him."

They stared at him, shocked.

"TALK," Van demanded.

"Why are you so rude?" they asked indignantly.

Van got to his feet in a threatening way. "TELL ME what you said to my retard brother so he'll leave me alone."

"You are a terrible example for your brother!"

Van made an obscene gesture.

"What is happening?" Sora asked, distressed at all the unspoken hostility.

Now glaring back at Van, Reiko signed, "Tell your sweet brother that we asked him if he'd watched Frozen recently."

Van sat back down and shoved Sora's shoulder to get his attention, even though Sora had been watching the whole exchange intently. "They asked if you watched Frozen, with Anna and Elsa and the reindeer," he snapped, then retreated back into his music.

Sora's face lit up. "Snow movie! Reindeer! We watched it at school!"

"Where do you go to school?"

"School! Teacher Axel, Teacher Demyx, Teacher Saïx. I play with Riku and Kairi!"

They smiled uncertainly. "Your brother should be nicer to people."

"Brother is mean to everyone. I love Brother."

"Sora," said Janet, "you are a special, wonderful person. Don't ever let anyone put you down."

"I love you!"

They smiled a little sadly. "You are a sweet boy, Sora."

"We are happy to talk to you," Reiko added.

"I like making friends with hand talk people!"

"Hey," Jane said aloud, trying to get Van's attention since he couldn't see her with his eyes closed. When he didn't respond, she said louder, "HEY, scumbag."

Van cracked his eyes open and shot her the bird again.

"You are the most rude, disrespectful-!"

Van pointedly closed his eyes again. Reiko began a frustrated signed rant that she knew he couldn't see, and Jane was angry enough to continue aloud, even though she knew her passion was probably garbling her words too much to be intelligible. "You don't deserve to have this boy for a brother, you're a disgrace to our community, you-!" She finally noticed that Sora was waving at her.

"Brother is Brother," Sora said. "He doesn't like anyone, he doesn't like me. He won't be nice if you're mean to him, so be nice."

"...You're a wonderful person, Sora."

"You're a wonderful person!" he repeated. "I love you!"

After they'd gotten off the bus, Sora signed as they walked along, "I love hand talk people, loooove. Happy friends."

"You should go to a deaf school," Van remarked.

"Friends! I wish EVERYONE talked with hands."

"Well, they don't. Sucks to be you, bro."

Sora took hold of Van's hand and signed awkwardly with his other arm, "I love Brother."

"You love everyone. Shut up about it."

"Loooove," Sora signed, though only with one arm.

"Too bad you can't live in some fantasy world where everyone loves each other."

"You love someone, they love you back!"

"Whatever."

o.o.o

Author's Notes: Van can be pretty bad sometimes... (Ftr, if he truly hated Sora, he would have just sat there refusing to open his eyes the entire time, so the fact that he did eventually translate for Sora was a little bit nice of him. He's just not in the best mood, and he also doesn't like talking to people at all unless, like Axel and Demyx and of course Sora, they understand his personality. *sweatdrop* If they don't react well to him, his behavior gets worse.)

I personally assume that characters originating in the Kingdom Hearts universe are bilingual. Janet was using mostly American Sign Language, Reiko was using Japanese Sign Language, Sora & Van were using a mixture, and all of them could understand each other. The ladies were actually signing too quickly for Sora to fully understand them, but since he's both a kid and has an intellectual disability, instead of asking them to slow down, he simply continued the conversation based on the signs he did recognize.

I don't know much about sign language or Deaf culture, so I probably made a lot of mistakes...

I did look up sign language profanity, though I didn't find anything to help with the grammatical aspect of it (for example, the way people sometimes use certain curse words as adjectives or interjections in spoken speech, rather than nouns or verbs). The closest I could find was a possibility that the word might just be spelled out in those instances, but I'm not sure. In any case, Van may or may not have used that exact wording, but he managed quite well to be offensive regardless. *sweatdrop*

I tried looking up name signs, but it was confusing and there was too much conflicting information. I had Sora introduce himself as the Japanese sign for "sky" because it's easier for him (he might fingerspell his name if Axel's around, but he gets lazy when no one makes him spell XD), and that's what his name literally means in Japanese, but I don't think it would count as a true name sign. Same with Riku ("land/shore") and Kairi ("nautical mile"), though Sora did use personal name signs for his three teachers (the ladies he was talking to wouldn't have known whom he referred to). Sora actually doesn't hang around deaf people very much, since he himself is not deaf and he doesn't have much opportunity to visit deaf communities; it's basically just him chatting with any strangers he happens to run across who know sign language.

Specialized instruction classes often go on field trips, sometimes to teach them life skills and sometimes for other purposes. I've been with them on several trips, but never to a movie theater; however, I know they do go to the theater sometimes. I had the idea for this fic that Axel might have taken his class to see Frozen as a life skills field trip. Or possibly he just showed it in class, I'm not sure.

I'm still in a Frozen mood. I've been addicted to some of the music, and I'm back to really wanting to see the movie. X'D Mostly so I can write fanfiction for it properly...

Complete: 4/100