Important message at the end of the chapter.
Disclaimer- I do not own Kingdom Hearts.
"Thanks for letting us stay the night," Sora told Santa. "We really do appreciate it."
Santa nodded and smiled at the trio, who stood just outside the plaza where they had taken down the experiment. "You're very welcome, Sora. And, ah, for what it's worth…" He paused, and the Keybearer cocked his head to the side, wondering what he was going to say.
However, as the red-clad man continued, Sora's eyes flew wide and a gasp of happiness escaped him.
"That position on my 'nice' list has just been given back to you."
For a few moments, Sora could only stare at him, mouth gaping and fingers curling into delighted fists. Behind him, Donald and Goofy sniggered to themselves, but he ignored them as best he could, because he wasn't on the naughty list anymore. "Really?" he got out at last.
Santa laughed, the action rippling along his ample belly. "I decided you more than deserved it, after everything you've done. All three of you," he added, friendly gaze sweeping over Donald and Goofy as well.
Donald had had one feathered hand over his mouth to at least slightly muffle his chuckles, but at this he dropped it back to his side immediately. "Are we really?" he demanded, though the forceful desire to know was tempered by eager pleasure.
Goofy cleared his throat. "Donald, we were there before, remember?"
Sora blinked, then a grin spread across his face as he recalled what had happened the first time Jack had led them all into Santa's home. Santa had announced Donald and Goofy's names being scrawled on his list of those to give gifts to; reminded Sora of what Riku had told him all those years ago; and Char had dismissed the subject entirely, commenting that she already knew she had no place on that particular roster. "You know, he's right, Donald," he put in.
The duck raised a finger to retort, then froze as he realized they were right. "Ah, phooey," he grumbled, lowering his hand for the second time and tapping his webbed foot on the ground. He glared down at the imprint it made and accentuated in the fresh snow and spoke to it instead of the others. "We already know Char isn't off the naughty list, though."
His comment had seemingly come from out of nowhere, and yet as the disdainful words emerged, Sora turned and gave Santa an almost pleading look. When Char had first acknowledged with a kind of dry self-deprecation that she didn't exactly deserve Santa's respect, the way she had scoffed and balked at the idea of saving Christmas from the Heartless had been fresh enough in Sora's mind for him to readily agree.
Now, though, a week later, after finding out she could never readily support a holiday and time denied to her for the last five years – after finding out her connection to the Organization, and why she mistrusted them even more than Sora and his friends did – he found himself only addressing Santa earnestly.
"You could… take her off, right? I mean, I know she might not exactly deserve it, but…" He trailed off when it hit him that any cohesive way to argue in her favor would involve admitting the true extent of how he felt about her.
Santa pressed one finger against his temple in thought. After a few moments, during which Sora forced himself to release the breath he'd unconsciously trapped in his chest, he lowered his hand, not taking his eyes off the group. "You know, Sora, you may have a point. I'll consider it."
The Keybearer's jaw dropped; the rebuttals that had swarmed about in his mind and readied themselves to transfer onto his tongue went forgotten in the face of his pleased surprise. "I… really?" he blurted at last.
"It's probably more than she deserves, but I guess you should at least think about it," Donald said, grudging agreement etched into every syllable.
"I dunno, Donald. What about everything she's done to help us?" Goofy pointed out.
The duck waved a dismissing hand. "Okay, I guess you've got a point." At his companions' mildly startled expressions at his easy acquiescence, he quickly turned away. "Anyway, we should probably get going." His clumsy subject change coaxed a grin onto Sora's face, one that proved uncontrollable in light of what Father Christmas had just said.
He's going to think about it. That's enough.
Maybe Char would actually get a Christmas of her own this year, life as a researcher hindering her or not.
"You're right, Donald. We've got people to see and a dark realm to find." Only after he had spoken the last sentence did Sora realize how much of their goals he had just unintentionally revealed; but the initial fear that danced along his heartbeat vanished when he remembered how he had mentioned the dimension of shadows only yesterday.
Santa had only proffered a cryptic response to Sora's inquiry – whether or not he, Donald, and Goofy would find their friends in the Organization's world – but he hadn't disproved the theory at all. Nor had he reacted in confusion.
"Wait!" Donald cried suddenly, startling his other two companions into turning to him. Much to Sora's bemusement, the mage already had his broom-headed staff gripped in one hand.
"We've gotta get back to the tree first," he said, giving the others a hard stare.
Sora blinked, now more perplexed than ever; Goofy, however, let out a sound of understanding. "Just go with it, Sora," he muttered into his leader's ear.
He turned his head sharply toward the knight and opened his mouth to speak, only for a voice from around the corner to interrupt. "Wait, you three!"
Oh for the love of – how many interruptions are we going to have? he could almost hear Char groaning. Another stout figure in red rounded the side of the house, holding something that glittered in the early morning sunlight.
Mrs. Claus halted in her tracks, one hand releasing her burden momentarily to push a strand of gossamer gray hair out of her eyes. "I wanted you all to have this for the road," she rasped. As she spoke, the movement of her arms extending toward them drew Sora's eye, and he couldn't stop the grin that widened on his features at what he saw.
He took the plastic-wrapped plate of cookies and met her anxious gaze. "I know it's not much, but at least you won't go hungry," Mrs. Claus said.
"We don't mind at all. Thank you kindly, Mrs. Claus." Goofy dragged his eyes from the food in Sora's hands to their giver.
The elderly woman's face was set almost gravely. "Good luck with finding your friends, Sora. I enjoyed hearing your stories last night."
Her words reminded him of what all he had said – of the tales from Donald and Goofy of their castle that had, seemingly, segued themselves up within the duo's minds as the moon had climbed higher above the snow-capped horizon. Thinking of all the stories, of the memories, of the friendship that drove him, Sora lifted his chin and his features creased into a determined expression. "Thanks. We all really appreciate it."
As Santa waved them off, the three of them trudged through the snow and closer to the tree emblazoned with a pumpkin that would carry them through its vertigo-inducing current back to Halloween Town. Thinking of the fall that accompanied each journey to and from the holiday towns, Sora winced and looked at Donald as they ascended the crest of the hill. "Donald, do we really have to go back to Halloween Town?"
"Huh? Back to Halloween Town?" Donald gave him a bewildered glance. If the mummified tape hadn't covered his entire body, doubtless, his white feathers would have rendered him all but part of the like-colorless snow.
"Well… yeah." Sora's grip on the plate grew a little slack; the plastic under his fingertips crackled in protest as his fingertips shifted against it. "I thought that was why we had to be back here before we left," he explained uncertainly.
"What are you talking about?" Donald asked, folding his arms and tapping his foot. "I couldn't very well warp us back up to the ship in the middle of town!"
"Yeah, Donald's gotta do that magic… teleport… doohickey." Goofy gestured vaguely with one hand. "I, uh… kinda thought you knew, Sora. We couldn't really say it right then and there with all them people around."
Of course. That made sense. Sora rubbed the back of his head sheepishly; now that he thought about it, while the sun had yet to make any real headway in the sky, a couple of Christmas Town natives had been lumbering sleepily around the town square. "Oh yeah," he said. "I, uh… didn't really notice."
Donald rolled his eyes, not even dignifying that bit of obliviousness with a response. Sora's back blazed in embarrassment.
"Well, whatever. Let's just head back up to the ship." He lifted his staff, sparing it one final glare and grumble about how undignified it was.
Before the light engulfed them in translucent globes and shot up into the heavens, Sora quickly readjusted his grip on Mrs. Claus' gift to them. Couldn't afford to have them floating around in the world between worlds, after all.
Sora had forgotten just how much magical travel dislodged his stomach; in the past, before Donald's old, wizard hat-capped staff had been replaced by that of the fiery Heartless, he had always used his magic to both swathe the three of them in disguises and transport them from the Gummi ship down to the world below. Of course, none of them enjoyed this form of travel, but over time they had grown accustomed to its effects.
Now, though, the Keybearer's most recent memory of beaming back up to the Gummi ship involved a splitting headache and not knowing why Roxas had disappeared. As a result, he arrived in the ship's command room bracing for the former.
However, when the white spots eating away at his vision faded, he found himself relatively safe. Except for said rattled stomach.
He groaned, pushing a hand into his bangs. Goofy, who had just gotten shakily to his feet, spotted his leader and approached, concern showing despite the strain of just having made contact with the ground. "You all right, Sora?"
"Your head's not hurting, is it?" Donald cut in roughly. Unlike last time, the soft green light associated with the Curaga chain did not glimmer around his staff's head, but from the fierce set of his jaw Sora figured he was ready to cast it at any moment if necessary.
He hastily tried to assuage his friends' fears. "I'm fine. Just a little dizzy, is all." From the looks on their faces, he could imagine how it must seem like a lie: seeing him still on one knee, thumb pushed to his temple as if to stave off a headache, had to worry them after the effective coma he had been in last time.
To calm them down and show he was telling the truth, he rose to his feet, remembering to do it slowly so as not to stumble. Immediately, Donald reached out as if to steady him as best he could with his meager height, but much to Sora's relief he managed to stay steady until he reached the pilot's seat.
He stared down at the control panel, registering the sound of the chair's seat giving under Donald's weight as he climbed up on one side. On the other, Goofy shrugged before settling there.
Even as the boy sought out the next closest world on the map, he couldn't help remembering the last time Donald had used his staff to warp them down to a world. First the peculiar, painful sensation of his heart dividing, cell-like, in his chest, then finding the extra lion cub, one whose fur was shaded honey-blond and whose eyes matched Sora's own all too well.
Maybe that should've tipped me off that Roxas was connected to me somehow. That and the dreams I kept having about him. Gazing down at the screen – Agrabah, he noted, the next closest world was shaped like Genie's lamp, so that had to be Agrabah – Sora uttered a quiet sigh, one that could almost answer to breath.
"You know…" he began, not looking up at his friends' curious expressions. "The last time this happened, I wondered what had happened to Roxas."
He didn't dare meet their eyes, but he did hear them let out disconsolate murmurs. "Oh yeah," Donald mumbled. Goofy remained silent, his own remembrance kept within his mind.
"It's funny, you know? If I'd known he was my Nobody before then, maybe I could've asked him about the Organization. Maybe about why he and Char hate each other so much." Mentioning the redhead was as much due to genuine curiosity as to his desire to tempt fate, to summon at least a twitch from Roxas deep within his heart.
How does that work, anyway? What does the inside of my heart look like to him?
When he felt nothing, not even a mild stirring from his Nobody as he always did with Anxclof and Axel, Sora sighed again, fingers curling into the armrests.
"Maybe when we get to Twilight Town, we can ask about him," Goofy suggested at last.
Now that surprised Sora into glancing up. The two of them were regarding him with desperate worry, as though by reassuring him they could reassure themselves. Recalling the relief that had shown on their faces when his resolve had returned in Port Royal two days before, Sora knew they were saying this for all three of them.
"Why Twilight Town?" he asked, tipping his head to the side.
Donald's eyes widened in realization. "Wait a second, we had that picture of him with the Twilight Town gang!" He put his hands on his armrest to lean closer to Sora. "Do you still have it with you?"
"Well, yeah, of course I do." Firm response aside, it took him a couple of seconds of rooting around in his pockets to dig out the photo. Placing it in front of him, he peered down at it, at the white glow outlining its square shape and attempting to pierce through the photograph paper. On either side of him, Donald and Goofy leaned in for a closer look.
"Y'know," Goofy murmured, "I never got a real good look at it when we found it. But… they look kinda happy."
"Yeah," Sora breathed. At the very least, this explained the nostalgia and near-painful desire – for the Twilight Town trio, whose formation so resembled both his and Roxas' own circle of friends, to acknowledge his presence – that cried out within his heart whenever they were in Twilight Town.
"But if Roxas really is Sora's Nobody," Donald protested, "he would only look happy. Right, Sora?"
He angled his head up to the brunette, clearly seeking his agreement, only to blink and draw away slightly. "Sora?"
For some reason, the Keybearer couldn't take his eyes off the photo; off the pale light from the screen rimming the four teens depicted in a nigh angelic glow. Donald had a point, he reminded himself; Nobodies had no hearts.
But that didn't explain the alien shiver that had been so decidedly not his own when Anxclof had appeared, lucid and honest and embodying a past that was so decidedly not his own.
Quickly, he shook his head. It crossed his mind, oddly, traitorously, that he had only Char to blame for revealing Roxas' identity in the first place; his resolve wouldn't have suffered this much had she only dismissed his question as to who the blond was.
If she had kept one last secret for him.
And then the feeling of angry spite vanished, leaving guilt just as raw in its wake. It's not her fault, he told himself firmly. It's no one's fault, really.
Aloud, he only agreed, albeit somewhat tentatively, with Donald's words. "You're right, Donald." Even to himself, though, the words sounded hollow, and he hastily changed to their original topic. "Anyway, we can ask the Twilight Town when we get there. Right now, we have to get to Agrabah."
"Why Agrabah?" This time, it was Donald's turn to tilt his head in confusion.
Sora's lips curled upward in a smug grin at how the tables had turned. "It's the next world on the map," he informed the duck. "And I want to see how Aladdin and Jasmine are doing."
When they had left, only about a week ago, the two of them seemed to have resolved their conflict, if their dancing close together – a commoner and a royal, right in the middle of the palace square – was any indication. Still, though, Sora wanted to see how things had gone between them since then.
And then his smile vanished as quickly as it had come, along with the affection that had come with it. Because that same night, he and Char had mimicked those movements just as readily, had stayed close together without springing apart for the first time.
It was the first time he had properly acknowledged that he just might feel something a little more than friendship for her.
Of course, he recalled with a small flinch, his dozing off against her shoulder may or may not have destroyed the peacefulness of that moment a bit. At least it wasn't in the middle of the song… right?
The attempt at optimism fell down sadly, but he shrugged it off; the emotion he felt at recalling his awkwardness, her warmth against him, and frantically scraping together every bit of dancing he knew didn't resemble sorrow, but only gentle nostalgia.
"Remember when me and Char danced out there?" he asked Donald and Goofy. The duck's face had been contorted in annoyance when Sora had mentioned Agrabah, but now he calmed considerably.
"And you fell asleep on top of her?" he asked dryly.
Sora groaned, palming his forehead as he pocketed the picture of Roxas. "Don't remind me," he laughed. His fingers found the controls, and with a few buttons pushed, he had shifted the Gummi ship from its neutral position in the pale green sky into motion.
Goofy uttered a surprised grunt and clung to the dashboard as the Gummi ship began to move. "Gawrsh, Sora, could you tell us before y'start the ship?" he managed, without a trace of exasperation in the question.
"Oh. Sorry, Goofy." The brunette tossed a genuinely contrite look over his shoulder at the knight before refocusing on the wisps of cloud clearing ahead.
On his other side, Donald just growled under his breath and summoned his staff, presumably to take them down into the desert city once the mists had cleared.
Char padded down the stairs just in time to halt in her tracks as her bleary eyes took in an odd sight: Falcon, standing alone in the kitchen, back to her. Something black shifted next to the dark-haired girl, and panic flashed throughout Char's still sleep-bogged mind before she realized the idiocy of Heartless having gotten in here.
The black object moved again, showing Char that it was only Falcon's elbow moving down against the countertop. Complete silence pervaded the kitchen, broken only by the sizzle of whatever was on the frying pan.
Oddly, Riku was nowhere to be seen.
Awkwardly, not knowing what else to do, she greeted, "Morning."
Falcon's shoulders stiffened, and she glanced over her shoulder; Char got a glimpse of a spatula in her grasp before she almost dropped it on the frying pan in front of her. "Oh, um, hi," she said, once she had double-checked to make sure whatever she was cooking had been spared her bout of surprise.
However, this diversion in attention didn't last long; just as quickly as she had looked at Char, she was focused on her brewing breakfast again. Char narrowed her eyes, immediately tracing her ignoring her back to Riku again, before her common sense kicked in and shoved that bit of selfish thought aside. She probably doesn't want to burn whatever's in the pan, you idiot.
In spite of that, though, she found her eyes roving over the room – which Falcon had apparently spent time picking up, as the clean bandages and rolls of gauze scattered about looked somewhat lessened – in search of the black robe she so hated. When she found no trace of Riku, her brows drew down over her eyes in both a frown of puzzlement and frustration.
She tamped down the latter and looked back at Falcon, who was now flipping the batter-encrusted food with a new fervor. Pancakes, Char realized, she was cooking pancakes; but the momentary triumph offered by her yawning stomach vanished at what she saw next. The older girl's shoulders had hunched a little too far over her work, as if to distract herself from how Riku had apparently left her alone with Char.
Char couldn't blame her for her newfound concentration; she shared the same feeling, the same almost-not quite-dread that welled up within her.
"Where's Riku?" she asked, arms crossing over her chest as if to excuse her own bluntness.
To Falcon's credit, she did not react as dramatically to the sudden influx of sound into the otherwise-quiet room as she had before. Her arm only twitched once before she responded fairly briskly, without turning around. "He had somewhere to be. He, ah… said he might not be back till later today."
Oh, fantastic. Good to know you left me alone all day with a girl who hates me, and a guy who doesn't know the meaning of the words "personal space." Char swallowed an irritated grumble and instead chose to sit down on the couch.
Staring down at the ground, she couldn't help wondering just how urgently this other task called to him. Annoyance pulsed throughout her body, white hot and impossible to ignore, at the thought that whatever this was, it had dragged him away from the mission whose high priority had required him to force her into breaking their promise.
Unable to keep silent, even out of common courtesy, Char spoke again, glaring at the floor beneath the glass-topped table as she did so. "So who exactly pulled him away from this mission?"
She heard a sharp exhalation, whose pitch and guttural emergence gave it more than a hint of exasperation, from the kitchen. "He didn't say," Falcon growled. Daring to crane her neck to see over the top of the couch showed Char that the other girl was leaning over the pan in front of her, hands gripping either side of the counter tightly. "Gods forbid he should tell me why he had to go."
"Well, it's not like he's obligated," Char muttered under her breath. It wouldn't be the first time someone hadn't trusted her enough with information, she reflected bitterly, as Ansem floated into her thoughts.
After a few moments, during which the sound of the stove dying down rumbled throughout the area, she shook herself and stood up. "That smells good," she tried, clumsily. She grasped about mentally for a good topic to lead into from there, but her mouth chose to act ahead of her brain anyway. "What are you cooking?"
Falcon turned around fully then, actually spared her a look that didn't blaze with anger and vitriol. The emerald stare she fixed on Char carried only the telltale narrow of fading anger, as well as a hint of wariness. For some reason, the same thought that had come into Char's mind a couple of mornings ago reappeared: that at least the latter suspicion struck a familiar chord deep inside her.
Before she could pursue that formerly dormant notion, though, Falcon answered, still not dropping the ice-laden tone she tended to use around the redhead. Rather amusing, really, considering the element she was proficient at. "Blueberry pancakes. I had a third one ready for Riku, too, but he told me he had to leave pretty much right after I started cooking," she explained.
"Oh." Char blinked stupidly. She mentally chided herself, for choosing to throw her intelligence into a deep pit somewhere inside and locking it up.
Then again, in the face of Falcon's obvious lingering disdain toward her, her normally prolific dry remarks shriveled up before they could get to the tip of her tongue.
In the end, she turned back around and gazed down at her reflection in the glass tabletop, listening while Falcon bustled about in the kitchen, presumably adding her finishing touches to the results of her morning labors. She found what she would have expected staring back at her, albeit with more dark red veins shot through her irises and the scarlet line of a healing cut stretched lightly across her cheek.
Where the hell did that come from, she wondered for a moment, before recalling the arduous battle against the Behemoth yesterday. Just thinking of the fight made exhaustion nudge the edge of her consciousness all over again. The rain cascading down in a light curtain and framing every flash of shadowy lightning with a halo of steam; her instinctively lying about how she knew of the Behemoth's weakness; Falcon and Copperhead willingly playing decoy while she and Riku worked on striking it down; and, finally the relief they had all experienced at how Riku had finally struck the Heartless down.
Recalling how Falcon had all but flung herself into Riku's embrace out of gratefulness, Char couldn't hold back a flinch of sympathy, tinged by both budding wakefulness and amusement at Riku's expense as it was. Her reflection mimicked her intentions, and, seeing that, she quickly brought her countenance back to neutrality again.
Her timing with that proved fortunate, because Falcon's face slid into the makeshift mirror, eyebrow vanishing into her side-swept bangs. Apparently in the few minutes Char had spent reminiscing on yesterday's battle, Falcon had put the pancakes onto two plates and set them onto the table. "Everything okay?" she asked, though the question echoed hollow concern with every syllable.
Char looked up and inwardly brushed off every bit of lingering sympathy. Just the machine, she told herself firmly, but then what Riku had told her yesterday reminded her why said sympathy edged her consciousness in the first place. About how she actually cared about near-strangers, and not just because the boy she loved did.
Aloud, she only said, "Yeah," finding to her bemusement that it wasn't entirely a lie.
She stared down at her plate and blinked at the fact that two out of the three Falcon had cooked were there, already covered in maple syrup and their freshly-added blueberries glistening in the artificial light. As she glanced back at Falcon, she found the dark-haired girl already watching her, a vaguely anticipatory expression on her face.
"I thought you'd be hungry, so I just gave you the extra one." Uncertainty replaced her expectative aura, and she added, "That's okay, right?"
Char thought about lying, or at the very least softening her hunger as much as possible; but her stomach chose that moment to betray her with a bellow of agreement. Quickly, she ducked her head and impaled one pancake with the prongs of her fork, back growing hot with embarrassment at Falcon's chuckle.
Yet it didn't resonate with spite. Just genuine amusement.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, with Char moderating her own desire for sustenance so as not to seem too rude. Just because she had spent the last eleven years of her life – year with Riku and Ansem and month with Sora included – living with men, did not mean she shared any sort of disregard for common courtesy.
Doesn't mean I have to like it, though.
Rather than dwell on that, though, she found her thoughts drifting back to the much closer past: last night, when the party had ended and she had recovered from her stupor long enough to follow Riku back indoors. The tide of people had carried them closer to the exit, which had worked out fine for the two of them, as not even Riku had the slightest idea of how to get back to Falcon's house from here.
As fate would have it, though, Falcon and Copperhead had lingered much closer to the ballroom doors, since by the time Riku and Char had wound their slow but careful way down the manor's stairs and to the lit pathway outside, they had spotted the others immediately. Falcon's dark jacket and hair had blended almost perfectly into the night, but Copperhead's mostly white coat had caught Riku's eye almost immediately.
To Char's confusion, Falcon's gaze – hell, her entire stance – carried a much more haunted gleam than she would have thought her capable. A much larger shadow than when any of them had accidentally uttered the nickname Fal, or when Copperhead brought up a part of their shared past so carelessly.
And Copperhead had kept his demeanor blithe and carefree as always, but his mask, differently colored from Falcon's though it was, had suffered more than a few undue cracks and breaks as well. Riku had noticed this before Char had, and asked him about it as carefully as he could with fatigue hanging over his head, but Copperhead had fairly dodged his query.
Obviously, something had transpired between Falcon and Copperhead last night. Char slanted a glance at Falcon; she was focusing a little too determinedly on tearing her pancake apart – not aggressively, not like she was imagining her former friend's pretty little blond head in its place, but definitely fastidiously. Like she was distracting herself from something more important.
The redhead's stomach beckoned then, and she heeded its call with a few more bites of pancake, finishing the first one on her plate. She figured nothing truly unsavory had happened; otherwise Copperhead would have come away with his bound wounds from the Behemoth battle reopened.
So then what was it?
She spent a couple of seconds grappling between her desire to know and her manners, but then it hit her. That maybe it didn't matter what had happened, exactly.
Falcon's belligerence toward her food had allowed her to finish rather quickly, and so now she glared down at her crumb-sprayed plate, as if now she was pretending to incinerate Copperhead's face in the process. Char fought back a chuckle at the sight.
She swallowed her mouthful of pancake, using the moment it took to do so to gather her thoughts. "Hey, Falcon?" she asked, carefully tacking the final syllable of the name at the end so as not to rouse her temper.
"Hm?" Falcon mumbled, not taking her eyes off the plate.
The terse, barely even verbal response served as the final catalyst for Char's pride to flare up deep in her heart, scarcely exercised as it had been these days, and scream at her to deny Falcon the offer for truce. However, she forcefully shoved it back into its nook within her and spoke anyway. "I, um…"
When Falcon finally turned her head to stare questioningly at her, Char felt a sigh compress out of her, one of surrender and frustration. "I can't stay here if all we're going to do is dance around each other," she confessed. Remembering the last time she had had to enact a truce – with Roxas in the Pride Lands – her resolve strengthened, the knowledge of her having successfully done this pushing her on. "If we want to help anybody, we need to work together to find the machine. So…"
She trailed off, then, because suddenly the word truce didn't seem like a fitting name for what she was seeking. Friendship sounded a bit extreme.
Trust, maybe, was what she wanted.
Falcon blinked once, then something seemed to melt away on her countenance. The breath that had passed through Char seemed to volley into her and back in the form of her own sigh. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
"You guess?" Char inclined her head skeptically.
"Okay, you are." Falcon rolled her eyes, but her lips had begun to tug very slightly upward. And somehow, that false, empty quality about her seemed to have vanished, if only for the moment.
Char felt a grin of her own begin to take over her own face and thought, so this was what it was like for Sora.
She stuck out a hand. "Well, then, I guess we can work together now. Right?"
"You guess?" Falcon echoed, taking her hand and shaking it.
It was Char's turn to roll her eyes and grin. "Okay, yeah, we can."
A sudden knocking at the door made them both drop their hands and turn toward the source of the noise. "Riku can't be back already," Falcon mused, not taking her eyes off the door.
The pounding grew more insistent then, and Char's fingers briefly tightened against the material of the couch as fingers began tapping out a staccato rhythm. "If he was back, you would know," she tossed over her shoulder as she rose and began walking toward the offender. She had the sneaking suspicion that blond hair and violet eyes and an overly snarky grin would greet her; just the thought made her exert every ounce of mental effort to stifle a groan, because Copperhead's presence would just resurrect every ounce of tension all over again.
There goes all the progress I made in the last few minutes.
Her tread very nearly faltered then. Since when had she begun to think of Falcon's actually expressing genuine happiness as her own venture?
Since the moment she had allowed the parasite created by her wondering about Falcon's behavior to infect her thoughts in the first place, she supposed.
With that wry explanation ringing in her head, she crossed to in front of the threshold and pulled the door open. Sure enough, true to her intuition, Copperhead stood there, fist raised as if to knock again; thankfully, though, he reacted quickly enough to Char's sudden appearance to lower his arm before he could rap her forehead by mistake. "Good morning, Blaze," he chirped.
Char didn't even bother dignifying his prolonged aversion to her actual name with a rebuttal, occupying the back of her throat as it was. "Don't you have work today?" she asked, not daring to open the door more than a little ajar.
When he tilted his head to try and see into the house, she shifted to block his line of sight. His eyes narrowed, but instead of pointing out her lack of hospitality, he just shrugged. "I've had the next couple of days off for a while." As he spoke, he hefted the scabbard strapped around his chest, where the scythe's blade protruded out from behind his back.
"Uh… can I come in?" he added sheepishly. "This is kinda heavy."
She surveyed him a moment longer, briefly weighing the consequences of turning him away. For Falcon's sake, if nothing else. However, her better judgment won out over the careful hand of friendship she had extended to Falcon not minutes before; they could use all the help they could get.
Someone who knew this world as well as Falcon did, so Char could find Sora again.
So she pulled the door open enough to accommodate him and his dangerous burden. "Feel free. At least this way we won't have to waste time pulling you out of work."
Copperhead's shoulders slumped in relief. "Thanks, Blaze."
Char turned away, rolling her eyes once her back had faced him. "Don't call me that," she muttered under her breath, but it was half-hearted. Ironic, considering that only a month before, she would probably have robbed him of his most valued organ if he'd dared call her anything other than Char.
Turning around proved a mistake, however, because that brought her face to face with Falcon. Her eyes darted to the fork in the dark-haired girl's hand, which had begun to scrape together the meager crumbs remaining on her own plate, but she froze mid-lift when she saw just who was stepping inside behind Char.
"Sorry about this," the redhead announced, suddenly feeling the need to fill the newfound silence whose tension could have choked a Behemoth. "But, well, he said he had the next two days off, and with Riku gone, we need the extra fighting power."
Falcon regarded her with more than a hint of dread budding in the widening of her eyes and her eyebrows drawing together. Her eyes flicked from traitor to newfound ally and back again, and Char could almost hear her thinking why would you let him in, after what he's done, after –
And she felt a strand of mild anger stir inside her at not knowing exactly what that was.
The resentment toward the secrets Falcon and Copperhead still kept allowed her to trot off and sit on the couch beside the other girl with relatively little guilt. She signaled toward his side of the table. "Sit. We need to talk about where we need to go today."
Like, oh, the citadel, maybe, but her sense of courtesy caught up with the poisonous suggestion and muffled it before it could make itself audible.
However, Copperhead was now glancing around the room with more than a hint of curiosity. Char cringed as he echoed the thought still reverberating lightly at the edges of her consciousness. "Where's Riku?"
A moment's silence, during which Char glanced to Falcon and found her staring at the ground in lieu of at him; even from this angle she could see the carefully blank expression plastered on Falcon's face again and fought a frustrated growl.
She took it upon herself to reply to his query. "He had somewhere else to be, apparently," she explained, and could not hold back a caustic grumble of, "Don't know what was so important he couldn't stick around."
"Oh." Copperhead blinked, but the confusion furrowing his brow didn't last long. He grinned, the action so forced that Char couldn't even roll her eyes at him. Again, she recalled the lamplight bending against the contours of both Shadowed Desert natives' forms, highlighting the uncertainty and pain that much more deeply, and she had to shake off the almost-maybe-concern that lifted dangerous fingers to squeeze her heart.
Not for the first time, she found herself longing for Riku's presence; this time, though, the desire originated not from a need to palliate some of the blinding idiocy Sora and his companions sometimes exhibited, but to share the burden of this worry weighing down her shoulders.
Copperhead had already crossed the room and unwound the scythe's scabbard from around his shoulders. He set it down, something a little like nostalgia darting across his face and in the ease of the movement. Char spent only a moment wondering why it looked so practiced before his explanation from two days ago told her.
In her mind's eye, the city hall's wooden floors and stretching hallway flowered up around her, Copperhead, and Riku. Falcon had fled upon entering the building, which she looked so desperately like she wanted to do now.
Copperhead had explained how he had come to live with Falcon for a bit after his brother had died. It only made sense, then, that he had grown accustomed to sitting at this very table.
If, of course, the way his eyes briefly flashed over the rest of the room – an unspoken affirmation as to how nothing had changed in the motion – told her anything.
Then she frowned. Why was she examining every bit of movement either of them made so closely, anyway?
The annoying part was that she knew why. Because some part of her, some part that had actually come to terms with the whole "actually giving a damn about strangers" thing, desperately sought an opening through which she could dance and slice the secret open for all to see.
Maybe… it's because you care about what happened.
That's the funny thing about Sora, you know? He kind of… lets you care about people you normally wouldn't.
I didn't know caring would suck this much, she mentally spat at Riku and Sora.
Wherever the both of them were.
Riku made a mental note to never wear black leather into the desert again. Not only did the heat channel that much more strongly into his body, assisted by both the material and color of his garb, but the swirling sands that managed to filter in from outside clung to his coat and forced him away from the ruin entrance.
With nothing else to do, he shuffled off to the back of the small corridor and settled down against the stone slab resting against the wall. He yelped in undignified, unrestrained surprise when said slab gave just slightly under his weight, but soon he had gotten into a relatively comfortable standing position. One hip pressed against the wall next to it, and his body facing the shadow-engulfed corners of the room.
Unfortunately, this killed a total of about forty-five seconds.
Riku glared at the limited view of the desert ruins outside. Before he had summoned a dark portal far enough past Falcon's house so as not to arouse her suspicion, he had drawn his hood up to conceal the face that wasn't his own. A last-minute decision, really, but one that had occurred to him just in time. Whether Sora was here in Agrabah or not, Riku really didn't want to touch the risk of revealing himself to his best friend.
What's the problem with that, though? He flinched, amber eyes narrowing beneath the hood, as the echo of Char's protest from a month ago spoke out against his decision to stay hidden as it always did. As it always had since the day she had taken umbrage at his sending her away in the first place.
Really, it wasn't an invalid question.
He knew why he had to conceal his face from his best friend, though, even after everything he had sacrificed to return him to normal: his heart, his body, his conscience. For the time being – until he found a way to cast off the shawl of darkness Xehanort's Heartless had wrapped about his shoulders since he had first reeled him in back in Hollow Bastion – he couldn't let Sora know just how close he was.
I wonder where he thinks I am, he thought, and then fought back a wince, one that tensed the side of his body that soaked up the wall's cold stone. That might have been a good thing to ask Char last night.
Before she had dropped the whole your best friend and I like each other bomb, anyway.
Gods. Sora with someone other than Kairi. Just thinking it left a strange, but not wholly unpleasant taste in the back of his throat, along with an odd feeling deep within his chest. Like… something had been dislodged.
Yet, he found to his surprise and budding concern, he did not find it a terrible sensation in the least.
The oft-exercised selfish part of him reared up inside him then. Wound itself about the place next to his heart reserved for his past envy toward Sora and everything he had that Riku didn't and whispered he's not after Kairi anymore, you know – but Riku sent the proverbial Soul Eater down to thoroughly cut off that thought.
He narrowed his eyes at the desert ruins beyond. The winding corridor pulled most of the view offered to him behind the stone pillar's unyielding stone, but he still glimpsed sand cascading down, skating against the wall cutting off the immense valley from the rest of the ruins. It ran light-colored fingers down said wall before vanishing into the pale abyss.
Watching the makeshift waterfalls, Riku repressed a shudder. Even though he had grown up surrounded by sand, water and salty air and beautiful skies had always accompanied it. Back home, at least they had had water, a horizon that only blinded him at certain points in the day instead of perennially.
The irony of his longing for the home he had once wanted to escape was not lost on him.
To distract himself, he shifted against the wall and thought on the reason why he had come to this gods-forsaken world in the first place. Before Ansem the Wise had sent him off – Riku refused to call him DiZ, refused to believe that just because the old man had all but mummified himself he had the right to a new alias as well – he had told Riku to leave the search to Char for a bit and meet him at Agrabah's desert ruins if things weren't going well.
At the time, Riku had scoffed and dismissed the request. He had counted on the Organization having been controlled by recklessness and the desperate need to triumph over their master one more time; he had thought, they're probably going to hide it in the most obvious place you can think of.
Now, though, two days had gone by, it was the morning of the third, and, true to Ansem's caveat, things weren't going well.
Char's words from last night floated back into his mind onto the current of frustration. You know the machine's probably out at the citadel, right? With our luck.
Yeah, he answered mentally, with a very verbal sigh. But, like she said, Falcon and Copperhead have too much latent misery over what happened there.
As much as their refusal to go near the old castle annoyed him, empathy tempered that as well. Gods only knew if he dared return to Hollow Bastion – as much as the past year spent restoring its old glory had changed it since he had escaped from it into the realm of darkness – only terrible memories would haunt him at every corner, at every glimpse of Maleficent's skull-littered castle in the distance.
So maybe he could understand why Falcon had never taken him near the citadel.
Something rippled at the edges of the shadows then, and Riku instinctively whirled toward it, for an instant forgetting his desire to remain hidden to anyone besides who he was meeting here. His fingers twitched at his side, but the readiness to summon the Soul Eater if it was a Heartless faded when he saw someone emerge from the darkness.
Someone who appraised him with a single amber eye surrounded by crimson.
Riku narrowed his eyes, muscles relaxing only just as Ansem – the true one, not the alias or the shapeless being of darkness – stepped as far into the open as he dared. As he would challenge himself to, rather, coward that he was. Rather than antagonize him by calling his true name, though, Riku reined in the urge just in time. If he has information for me, the last thing I want is to piss him off. "DiZ," he greeted stiffly.
"Good afternoon, Ansem. Or shall I call you by your true name, and you return the favor to me?" DiZ angled his head ever so slightly, almost tauntingly, to the side, and Riku gritted his teeth. Gods, but the old man had no idea how badly he wanted to take him up on that offer… and how much he regretted telling the true Ansem to call him that a month ago.
Too late, he remembered the hood still swathed his face, and he inwardly cursed himself for giving away his identity so soon. Aloud, though, he only demurred, "I'd rather keep things like this. If it's all the same to you." Despite himself, the last part caught a sharp, contemptuous edge upon slipping out.
Instead of taking offense to Riku's tone, DiZ threw back his head and laughed. "Still concerned about Sora discovering you as you are? Well," he continued, "it's certainly not an unfounded one."
Riku's eyes, just as golden as the single one currently slitted in amusement, widened. "So Sora's here?" However, he quickly shook off the desperate curiosity that had flared inside him, not knowing whether or not he wanted the answer. "Look," he growled, "I think I should be the one asking questions here."
DiZ's hands vanished into his red-wrapped sleeves. "Fair enough."
The belligerence turned to confusion at once, and, completely flustered, Riku blinked. Then he shook his head and fixed his glare on the stupidly open glimmer in that single visible eye. Over the year he'd spent living with this man and his last remaining protégé, he'd learned all too well how to read emotions in that one eye. Triumph when Sora's memories grew closer to regeneration; anger when Riku had returned after Roxas had first defeated him; amusement at his and Char's easy friendship. "Oh, no, you don't," he said. "That was way too easy."
"Call me a liar, if you wish. It is not the worst name I have been called." DiZ spread his palms wide, almost in supplication.
Riku thought of the many names he would make for this man and knew he had a point. "All right, fine," he sighed at last, sitting back on his haunches. "First things first. The search? Not going so well."
DiZ's affable façade faltered considerably at this piece of news: a crack in the mask, so very palpable that Riku expected red bandages to start peeling away with the force of it. "I'd hoped to meet you here with better news," he finally said.
"Yeah, well, you're not the only one." Riku folded his arms, frustration surfacing anew at every memory of the last couple of days – and, really, the last month or so: Falcon and Copperhead both skirting around both the physical and verbal recollections of the citadel; Char's annoyance proving contagious and filtering into his own, well-buried emotions; his discomfort at Falcon's not-so-subtle longings.
His mind brought him up short at the thought of Char. "Oh yeah, and the whole thing with dragging Char to the Shadowed Desert to help with the search?" he began, throwing every bit of scorn and amplified reluctance he had initially experienced at the whole suggestion into each word. "It wasn't one of your better ideas."
The red-clad jaw slackened just slightly, allowing the mask of deceptive indifference to repair itself again. Watching this transformation, Riku felt sudden fury ripple across his consciousness. Everybody's hiding something, he thought. Falcon and Copperhead and DiZ. All of them.
At the very least, Char had had the strength to let hers fall and crash and shatter on the floor for not just Sora, but him, as well.
"I would have thought Charisa would enjoy the respite from Sora and his friends," the former master of Hollow Bastion, the man who had fallen so far in his vengeance, remarked. Amusement trickled throughout his voice: that, and incredulity, as well.
Riku rubbed one hand along the back of his neck, suddenly heated beneath the hood. "Let's just say she's not so happy about the whole arrangement. About me kidnapping her from Sora, I mean."
And then he had to stop there, because the words she had spoken to him last night were beginning to push at the tip of his tongue, longing to escape and share their burden. For some reason, though, even though the man standing in front of him carried at least part of the final remnants in Char's past, even though he should have had every right to know why his last hope had yet to fulfill her purpose, Riku balked at the notion.
Maybe because Char had put her trust in him, and passed on her burden to more than one person. All secrets had to end somewhere, after all.
So Riku remained silent while DiZ considered his comment about Char's not-so-hidden resentment toward leaving Sora so forcibly. Then he laughed again: but more quietly, this time. Less derisively and a little more self-deprecatingly.
Riku's chin lowered beneath the hood. "What's so funny?"
But DiZ only shook his head, shoulders still trembling a bit with mock mirth. "I might have known," he murmured. "Every bit of truth I've known has crumbled in the face of that boy's heart; why shouldn't hers as well?"
It was all Riku could do just to stand there and not shake him by the shoulders and demand what he was talking about.
Before he could, though, DiZ's body suddenly straightened. He stepped backward, into the shadows, and Riku took a step forward, irritation already blazing within him anew.
Then a flurry of movement, along with an all-too-familiar battle cry from outside, froze the blood in Riku's veins.
"Do tell Charisa I wish her well," and then DiZ was gone, darkness having swallowed up even the loose red bandage trailing in front of him on the ground.
Okay. So the first thing you guys might notice is that this is much shorter than usual. While the majority of you are probably sighing in relief that it's not so tl;dr, it's mostly because I have something to say.
I... don't usually get sick of things. Not apparently, anyway. Hell, this and my other completed WIP will tell you once I've got my nasty little claws in something, I won't let go until it's finished. But... lately, both happenings on here and RL events are conspiring against my inspiration for this fic.
Trolls and sudden dearth of reviews aside, there's a bit of discrepancy between this fic's length and my true ambitions. As some of you may know, I have college stuff to do, and while last semester had both the disadvantages of my not knowing what to expect out of college and NaNoWriMo forcing me to slack off, this semester? I don't have those excuses.
Last semester, I barely kept my scholarship by the skin of my teeth. This semester, I'm going to try and change that. And doing that while keeping regular updates for this fic? Not really a correlation.
And, well, let's face it, I've been severely falling down in quality as far as updates go. Any of you ever looked back on something you wrote and, rather than cringe at how shittily you wrote, think you set the bar a little too high for the future? Yeah. That's me right now.
So yeah, this means I'm going on a semi-hiatus of sorts. I know this was a really shitty chapter to leave you guys with, along with a somewhat-cliffhanger ending, but I wanted to get this done before classes start tomorrow and I'm fully inundated in the real world. (Yes, it's a place. We live in it. We all live in it eventually. And if there's anything life has taught me, it's that "later" is never as far away as you think.)
How long this will last, I don't know. Weeks? Months? Till summer? Maybe, maybe, and maybe. If I churn out anything between now and then, though, it'll most likely be oneshots.
If you want to know when the hell I'm going to get off my ass and update, a link to any possible progress is in the form of my Twitter on my profile.
I'm sincerely hoping you all will stick around until I start writing this again. Until then.