Chapter 68, everybody! A little Thanksgiving present from me to you all. ;) I'm thankful for all of you guys; really.
In the grand scheme of things, not much really happens here. A ton of scenery porn, and Luxord being a smug mofo, and how Riku and Falcon met - but not much else. Yeah. I tried? Well, in my defense, if I'd put everything that I want to happen at this particular day in this chapter, it'd be nigh on 30 pages. Not even joking.
Anyway, I know you're not interested in me ranting, so enjoy!
Disclaimer- I do not own Kingdom Hearts.
The Shadowed Desert's town square proved significantly more crowded in the height of the morning. Multiple shopkeepers – most of the people Char and Riku had spent yesterday afternoon talking to, in fact – bustled about, calling out their wares and advertising even as they brought one hand over their eyes to block out the blinding brightness of the noontime sun.
As Char, Falcon, and Riku passed, the redhead couldn't help but think of the marketplace back in Hollow Bastion, how this place and its general air of brisk business reminded her of her days as an apprentice. In particular, the days she and Ienzo would trail after Ansem and tug on his coat and beg him to purchase whatever inane triviality they had picked up floated to the front of her mind.
She fought back a sigh at the flood of nostalgia and wistfulness that assailed her at the memory of Ansem's frequent refusal, albeit not without a shred of contrition, and her and her best friend's disappointment. Even though the sting of knowing the men she had grown up with had succumbed to the deepest kind of darkness, she figured the old days wouldn't stop haunting her entirely.
Not unless she let them.
Odd, she mused, even as a burly man clad in a sleeveless top shouted something about cheap necklaces and his voice faded into the dull roar of the street shops behind her. I've gone from avoiding thinking about it, to loathing them for it, to missing them.
"The city hall's pretty close," Falcon called over her shoulder from the front of the group. A couple of people tossed their greetings at her, and she gave them a returning smile that didn't quite reach the rest of her face. When she looked back to Char and Riku, though, her expression became neutral again, albeit tinged with a bit of the bitterness that had marked her just before the forest had thinned out and given way to the brick buildings and pavement of town. "On the other side of those buildings over there."
She gestured vaguely toward a cluster of what might be the Shadowed Desert's equivalent of skyscrapers. The three buildings leaned close together almost conspiratorially, which puzzled Char at first until she, Riku, and Falcon finally cleared the throng of citizens and, in the very latter's case, paparazzi.
A better look at the structures revealed that whoever had designed them had connected the three buildings with a series of glass-encased walkways. Even now, facing the back two of the triangular formation, she caught a glimpse of multiple shapes shuffling about within the walkways between buildings.
"So what's up there, exactly?" Riku queried.
Char didn't glance back from watching the ant-like people crossing the expanse, but she did hear Falcon's response. "Offices, mostly," the dark-haired girl said, almost too dismissively. Of course, an instant later, she all but confirmed Char's suspicions by adding, "My dad used to work there," in a significantly strained tone.
Riku had followed Char's gaze and become similarly fascinated by the sight of the impressive structures looming above them, even though the majority of its stucco-bricked exterior had already given way to the underside of a catwalk above them. Although he knew he should be at least slightly embarrassed at his unabashed staring, he figured he could let it go for now; after all, even Destiny Island's most urban area paled in comparison to this.
However, when Falcon spoke, he glanced down at her, curiosity riding in behind his surprise. In spite of himself, his heart began to beat ridiculously quickly, and his startled feeling only amplified when he realized just how much he wanted to hear whatever she had to say. She had never mentioned her parents before now; in fact, when they had first discussed parents and he had brought up how he lived with his father back home, she had looked away uncomfortably before changing the subject. "Your dad?" he asked, raising one eyebrow in his equivalent of tilting his head to the side.
Falcon nodded, yet hesitation filled the halting manner in which she did so. "Yeah, he used to work here. Before…"
She trailed off then and stared down at the ground, rubbing her arm with the opposite hand.
Riku felt mild frustration replace his prior interest. So much for that. Not knowing what to say, he looked back in front of them again. In the center of the triangular formation created by the three buildings, a miniature courtyard stood. The bright sunlight caught off a jet of water streaming from the small fountain in the center, only for said jet to lose its blinding quality when a cloud passed overhead. All around the fountain, trees swayed gently in the afternoon breeze.
The three of them passed by, with Riku taking in the scenery as best he could with the swift pace Falcon had set; even with the increase in height and leg length Xehanort's form brought him, he had to walk a bit faster just to remain behind her. As for Char, she trailed a ways behind, head tilted downward just slightly; only when he turned his head and dipped it down to get a look at her mien did he see the contemplative expression there and decide to leave her be.
It was odd, though: he would have thought she would hate getting stuck at the rear of the group. By the way she walked now, though, it would seem she had grown accustomed to that position.
What else has she gotten used to with Sora? Riku wondered. The thought heralded an unexpected wave of… what was that, sorrow? It definitely resembled what he had felt over a year ago, when he and Sora and Kairi had first gotten separated and he had wandered lost in the darkness, all too closely. For some reason, the notion of his missing the old Char as much as he missed his closest friends in all the worlds rankled him.
Then again, despite his attempts to keep her relatively distant over the year they had spent together, they had become friends nonetheless. Riku had even allowed the shell he constantly crawled into around her and Namine to drop, that day when Sora had turned fifteen and he had desperately sought out at least some source of comfort. Char hadn't squeezed his hand back, but at least she hadn't torn it away. Her obvious crush on him from back then aside, at least she hadn't rejected that out of embarrassment or disgust.
"Back then" being the key words, obviously… A sigh rose up, thick as bile, inside the confines of Riku's throat, but with a herculean effort he swallowed it back down again. The weight of all the emotions carried behind that repressed breath crashed inside him almost tangibly, causing him to fight back a wince.
Because incredulity at Char caring for Sora like that wrapped around desperate hope at the brunette's reciprocating and knotted itself into need.
But that was thinking too far ahead, so Riku forced the knot of emotions inside him to untangle and dissolve.
He looked back in front of him and saw that many people, whose attire suggested they worked inside the buildings rising up around them, had swarmed outside for lunch. The scents of recently-heated food drifted up around them, breeze stirring the conglomeration into redolence, and Riku instinctively brought one hand to his stomach before realizing he couldn't muffle the noise of desire it made.
Clearly, the rumbling must have worked its way past Char's self-imposed absentmindedness and resonated in her eardrums, for she glanced back from a young couple inching closer together on a bench with a quirked eyebrow and an amused smirk playing over her lips. "Hungry there?" she asked.
"Gee, what makes you ask that?" Riku muttered, folding his arms and staring determinedly ahead. Forced detachment aside, her ensuing chuckle irked him just a tad.
Falcon smiled slightly, just enough to let him know she had smiled in the first place. The annoyance brought by Char's relishing his discomfort vanished slightly in favor of gratefulness at the sight: at knowing Falcon was still capable of creating a smile that did more than just obligatorily push her mouth upward and halt at that movement. Knowing he had caused it made him feel a little awkward, especially in light of his heart belonging to someone not her; especially because Kairi had maroon hair and violet eyes, not dark hair and green eyes – but he did know not seeing Falcon happy struck a subtle chord of melancholia within him as well.
"Well," the dark-haired girl said, "maybe after we get to city hall we can pick up some lunch. Eggs only fill you up so much, after all." Even as she spoke, though, that expression of subdued amusement faltered, giving way to the shadows lying just beneath.
Although she didn't dare speak the name, Riku knew who she was thinking of – who she was dreading – meeting at the domed building whose outline he could now see just beyond the courtyard. Copperhead.
He looked at Char and, to his surprise, saw her staring back. They, too, remained silent, but even as the buzzing of the office workers on their break around the three of them shrank into irrelevance, he knew what the redhead was thinking. Knew his amber eyes and the pensive set of his jaw mirrored hers.
As one, the two of them fell back, letting Falcon march on ahead. Her eyes flicked toward them once, but the thought of just who she had to face seemed to have sapped her of the mental energy required to express jealousy, and soon she looked back ahead again, focusing staunchly on just that.
"Why does she hate him so much?" Char whispered immediately, once they had fallen far enough out of their leader's earshot.
Riku blinked, stared down at her; cursed the height difference that rendered it difficult to gauge her emotions entirely. In his original form – the now-sixteen-year-old, silver-haired, turquoise-eyed boy that should have walked at her side – he had stood taller than Char, yes, but not to the ridiculous extent of now. It was the reason why most of his longer conversations with Falcon had taken place on her couch, when they were both sitting and could lock eyes.
After a few moments, he placed the look on Char's face. Desperate curiosity, the kind that, he was sure, Sora must have felt toward her after a couple of weeks of traveling together. Riku had all but anticipated that much; Char liked to think of herself as such a great liar, but anyone who had known her more than a few minutes could see past her façades, as he could now.
"Was that what you wanted to ask me back there?" he muttered back, and her resulting nod confirmed it. Well, he thought dryly, there's one "later" out of the way.
The identity of the other two, though – why she had stopped Falcon, and what exactly her attitude toward Sora was – remained so much more prominent in the atmosphere between Riku and Char that it almost felt like she had said nothing at all.
Shaking these thoughts off, Riku shrugged in response to her query, unable to keep frustration from tingeing the gesture. "We've never actually discussed it," he admitted.
Char raised one eyebrow. "One of those 'I didn't want to bug her' things, huh?" She emphasized her quoting him with a derogatory set of air quotes.
Riku opened his mouth to retort, only to realize he had nothing to say to rebuff her scorn and looking away. Her annoyance wasn't entirely unfounded, after all; this was a point he had wondered about and focused so deeply on in the past month or so that its presence in his mind had become furrowed and engraved there. Much as he hated to admit it, the curiosity lurked within him and refused to leave. "You could say that," he muttered under his breath.
However, the conversation ended abruptly when Falcon's voice drove, wedge-like, between the respective cadences of gray-haired boy and red-haired girl. "We're here," Falcon announced, words encased in a bit too much ice for Riku's liking.
He tried to ignore the distinctly irritated gleam in her eyes – the way her resignation had sapped her envy had petered off, evidently – and met her eyes for a brief moment before she turned back around. Although the eye contact lasted only briefly, he picked up resentment in her green gaze and couldn't help but feel a bit of his own.
Lifting his head to see ahead of her, he found himself and his companions briefly bathed in shadow as they passed beneath the leftmost of the walkway that connected the point building with its fellows. Falcon had veered sharply to the left as Riku and Char had talked, and now they emerged from the courtyard, stepping down from a raised curb that divided this concrete-paved area.
Now the dome-shaped structure that had seemed so far away revealed itself fully, and Riku saw that they had only glimpsed its roof; the city hall itself was a wide building that rounded out as it rose into the sky. People swarmed about, not surprising for this time of day, walking up and down the massive stairway that set off this ground from the city hall's entrance.
As the three of them carved a swath through the crowds, Riku couldn't help catching a few threads of conversation from the people in groups, which wove in and out of his hearing and faded out as the groups passed them by. Most of the words he caught had a mundane nature about them, nothing to indicate they had seen or heard anything odd lately; only now that that thought had occurred to him did he realize he could listen in and see if anything strange had happened in the last few days since the Organization had taken the machine here. He felt like palming his forehead, so strong was his self-deprecation at that moment. Good job focusing.
Char seemed to have taken up the attentiveness that he had lost, for she leaned over – well, more like leaned up – and muttered into his ear, "Are you hearing anything interesting?"
Riku raised an eyebrow. "About the machine?"
"No, about the weather. Yes, the machine!" Char hissed, so venomously that he actually pulled back a bit and stared, mildly confused, down at her.
"Calm down," he said quietly, giving in to his frustration for a moment and gripping her elbow with one gloved hand.
Ice-blue eyes flicked down to that hand almost nervously, but the gaze she turned to his blazed. "I'm not going to calm down," she growled. The effect was dulled slightly by how she had to reduce her volume immensely, but her point got through nonetheless. "How in the hell am I supposed to calm down when, oh, I don't know, you dragged me here when I didn't want to be?" She all but spat out the last part.
Riku groaned, the sound scraping against the inside of his throat. Of course; even though he had spent a good amount of wasted breath telling her taking her away from Sora was not his idea or what he had wanted, she still held a grudge toward him for that. "Like it's my fault Sora doesn't drive you up the wall!" he snarled, the statement turning into a hybrid between a growl and a hiss.
"Did you expect him to? That's just great; you sent me on a huge journey with someone you thought would drive me insane." Char yanked her arm out of his grip, death glare still fixed unwaveringly on him; the force of her breaking away all but unbalanced him, and he would have suffered the rather humiliating fate of tumbling down the stairs had he not righted himself in time. He met her glower with gusto, inwardly wondering how she still managed to have this effect on him.
"That's not why I –" Riku broke off abruptly when the ground beneath him became decidedly level again, indicating they had reached the top of the steps. Char noticed this as well, for the words obviously left unsaid died on her lips and she composed herself.
Falcon came to a halt in front of the double doors and spun around to face them. Although she had clearly heard the argument that had raged just behind her, she showed no sign of any interest in pursuing it or stirring it anew; just regarded them with that resignation having returned to her features. "As soon as we get him, we're done here," she said, the weight and lowness of the words all but turning them into a growl. From her tone, no question existed as to who he was.
Riku nodded, internally calming his boiling temper and trying to make himself not look like he had wanted to deliver a blow with the Soul Eater to Char's head just moments before. They were in public, after all, and he didn't want to seem dangerous when it was so completely the opposite of what he wanted. Not like the guy who originally looked like this didn't look dangerous enough, he reflected bitterly. "As soon as we get Copperhead, we get down to business," he confirmed Falcon's unspoken inquiry. "The next couple of places, and then we drop him off back here."
Falcon nodded, outwardly pacified.
"Wait a minute," Char said suddenly. Riku turned his head to look at her, but she seemed to have decided her vitriol toward him merited not meeting his eyes and was appraising Falcon. The dark-haired girl raised an eyebrow at the younger's stare, a silent invitation for her to continue.
"Can we really just borrow Copperhead for the day?" the redhead asked, folding her arms. "He works here, right?" At Falcon's wary nod, she went on, "Then how can we guarantee we can just drag him away from his job whenever we feel like it?"
Riku blinked. Despite the brisk nature of her remark – along with a tinge of impatience, the only things that betrayed her and conjured up the question of just why she didn't want to be away from Sora – he couldn't help wondering whether he was imagining the light taint of sympathy in her voice or not. Which struck him as odd, because Char had already made it clear, even in the day or so since they had first stepped out of the dark portal into the Flaming Forest, that all she cared about was finding the machine and getting back to Sora.
So then why would she care about Falcon's comfort? he wondered.
He never got to voice this question, though, for Falcon sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "If only it was that easy. He's the mayor's little favorite – gets to run about and do what he pleases. He got that job after we…" An uncomfortable, pregnant pause, then the subdued, rather lame euphemism "broke up." Recovering, she added, annoyance masking her conflict from just moments before, "But I know he gets to do what he wants. It's the only reason why he showed up in the forest yesterday."
The only reason we're all still alive, she left unspoken, but it hung in the air between the three, all but choking them.
Char took a deep breath. "Okay, fine. I was just wondering."
Just wondering, right. Like all the sardonic thoughts before, though, Riku suppressed it, shoved it to the same corner of his mind reserved for the memory of when Destiny Island had vanished and when he had kidnapped Roxas.
Dark things, things he didn't want to consider.
Maybe that was when he realized Char may be avoiding voicing her own emotions, but he was guilty of the exact same phenomenon.
Falcon turned back around, faced the doors. Her shoulders actually heaved with the depth of the preparing breath she took. "Let's get this over with," she muttered, and, seizing the golden handle of one of the oaken doors, pushed it open.
Sora stared down at the moonlit sea surging beneath the decks of the Black Pearl, the sounds of Donald and Goofy chatting nearby all but fading into the sounds of the waves. Thinking on the events that had occurred since leaving the Coliseum – finding Jack Sparrow; beating back Heartless at the pirate's side; Elizabeth urgently telling them Will was in trouble; heading back to the Isla de Muerta to retrieve him – the Keybearer couldn't help but sigh under his breath. Will had approached in the Interceptor, the ship they had used during the group's first visit to Port Royal, and they had allowed him to cross the makeshift wooden bridge from the smaller boat to Jack's Black Pearl. Of course, almost the moment Will crawled, bleeding, onto the pirate ship, he had collapsed, and now Elizabeth was looking after him in the cabin.
But that's not even the worst part, Sora thought, grimacing slightly. According to Will, he had arrived in the cavern where the bloody battle with Barbossa and that lizard-like Heartless with the glowing tail had transpired – where, he recalled with a pang, the first time he had embraced Char had occurred – to find the massive chest filled with medallions had vanished. He would have explored further, but something had attacked him, then. Blindly fleeing from his assailant had made him the only survivor out of the crew he had taken with him, but Will did know the creatures that had sliced into him and lashed out with card-shaped talons had done so at the command of another person.
Another person clad in a hooded black cloak.
Sora had wanted to go back, to see exactly who – what – had shown up there. However, Jack had demurred. "I'll have no monsters on my ship today, thank ye," he had declared, turning around with a peremptory aura that brooked no argument. "We're headed for home."
By the time Sora, Donald, and Goofy had finished fully making sure Elizabeth would be all right taking care of Will's wounds on her own – Sora had never seen a paper cut that intense, after all – Jack was already at the wheel of the ship, steadily focused on the horizon with his compass flipped open in his hand.
And that brought them back to the present: halfway back to the mainland, with Sora resting his arms on the rail and looking out at the ocean. It occurred to him, vaguely, that if they ever arrived here while the sun held sway over the sky this place would remind him a bit more of home. As it was, though, he could only think of watching the horizon swallow the burning red sun as he, Kairi, and Riku sailed back from the play island to head home and listening to Riku persist in asking Kairi about where she had come from. The questions had obviously made her uncomfortable, but she had obliged her friend's curiosity, which proved infectious to Sora as well, regardless of her own feelings.
Now that Sora thought about it, maybe everything had started there. The restlessness, the feeling of the world stretching so much wider than just their little patch of sea and sand, Riku's rivalry with him. It sounded horrible – he could never blame Kairi for anything that had happened to them – and yet it held some truth to it.
"Sora?" Donald asked, tugging on the boy's pant leg. Looking down, he saw the two of them had ambled up while he was ruminating on the connection between this sea and his own. Goofy stood beside Sora, gazing out at the silver-bathed ocean, but when Donald gave him a hard stare, he lifted the duck up and set him down on the railing dividing the ship from the stars. Donald curled his arms around it and placed his webbed feet on the bar beneath the top railing, inclining his head expectantly toward Sora.
Sora gave them a forced smile. "Hey, guys."
"Whatcha thinking about?" Goofy asked.
Sora shrugged, slightly reluctant to voice his thoughts but knowing he had to let them know Char had slipped his mind. Oh, no, wait. She was back now. His eyelids slipped closed, the moon imprinting a bright circle on their dark interior. "Kairi and Riku," he said. Paused, then added mutedly, "The ocean here kind of reminds me of home. And them."
Goofy let out a murmur of acknowledgment before falling silent, as if understanding the brunette's desire for reticence on this subject. Donald, however, narrowed his eyes, seemed to take a deep mental breath before speaking. "Beast's Castle makes me think of home," he confessed.
"It does?" Sora blinked, startled out of his quietness. "No way."
"It does!" Donald growled, almost parrot-like as he threw Sora's query back at him in statement form. Thinking of this, laughter bubbled up within the brunette, which only seemed to annoy the duck more. "What's so funny?" he demanded.
"Nothing," Sora grinned, wiping imaginary tears from his eyes. "Just… you almost sounded like a parrot for a second there."
Donald let out a confused "wak," while Goofy covered his mouth to hide his giggles. "Y'know, you kinda did, Donald."
"Oh, shut it!" The mage rounded on Goofy with a fervor that nearly unbalanced him from his balancing act on the rails.
They spent a few moments racked with amusement at Donald's expense, before even that petered off, when it steadily hit each of them in turn that a feminine voice remained conspicuously absent. Sora's laughter faded, Goofy lowered his hand and watched the sea again, and Donald's agitation gradually became eclipsed by grudging acceptance of the fact that he had, in fact, sounded like a parrot for a moment.
As the three of them stood in silence, Sora couldn't help recalling the conversation that had transpired the last time he had stood on these decks, looking out at this very ocean. Even now, Char's phantom presence seemed to materialize between him and Goofy and echo the tale she had spoken that day: how she had gone to Atlantica with one of her fellow apprentices and seen a school of fish lit up by the sunset. The breathless wonder with which she had related the memory seeped into Sora again, as it had then, and left him regarding the sea around them differently than before.
Because now that a couple of weeks or so lay stretched out between that incident and now, he could appreciate the exact amount of mental fortitude she had required just to tell him that much. Now that he knew the full story about her past – or most of it, if Xemnas' accusation about Char keeping secrets about Riku stood true – he could understand why she had dodged his honest attempts to glean more facts from her.
Now that she was gone, he could see that that day he had first regarded her as beautiful.
The realization sent multiple tendrils of sorrow and wistfulness into his chest, squeezing his heart and all but coaxing tears to his eyes.
A voice suddenly came from the higher deck, where Jack Sparrow currently had his attention at the helm. "Miss your lady friend at all?" he inquired languidly.
Sora cringed; even from a distance, the pirate had hit his emotions right on the mark. "Yeah," he murmured.
"Mind speaking up? Couldn't quite catch that."
Hearing the careless tone attached to the words, the brunette rolled his eyes. Now he knew for sure Jack hadn't changed a bit. "I said, yeah, I do," he replied, refusing to succumb to his visceral response and shout back at the older man.
"I don't blame you," Jack commented. Although he clearly addressed Sora, his eyes remained focused on the dim lights of the mainland ahead. "Every day Will's without his lass, he's miserable. Love makes fools out of us all, eh?"
Sora raised and lowered one shoulder in silent agreement, watching the ocean churn beneath the Black Pearl again.
The next moment, though, Jack's words carried a distinctively wary aura to them, making the trio currently standing at the rail glance back. "Don't remember inviting you."
As one, the Keybearer, mage, and knight turned just in time to see the final remnants of a dark portal, tentacles stark even against the moon-streaked blackness of the night, vanish, revealing a dark-clad shape. In tow, it – rather, he, since the only female Organization member Sora knew of had quit long ago – held a notoriously familiar treasure chest, which was dropped with a grunt of exertion. "Rather a heavy burden, that," the Nobody remarked, urbane accent all but matching that of Jack Sparrow himself.
Immediately, Sora summoned the Rumbling Rose to him, and Donald and Goofy drew their weapons as well. "So it was the Organization!" Donald shouted. His mental energy expended on annoyance just minutes before apparently had now chosen to channel itself toward the foe before them.
A gasp came from the direction of the cabin, signifying that Will and Elizabeth had just emerged at the sound of the commotion. The former was limping slightly, his chest covered with ragged bandages, but his eyes were just as wide as his makeshift doctor's.
"That's him," Will rasped, staring straight at the Nobody, who merely inclined his head toward the Port Royal native. "That's the man who attacked us on the Isla de Muerta!"
"Charmed, William Turner," he answered, a smirk audible behind the hood. "It's good to see you remember me."
Elizabeth let out a startled grunt. "How do you know his name?"
"Does it matter?" Jack tossed the words over the balcony at the couple standing there as he all but vaulted over to stand beside Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Drawing his sword, he narrowed his eyes at the newcomer. "Unless I'm wrong – which I'm not – that chest holds the medallions what Mr. Turner said got stolen."
"An Organization member would have it," Sora commented, venom etched into every syllable.
That hooded head swiveled, owl-like, to him, and he shuddered at the intensity of the hidden stare beneath. What's with these guys and staring at me? Of course, an instant later, he got the answer to that unspoken question. "Good evening, Roxas," he greeted almost cordially. "Tell me, how is being whole? Is it everything we thought it would be?"
"That's Sora to you," the boy snapped back, even though the part of him that was Roxas was now stirring at the sound of his name and the mention of the Organization's goal. Luxord, Roxas told him, his name is Luxord. However, Sora mentally batted those words away. "And if you know any better, you'll give those medallions back."
"It's unfortunate, then, that I don't know any better." Without acknowledging Sora's sputter of response, Luxord began pacing down the deck, running a black-gloved hand along the chest as he did so. He picked up a layer of dust there; Sora could see it illuminated by the moonlight. The six of them – boy, dog, duck, captain, young couple – could only watch, frozen, as the Nobody began to speak. "The darkness of men's hearts – drawn to these cursed medallions." He snapped his fingers, startling them all when a myriad of dark flames cascaded down from the sky and created a small conflagration on deck; the flames faded with a realistic crackle to reveal an upright, dark purple Heartless, dangling an anchor from its hand. "And this Heartless – a veritable maelstrom of avarice…"
"Huh?" Goofy mumbled. Sora's mouth twitched in vague amusement at the thought of Char automatically moving to translate Luxord's description into more monosyllabic terms.
Luxord ignored the knight's bemusement and continued, even as the Heartless' black-rimmed gold eyes honed in on the four fighters standing in front of it. "I wonder, are they worthy to serve Organization XIII?" he wondered aloud, coming to a stop and facing them again.
Jack sighed, jiggling his sword in his hand. "I take it you want an answer now?"
"Precisely," Luxord purred, and, with a flick of a hand, darkness had swallowed him up, leaving them to fight the Heartless.
Falcon couldn't believe she was reduced to hiding in a bathroom.
But no, here she was: curled up next to the sink, knees drawn up to her face, resisting the urge to bury her face there and never look up again. At least the janitors here in the city hall kept the floors pristine and well-mopped.
She looked up at the ceiling and rubbed a gloved palm over her face, drawing a rather unnecessary amount of comfort from the fabric against the bridge of her nose. Lowered her hand, counted the cracks she found along the ceiling tiles – fourteen, not including the boundaries between one tile and the other – before pushing her head back against the side of the sink and closing her eyes.
Why am I doing this? the dark-haired girl wondered, only half-obligatorily. The reason why she had tugged herself away from Char and Riku upon entering the city hall remained painfully clear to her, after all. Once they had stepped over the threshold and the sound of phones ringing and voices raised in conversation had enveloped the wind blowing and conversations going on outside, a sense of panic had seized Falcon, and she had stuttered out, "Be right back," before fleeing. Thankfully, the blindness brought on by said panic had receded long enough for her to spot a door conspicuously labeled "Women's Restroom," allowing her to slip inside.
And that brought her back to the present: sitting on the floor, trying to calm her breathing at just remembering how loudly the fear had rattled in her veins. How raw it had singed her nerves.
"It's Copperhead," she muttered aloud, completing the gesture she so wished to enact earlier and staring at the view of the floor offered between her knees. As always, the taste of that traitor's name scuttling across her tongue heralded the rush of so many emotions: anger, first and foremost; the pure desperate curiosity, the need to know why he had gone to such extremes and betrayed his best friend just to see his brother's smile again; and, more recently, the sensation of missing the bastard.
And there lay the problem: the fact that facing the source of so many entwining, conflicting feelings inside her struck so much terror into her heart. She, who had faced down gigantic Heartless without so much as flinching; who had regarded her own death at the blade Xemnas had brought without so much as batting her eye – she was dreading the presence of one man.
Falcon straightened at that thought, her brow furrowing. The epiphany – actually, maybe epiphany didn't fit the exact context of recalling the effect Copperhead's violet eyes and careless grin and scythe-swinging had on her ability to think straight; recollection of fact seemed more appropriate – made her wonder just why he still held so much sway over how she felt.
The initial hypothesis, of course, was so ludicrous that she actually hissed aloud and shook her head, batting the imaginary fly away with one hand and nearly hitting the sink in her fervor. No way I'm still in love with him. That died the moment my parents did.
No, the real reason behind her balking at the brick wall of having to face him rang loud and clear to her. Her nose found further purchase in the safe haven of darkness between her knees at the thought. It was because the sight of him would loosen the floodgates she had wound so tightly about the memories of happiness with him; would destroy the numbness that time had built up around the days when Dyme had still been alive, and her parents had still been alive, and the worst thing to worry about had been whether she tilted her head right to kiss him.
It was because the past rose up, tall and blonde-haired in the shape of Copperhead's body, and even months after the fact it hurt too much to contemplate the past. Riku's arrival might have made it immensely easier to not ponder how long a Heartless goring her belly would hurt before the end – might have applied a bit of healing balm to the still-festering sore and slash in her ability to trust – but that feeling toward Copperhead remained nonetheless.
Once again, the contrast between Riku and Copperhead struck Falcon, from their skin and hair to their eyes and disposition. Dark and olive; silver to gold; amber to violet; calm and even-tempered to brash and reckless. Not only that, she reflected, but how we met was way different, too.
And then she shivered, because just which boy she included in that unspoken we remained unclear to her.
The Heartless vanished in a wisp of black smoke, and Falcon absently watched its pink, heart-shaped burden drift up into the cloud-patched sky before lowering her Keyblade. Soreness permeated her muscles as deeply as it ever had; a year without Copperhead's help had allowed her to adjust to the lack of scythe swinging nearby, but the Heartless were coming as strongly as they had when they had had two opponents to contend with.
Emerald eyes narrowed at recalling the days when he had fought at her side, and bitterness that only arose from the deep, dark swamp of her heart when it reminisced on Copperhead threatened to choke her. Why protect me all those years, if he was just going to stab me in the back later?
She turned away from the battle site, taking in the spring-tinged air as she did so. In light of the carnage going on in the recently-rejuvenated forest – both from shadowy and multicolored Heartless and from the last thing they saw before Kingdom Hearts took them – the pleasant bite to the breeze seemed almost obscene.
However, it did serve to remind her that even through grief and loss, time went on, heedless of whoever got caught up in its current. She forced herself to think back on that day – pain shock sorrow Copperhead why if my death is what it takes then I don't care this isn't how love works you whore – and realized that it had occurred on a day much like this one, albeit with storms rending the sky instead of white-marred blue.
How had a year gone by, she wondered with a pang, without her properly noticing?
She would have made a mental note to visit their graves later, even though it meant skirting dangerously close to the resting place of the man whose death had sent everything spiraling out of control. She would have vowed to honor this day. But the sound of branches snapping and leaves rustling made her whirl around, Keyblade immediately raised in her fencing stance. Every ounce of soreness and remnants of the last few days' toil, gone.
Her mouth opened to demand who lurked in the bushes, but very quickly she found out just who, or rather what, waited for her. With a tail lashing toward her.
It flickered into visibility scant inches away from her, and though her reflexes kicked in just in time for her to dodge the worst of the blow, the sharp tip still caught and broke the skin along her arm. Hissing in pain, Falcon leaped back, inwardly cursing herself for allowing nostalgia to distract her.
A few thunderous footsteps, and then the Heartless revealed itself: a huge, multicolored lizard, forked tongue flicking out and lolling and eyes staring vacantly from its sockets. Falcon narrowed her eyes as the client's description of his bounty floated into her mind, coaxed into remembrance due to this foe's appearance. Large, reptilian, tendency to camouflage…
"Next paycheck, here I come," she muttered, and then had to repress a shudder, because she was channeling Copperhead without even realizing it. It made sense, considering their extensive history together; hell, at some points, she could barely tell where he ended and she began.
At some points, she remembered just how deeply their feelings had tethered them to one another, and it scared the hell out of her to think about.
Shaking it off, she snarled in tandem to the chameleon's roar and charged, only for dust to balloon up in thick mushroom clouds as it vanished and she was forced to stop. "Where'd you go, you bastard?" she hissed out, head swinging left and right to pinpoint it. Almost unnerving, really, the way she could hear the Heartless' presence – a rustling in the leaves, a stray twig snapping as it trod on the forest floor – and not see it right in front of her.
Then the noises stopped, and she had a split second to pick out the dual glowing orbs directly in front of her before a bright pink blur shot out and reeled her in. A rainbow-colored flash announced the lizard's return to visibility, and she glared into those still-glittering amber eyes before it lifted its claws and scored them across her body, searing multiple gashes and making her gasp.
The force of the blows dealt flung her back out of its tongue's hold, and she recovered in midair just long enough to fire a Blizzaga into the lizard's still-open mouth. Although swallowing ice normally wouldn't cause pain, the force and distance with which the shard hit the back of its mouth made the Heartless stagger back, a primordial roar escaping it as its hands flew to the injured area. Fleeting satisfaction made Falcon narrow her eyes and nod, before taking advantage of its stunned state to leap forward and attack with all she had.
At some point, the lizard recovered long enough to lash out with its claws, which she parried just before they could add to the already-oozing injuries it had inflicted on her. The Heartless threatened to push her back for a few moments, but eventually she maneuvered so she could push it further to the edge of the copse rimming the clearing, instead of vice versa.
As her Keyblade worked away at its endurance, she suddenly realized her back was tingling in the distinct impression of someone watching her. She risked a glance over her shoulder, but just as she ascertained the presence of leaves trembling and a dark shape vanishing behind more trees, bright light flashing from in front of her made her whirl around. She caught a final glimpse of the lizard vanishing, rainbow-colored light wreathing over its form as it did so, and a couple of dual golden globes beginning to glow.
Her eyes widened. Oh, son of a –
All at once, twin beams of amber flame cascaded into her, and she leaped back, free hand immediately flying to her abdomen as the place where Xemnas had slashed her all those months ago began to flare anew. Her teeth clenched against the agony, and she found herself slumping just slightly, her ramrod-straight battle stance bending just so in the face of the Heartless' onslaught. For the first time, the possibility of not making it out of this in one piece occurred to her; rather than striking trepidation into her, though, the first thought to follow that revelation was something along the lines of that guy will worry when I don't come back.
Not of the money, but whether or not the citizens would be concerned at her absence. Of course they would; she was the sole piece that kept the Heartless from breaking through to the town itself – but whether or not they would miss her as a person was obvious.
Absurdly, she found herself thinking of Copperhead.
But then something dark rippled over her head and landed with a puff of dust in front of her. In the half-moment it took for the cloud to clear, Falcon tensed, assuming by the dark garb of the figure that another Heartless had come to assist the lizard – but no, this newcomer stood too tall for any Heartless she knew about.
Sure enough, as wind and air swept the dust stirred into oblivion, the figure was revealed to be distinctly humanoid, tall, at least a foot taller than she, and clad in a hooded, black cloak. For some reason, she found herself thinking of Xemnas and how he had worn the exact same thing that bloody night; her fingers tightened over the hilt of her Keyblade.
Yet when she caught a glimpse of the weapon the person held, she found herself relaxing. Because unless Xemnas suddenly wielded an opaque, bat's wing-shaped blade instead of brightly glowing sabers, it wasn't him.
The newcomer spared her a sidelong glance over his shoulder before springing forward and lashing out with his sword, which collided with a parcel of trembling air. Startled into visibility, the Heartless brandished its claws, tongue already darting out to seize this other challenger in its grasp; but the dark-garbed man simply drove his blade down as hard as he could, severing the makeshift rope like a knife through hot butter.
The ensuing shriek of agony from the Heartless shattered Falcon's trance, and she charged into the fray as well, albeit with a heavier tread due to blood spattering the ground in her wake. Together, they beat back the reptilian Heartless, sword and Keyblade creating dual blurs of black and pale blue in the air. Glancing over at her partner, Falcon was surprised to see a single amber eye, almost Heartless-eye-gold, gazing back at her, the hood having slipped back just enough to reveal that and hidden locks of gray hair. Looks like Xemnas, her mind told her, but definitely not him.
Definitely.
Eventually, the combined attacks of anonymous man and exhausted girl proved too much for the Heartless; although it had managed to get off some attacks and leave deep scratch marks along her savior's body, it still succumbed when the newcomer pulled his arm back, a globe of dark flame coalesced at the tips of his fingers, and he launched the fire at the foe.
As the Heartless exploded, showering them with transparent particles of camouflage-colored mist, Falcon turned to face the man. He was already looking at her, this time with the hood meticulously angled to hide his face. "You all right?" he asked in a gruff voice.
After that, Falcon recalled from where she still sat on the bathroom floor, things had progressed as smoothly as she could expect: she had asked why he had saved her; he had explained he knew about Keyblades and was curious, and that jumping in to help her had been a last-moment decision on his part; she had expressed suspicion at his hood being up, and then at the sight of his face; he had explained his true form lay hidden beneath a layer of darkness; and she had grown damnably curious about it.
"Who are you?" she had asked.
He had hesitated, as if wondering whether or not to divulge his true name; then he sighed, startling her by stripping away the deep voice of the Heartless whose face he had swathed his own in and speaking with his true, sixteen-year-old voice. "Riku," was all he had said.
And now a month had passed, and Falcon sighed with mild frustration as it hit her that her heart had attached itself to a man she knew relatively little about. His friends, yes; his home, yes; how his true form eerily resembled Copperhead, yes – and when he had told her that last one, she had found herself guiltily, sickeningly grateful that he looked the way he did; if he had approached her looking like Copperhead she wouldn't have peeled back the fence of distance she had constructed around her heart for him in the first place.
But little else. Not why he had chosen to look like Xemnas; not why he had left home.
Then again, Falcon thought – and here her thoughts swung in a distinctively chiding direction – it's not like you've told him anything about your past, either. Why you and Copperhead have the relationship you do, if you can even call it that; why you were so suspicious that he looked like Xemnas; why you were so willing to help Riku in the first place.
Quickly, she stood, before any more self-incrimination could take place. She'd spent enough time hiding. Either she faced Copperhead and the past he embodied now, or she faced them later.
As much dread as it poured into her belly and heart, nauseating her and ramping up her heartbeat, she knew she would rather do it now.
The first sensation Sora had as he came to wakefulness was of something digging into his side. Sapphire eyes flickered open, and as the bruises from the Heartless' scythe began to throb again, a groan escaped him.
"Looks like the lad is awake," a voice drawled from nearby.
Shaking his head, Sora rose up, supporting himself by his elbows, and looked around. Donald and Goofy crouched next to him, both wearing expressions of relief. "Good thing you woke up," the dog said with a grateful smile.
Donald shook his head irritably. "That Heartless, blowing us off the ship like that!" he grumbled. "When I get my hands on it…"
"Blowing us off the…?" Sora trailed off as the memories of after Luxord had vanished set in: fighting the Heartless; dodging its anchor and enduring the crushing blows whenever it connected; a gust of wind issuing from the Heartless' talons and pushing them onto the still-floating Interceptor just nearby…
And, the one that stood out most, Will and Elizabeth's horrified cries as the Heartless flung its anchor at the empty ship and rendered it little more than wood.
He sat up fully in order to better survey the area. Glancing about, Sora realized he could recognize the remains of the ship they had first taken to the Isla de Muerta those weeks ago; the half-sullied wooden spoons he and Will had used to stir the stew they had made lay strewn about, and splinters were all that remained of the bowls holding said stew. The bottles of rum remained miraculously intact, one of which Jack was holding in his hand. Shadows all but concealed his frame, but Sora saw him nonetheless. "Good to see we all got out safely," he commented.
Jack lowered the bottle. If Sora didn't know any better, he would have thought he saw the cultivated poker face falter. "Ah, yes, well… There's a bit of a story to that, you see…"
He paused when Sora's eyes suddenly widened. A more colorful, mottled shape had caught his eye, trapped beneath Donald's webbed foot. Before he could try to understand why he was reaching forward and tugging it out into full view; Donald yelped in surprise at first, but his annoyance quickly morphed into confusion when he saw what his leader was doing.
Sora lifted the object up and squinted at it. Sitting in the moonlight as he was, he could easily see the map scrawled out onto the paper. It struck a familiar chord within him, though he could hardly understand why. Char might have understood, but –
And then the breath froze in his lungs, because he remembered she had dozed off looking at this when she had been here with them and he had made the mistake of wandering in to wake her up just in time to hear her speak the name of his best friend.
Riku.
All at once, the doubts Xemnas had raised back in Hollow Bastion came rushing in on Sora with the force of the cyclone that had blown them here. Wherever here was. Thinking that, Sora realized how desperately he loathed never knowing what was going on. Whether it involved Roxas, or Riku, or Char's secrets before she had divulged them.
"Sora?" Donald asked, tipping his head to the side.
With a start, the brunette faced his two longtime partners. Wrestled with his emotions for a couple of seconds before deciding it would make no difference whether they knew or not. "Char was reading this… the last time we were here," he confessed quietly, shaking the map listlessly for emphasis. "And I heard her say a name in her sleep."
"What name was it?" Goofy queried.
Sora flinched and looked back down again, somehow hoping to find resolve in the green-and-blue strokes on the page he held. Predictably, that attempt didn't succeed, and his reluctance to continue on hindered him from speaking. Somehow, he felt the need to carry any suspicion for Char on his shoulders alone, feelings for her aside; somehow, he felt like telling the whole truth now would just make the situation worse.
Either way, he knew he couldn't speak. Not when the memory of just how deeply Donald and Goofy had distrusted Char after Roxas' disappearance was so fresh in his mind.
He was saved from having to struggle with the decision any longer when Goofy glanced over his shoulder, only to let out a shocked cry and stagger backward. Leaping to his feet and all but unbalancing Donald in the process, Sora quickly saw the source of the knight's outburst: a skeletal Jack Sparrow, meandering out of the shadows and into the moonlight.
"What the…?" the Keybearer gaped.
Jack blinked, then glanced down at himself and gave an over-exaggerated sigh. "I told you there was a story to this."
Donald had whirled around, severely irritated, but when he saw Jack he all but fell back onto his haunches in confusion. "What happened?" he croaked out.
"Yeah," Goofy added, "why're you all skeleton-y?" He waggled his fingers to illustrate his meaning.
Jack shrugged. "I think I got a touch of something from that monster what attacked us."
"You mean the Heartless?" Sora put a finger to his chin in thought. Now that the initial burst of surprise had worn off, only bemusement governed his mind. "I've never heard of a Heartless that can do that…"
Sora, phantom Char said, we've seen Heartless that can manipulate ice and fire and possess people. Please don't tell me this is beyond the realm of possibility.
"Y'know," Goofy cut in suddenly, "we fought the Heartless, too. So we should be lookin' like that, too."
Jack folded his arms, moonlight catching off the bones beneath the tattered rags of his tunic as he did so. "Your doggy friend's got a point there, Zola," he said, ignoring the brunette's indignant confirmation of what exactly his name was. "Why's the skin restin' right on you three?"
Sora tilted his head to the side. In all honesty, the situation puzzled him as well. Not that he didn't appreciate keeping his muscles and skin intact, but he was confused as to why Jack had inherited the cursed pirates' physical disposition while his own Keyblade had connected much more often with the anchored Heartless and nothing had happened to him.
Only when Jack turned away and began to pace, stepping into the darkness and making his form revert back to its original in the process, did Goofy put a finger in the air out of realization. "Maybe the reason we're all okay is because we're not from this world," he suggested, keeping his voice low so as to adhere to the no-meddling policy.
Donald folded his arms. "There must be different laws."
"Yeah," Sora murmured. Different laws, huh? At first he assumed that the effect's absence on him had only emerged due to his status as Keybearer. As chosen savior of the worlds. Yet Goofy's hypothesis, almost Char-esque in its status and logic, reminded Sora that he wasn't the only one having to bounce from world to world. He wasn't the only one whose concept of home had become significantly abstract, more and more each day.
"We're always just passing through," he said, unconsciously speaking his thoughts aloud. He sighed, hands falling limply to his sides. "I'm sick of just running from world to world, looking for things I can't find. I wish…" He paused, took a deep breath, went on with Donald and Goofy watching worriedly and the sound of the sea that so resembled the one back home roaring just beyond the shipwreck. Just beyond the atlas and the doubt-stirring memories.
"I wish we could just find a way to reach the Organization and get all our friends back. So we could see home again."
Although his idea of home differed from Donald and Goofy's – his involved sand and sea and sky, while theirs involved grass and statues and standing firmly beside a monarch – the two Disney residents had the good grace to look sympathetic. "We'll find them eventually," Goofy reminded him, for the second time in twenty-four hours. Sora remembered how the knight had spoken just about the same words to him last night before he had crawled into bed and slept with dreams of Riku and Kairi and Char sitting alongside him looking at the sunset.
But when will those become more than just dreams?
To Donald's credit, he managed to avoid repeating what he had said last night and just nodded, eyes narrowed. "But first we gotta get out of here," he said, and the measured insistence in his voice made Sora wonder at just how much tact the duck did possess.
"Quit yammering, lads!" Jack called, making the three of them jump. Although his miraculously flesh-covered back had remained facing them, the slant of his spine suggested he had most definitely been listening. Sora braced himself for a torrent of snarky jabs about just how deeply he had laid his heart bare, but surprisingly, the pirate said nothing. He turned to face them, and even in the darkness, they could see the glitter in his gaze. "We've got to find ourselves a ship that'll float."
Seeing their blank stares, he continued, "I've been round these parts." He gestured to the view of the dark, star-splattered sky outside as he explained. "This is the ship graveyard. Where sunk ships come to rest after a long pirate's life. Methinks if we wander around for a while, we can find something that'll take us back to my ship. Savvy?"
Sora nodded. "And then we can look for the medallions."
"Of course," Jack confirmed with a wave of his hand.
The brunette looked to the others. "You guys ready?"
"Who do you think we are?" Donald puffed out his chest, making Sora and Goofy laugh; even Jack cracked a little smirk before beginning to move off.
"Just don't touch anything, right?" the Keybearer quipped, hoping to find solace in joking about the situation.
The bravado in the duck turned to indignation, and he deflated visibly with a "Hey!" He scrambled after the others, who were already following after the pirate and moving toward the outline of tattered sails and broken poles in the distance.
One of my shorter chapters, but w/e. It's Thanksgiving; be merry~
For reference, the Heartless that Falcon was fighting was the Veil Lizard, from Days. (the gigantic lizard thing you fight in front of the Twilight Town mansion)
Incidentally: I've surpassed the NaNo goal of 50k by finishing this chap :D Got about 34k done for this fic! The other 16k is for a MLP fic (yes, My Little Pony; deal) that has yet to be posted, but I still got to 50k, right? (IT'S NOT CHEATING, RIGHT? xD)
P.S. Next chapter is 69... -snigger- I'm so mature.
Review, please!