Hey guys! I told myself I'd get this updated before I headed back to school on Thursday. And here it is. c:
...that's the good news. The bad news is that, well, I head back to college on Thursday. Not a lot of time for fanfic writing while I'm there. Worst case scenario, though, I just take forever to update. And y'all are used to that lol
This chapter is... seriously, SERIOUSLY filler-esque. Blah. The cutesy ending should make up for it, though.
Enjoy!
Char had thought she had eradicated every bit of bitter nostalgia and leftover hatred toward Hollow Bastion – Radiant Garden – over the last month. At the very least, the overly specific regard of every back alley in Twilight Town's beige-cobbled streets told her that those feelings had transferred to her second home.
Yet here she sat in her room in Merlin's house, memorizing the patterns stitched into the quilt beneath her and absently lifting one bare foot to push a toe into the carpeted floor, unable to rouse herself and head outside.
You're being ridiculous, she chided herself. A sigh muffled itself against the back of her throat in correlation with that thought.
Her fingers twitched against her thighs when voices from the hallway seeped past the closed door's barrier and into her earshot. Although she failed to make out any exact words, judging by the deep, rumbling timbre and the softer, lighter tone that followed it up, Leon and Aerith were talking just outside.
Almost against her will, her gaze found its way past the wall clock, which read 3:24, to the round window. In light of her choosing to eschew the late afternoon bustle of Radiant Garden, the way the sunlight dappled the gray brick view outside, uninhibited by any clouds, almost taunted her.
Sora and the others had probably left to enjoy the clear skies and gentle breeze. Since she had yet to hear either a boyish, half-deep voice outside; or even a hoarse, belligerent squawk mingling with a deceptively ignorant drawl.
Char just hoped they didn't go out and spend all their hard-earned munny on the shopping center's various goods. They needed all the healing items they could afford, if tomorrow really went as planned.
Recalling the events after Tron's images of the past, she felt the wry smile gradually release its hold on her cheeks. Sora had explained that he thought he had found a way to the Organization's world, and that the particular path led through Twilight Town's winding alleys. As he had told her that much, though, he had tripped over his words, as though omitting something he wasn't quite telling her. Donald and Goofy had seemed guilty as well: ironic, considering the two of them had tiptoed around her and regarded her own secrets with wariness. Even now, Char couldn't help rolling her eyes at his source's dubiousness; if the Organization really was so obvious as to put a corridor in Twilight Town, she would have found it and gone after them long ago.
Still, she had taken Sora's proffered information with only the tiniest amount of suspicion tingeing her acceptance. The sooner they could head off and finish what Xemnas had begun, the better, as far as she was concerned. Emotional conflict and unintentional dive into her revenge's gray morality aside, she knew she had promised Riku – and Ansem – to keep helping Sora till the very end.
For her part, at least, she had readied herself for the final ride in the Gummi ship to Twilight Town and everything that would come after.
However, Donald's sudden inability to remain steady on his feet, along with Goofy's admittance that his head wound from yesterday still bothered him, had halted any upcoming proposal for an immediate assault. Aerith had suggested staying the night here in Radiant Garden, which Yuffie had followed up with gusto. Naturally, Sora had struggled with some underlying sense of politeness before agreeing.
And so that left Char here now: sitting in her room, spending the last night before the reckoning she had once longed for thinking on everything she had missed.
Goofy's head wound, for example. Only the day before Riku had kidnapped her, the force with which that flying rock had clobbered Goofy had given him the illusion of death – and yet not two hours later he had been fighting beside them, smashing robot Heartless to the ground like nothing had happened. I get bumped on the head all the time, he had laughed.
Whatever had happened yesterday, though, had sufficed to unlock whatever pain he had repressed from the last time he'd gotten bumped on the head.
Apparently, though, the Pride Lands had had something to do with it.
Damn, what else do I have to catch up on? They even took out Jafar without me.
Char was ashamed to find hot envy percolating inside her belly.
As fate would have it, that was the moment she also noticed the voices outside had gone quiet.
Suddenly, there came a knock at the door, and she jolted up from where she had half-leaned across the bed. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that her haste in that action almost felt guilty; then her eyes widened in a semblance of that guilt as the object of her thoughts called from beyond. "Hey, Char? You in there?"
Of course I'm in here, you goof, she thought irritably, where else would I be, but she answered nonetheless. "Yeah, I'm here," and after a pause, added an awkward, "Come in."
The door hinges squeaked in mild protest as its burden eased ajar, and Goofy poked his head into the room. His eyes widened from their carefully neutral size into a bemused expression as he fully took her in; Char blinked in confusion before remembering her reflection on both tomorrow's necessities and the notion of what all she had missed with the group. Guilt, the very same emotion she had dismissed as illusory moments before, stretched its sharp claws inside her chest, for a reason she didn't quite understand.
Because you made one of your friends worry about you, that's why.
With no small amount of effort, she snatched up the calmness that had just evacuated from Goofy's face and stretched that mask over her own. "What's up?" she asked, at the same time wincing at how horribly false her own voice sounded. One would think she would be sick of masks by now, after suffocating on the smog Falcon and Copperhead's shared past produced.
Of course, that train of thought deposited her at an irrelevant station entirely, where worry as to the pervert and female Keybearer's progress waited to roll its poisonous hold against her thoughts. And Riku. Gods only knew how he was shouldering the newfound increase in heavy silence on his own.
Goofy was eyeing her strangely again, head tilted in an almost expectant manner. Panic sparked inside her heart, sending it skittering into overtime, though she managed to stave it off by telling herself none of the others could possibly have picked up Riku's name in her ruminations.
Not even the most perceptive of all three of them.
"Sora and Donald are gettin' ready to head out to town," Goofy began, not taking his eyes off her face. Apparently he had decided to forego the chance he had given her to reveal her turmoil's source and just explain why he, of all people, had come knocking on her door. Char scoffed inwardly. He should have known better than to just expect her to pour everything out at this point.
Besides, if everything progressed as she thought it would – and she didn't dare factor in the knowledge that any equation plus Sora never quite worked out how she planned – they would find Riku. Regardless of her succumbing to any pressure and spilling her past, albeit a more distant one, like she had last time they had visited Radiant Garden.
"And we were wondering if you might wanna come with us," Goofy finished, rubbing his finger sheepishly under his nose as he spoke.
Char raised one eyebrow. "We? As in all three of you? I wasn't aware duck boy wanted me around," she drawled. "And besides, won't there be Heartless everywhere?"
Her instinctive rebuttal rang with genuine reluctance that Char, hindered by her desire to stay inside, only now realized had logic backing it. Cid and Merlin had successfully gotten the defense mechanism back under their control, and so Leon and the others had less of a job to do; however, Char highly doubted that they would risk the mechanism's instability just so their four heroes could have one measly, Heartless-free afternoon outing.
They'd turned the pedestals' frequency and strength up when Char had injured her leg, yes, but that had been a special case. She had had no weapons and could barely even walk without healing spells' steady application.
And she had only asked Aerith to turn up the defense mechanism so she could properly apologize to Sora for screaming at him.
Thinking of Sora proved a mistake. Fast on the heel of that thought came a cluster of sensations: his skin under her fingertips, the heat on his cheeks spreading up into hers from where their mouths connected –
"Aw, Donald doesn't mean anything he says!" Goofy assured her. He sounded considerably more cheerful now, as though he hadn't picked up on the most obvious of those tangible sensations reddening her cheeks. Thinking of that, Char had to fight the sudden urge to imitate what Sora had done earlier and pat her face down for evidence.
"And besides," the knight went on, "Sora told Cid to turn up the defense mechanism so we could walk around! Though, uh, he didn't really wanna do it after what just happened."
Char sighed inwardly. Of course.
"So you should come with us." Goofy shuffled his feet and wound his arms behind his back, tearing his eyes away from hers for the first time to stare awkwardly at the ground. Following his gaze, Char spotted a small stain marring the carpet just next to his feet and allowed herself a second to wonder where it had come from. Considering Merlin never seemed to use the hallway he had sealed away from mundane view with his magic…
Then she realized she was only using curiosity about something irrelevant to distract from making a real decision. She loathed that feeling in her chest, that uncertainty permeating her judgment and clouding it in darkness, and even more so the fact that she had yet to pinpoint its source.
Goofy looked back up at her, drawn by her lack of response, and opened his mouth to speak. Whatever backpedaling she had expected from him – a hasty assurance that she didn't have to leave if she didn't want to – failed to complete its journey into audibility; instead, he spoke with seriousness that the Char of a month ago would never have thought him capable of mustering.
"We only got one more day till we beat the Organization," he pointed out. "And we gotta spend it relaxing before we go. 'Cause we don't know what'll happen after."
His words echoed thoughts she had experienced before, albeit in completely different terms: how she would react at Sora finding Riku and Kairi again, and what would become of Char herself afterward. But the end result was the same: where the four of them would go once this – and suddenly she was drawing in sharper breaths, because the journey and the friendships and her winding path of vengeance had somehow condensed themselves into that one little word – was over.
She closed her eyes. Goofy was right, and she knew it. If this is really the last day before we end it, I have to make the most of it. Anger toward this town be damned.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Goofy's cheeks bunch up under the force of his grin. He couldn't just smile a little, he had to put his entire heart into it, and Char wondered fleetingly how else Sora's disposition had rubbed off on his traveling companions.
"There ya go," the knight said. "Sora and Donald're waiting outside Merlin's house."
As she followed him into the hall, she cast only the smallest look over her shoulder at her room. Only when she felt a continued upward quirk of her lips did it hit her that she was giving a tiny smile of her own.
Every time Char had walked through Merlin's house, even just the room that served as Radiant Garden's home base of sorts had swarmed with activity. Whether that activity took the form of Yuffie's loud whirlwind, or Cid's querulous rumble, or even Leon's taciturn wryness, Char had yet to recall a day when the small dwelling had been totally empty.
Today, though, as Goofy led her out of the hallway and the hallway widened out into the house's main area, Char couldn't help noticing no one even sat at the computer. She knew it shouldn't have unnerved her as much as it did – the tiny gap in sound between when Leon and Aerith's leaving and Goofy's appearance had revealed the house was empty – but the silence unsettled her anyway. The computer's hum failed to completely encompass the room in the same feeling that the restoration committee's presence did.
Goofy glanced over his shoulder and noticed her apprehension. "Leon and everybody else are out fixing what the MCP did," he explained.
"Fixing it?" Char raised an eyebrow, grateful at his perception. She had done her best to keep her discomfort well below the surface, but the knight had somehow picked up that much just from a rudimentary look at her. It should have pissed her off that someone besides Sora knew her so well, yet for some reason it didn't.
Goofy bobbed his head up and down in confirmation. "Yup. Repairing stuff that got knocked down – y'know, that sorta thing." He opened the door and swept out his hand in an invitation for her to go first.
Char rolled her eyes, though a grin tugged at her lips as she did so. "What a gentleman," she joked, and strode over the threshold to the borough beyond.
What lay just outside Merlin's house – broken gray brick and winding corridor connecting to Radiant Garden's marketplace – was by no means unfamiliar to her. Nonetheless, she felt herself balk at the sight, brought up short by the past's strings. Radiant Garden as it had appeared before, with its waterfalls and bountiful grass and wholeness, lurked in the back of her mind as a vague memory.
The town had fallen into disrepair only a few years after Ansem had found her wandering outside the postern, and she hadn't left those self-imposed perimeters much anyway. Tron's discovery had tugged this world's old self to the forefront of her mind, though, and as a result the lack of water cascading down to feed its leafy predator's body sent jarring disorientation throughout her.
Then she caught sight of something much more stabilizing, something that grounded her back in the present just as easily as it always had. Something whose familiarity brought happiness, and not bitterness at what had been.
Sora was chatting with Donald as Char and Goofy approached. As they halted in front of the two of them, Donald noted the sudden influx of red and black in his periphery and turned to them. "About time!" he growled with a stomp of his foot. "I'm hungry, and we had to wait for you to get here. What took you so long?"
He shot that final bit of hostility at Char. She rolled her eyes again and folded her arms across her chest; at the same time, though, Goofy's words about the lack of bite behind Donald's bark floated across her mind. Not surprising, though considering how much venom he spat at her half the time she might've thought it genuine. "Somehow, Goofy over here convinced me to get off my ass and come with you guys." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder as she spoke, to a modest chuckle from the dog in question.
A puff of quiet laughter drew her gaze toward Sora. When he saw her looking at him, he quickly cleared his throat to stagnate his amusement, despite the fact that she was eyeing him only with mildly belligerent interest. "I figured he would," the Keybearer said, unable to keep the tiniest chuckle out of his voice.
"Because…?" Char prompted, rotating her wrist in an imploring gesture.
Sora shrugged. "He knows how to talk to people. Donald would've just bitten your head off," he added. Donald squawked angrily and swatted away the playful elbow jab Sora sent in his direction, despite the fact that their difference in height made it all but useless.
Char blinked, then allowed herself a closed-mouthed chuckle that longed to escape her throat's confines. Much as it annoyed her to admit, Sora kind of had a point. "We've got an entire day to ourselves, right?" she asked. "Where to first?"
"Let's go find something to eat," Donald spoke up immediately. No sooner had the final word escaped his lips did he swing around on his heel and begin waddling toward the marketplace.
"I thought he was tired," Char accused, though a tiny smirk tempered any acid in the indictment.
"Well, he is hungry," Goofy defended his friend.
Sora shrugged. "He has a point. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast."
"Me neither," Char sighed. Much as yesterday had shaken all of them, and despite her nearly breaking apart, Falcon had scraped together the pieces of her grip on life and thrown them into making breakfast for her, Char, and Riku. The bacon and blueberry pancakes' memory teased her senses, phantom taste wreathing about inside her mouth. Suddenly she had to fight dual beasts of gnawing, bubbly hunger in her belly and the threat of saliva rising in the back of her mouth.
Sora had been about to turn and follow after Donald, who had already become a white streak darting along the gray stairwell. At Char's eager expression, though, he stopped in his tracks and gazed at her, something more than amusement softening his eyes: intense yet gentle in nature. Contradictions aside, its warmth was undeniable, and she suddenly had to still her twitching fingers at her side.
"Don't we have a duck to catch?" she quickly asked.
Not surprisingly, when the three of them found Donald, he met them with no small amount of annoyance. "About time you guys got over here!" he grumbled. One webbed foot tapped in a staccato rhythm against the ground. "Lucky for you the line was so long."
Char glanced around and saw he was right. While the group had witnessed Radiant Garden's true self, the populace had recognized danger's disappearance and swarmed out into the marketplace. Somewhere nearby the restoration committee was probably restocking their supplies, but beyond the immense throng of people Char couldn't even spot the slightest hint of pink on Aerith's dress.
Fortunately for her annoyance toward crowds, Donald had chosen a particular shop at the marketplace's perimeter, right at the top of the stairs. In the time Char had wasted rhapsodizing over food, most of the people swarming around the shop had vanished.
"Sorry about that, Donald," Goofy said. "We weren't gonna leave ya."
Donald rolled his eyes. "I know that!" he shot back.
Whatever further argument – or at least indignant squawking from Donald and oblivious rebuttal from Goofy – might have ensued died down at that moment. The two in front of them, a mother with a child hanging off the end of one hand, moved out of the way and allowed Char to see what exactly they were waiting to buy.
Of course, the brief flash of bright blue dribbling down the child's round cheek tipped her off.
She couldn't say no fast enough.
"But you don't even know what we're getting yet." Sora cast a bewildered look at her.
"Trust me, I do," Char ground out. "And it's probably not worth the munny."
Donald threw a glare over his shoulder at her, though the way he had to crane his neck to validate it dulled its effect. "But it's ice cream!" he protested. Turning around, he rose up on his tiptoes and placed his hands on the counter's edge for balance. An instant later, though, he jerked back a little, as the ice covering the counter properly soaked in and sent burning cold along his fingers. Good karmic retribution, Char thought.
Then another flash of white appeared in the shop, leaping up onto what must have been a stool behind the counter. "G'afternoon, lads!" the shopkeeper greeted in a scratchy accent.
Char's eyes widened at the bristly, whisker-like feathers on the stocky duck's face, the tiny spectacles he adjusted on his face, and the bolts of familiarity they brought. More unshaven, certainly, and with a distinctive frown line creasing his forehead that not even his welcoming smile could completely eradicate. But this was definitely the duck from Tron's messages.
"What kin I –?" the shopkeeper began.
"Uncle Scrooge?" Donald burst out.
"You know this guy, Donald?" Sora asked, cocking his head to the side.
Obviously, Char thought. How many other talking ducks do we know? She looked over to Sora and Goofy to gauge their reactions, wondering if they were thinking about why Scrooge created that sense of déjà vu. Goofy's expression hinted, at the very least, that he saw the resemblance between ten years ago and now; one of Sora's hands had perched itself just beneath his chin as his gaze flitted from older duck to younger and back again, as though thinking about Donald's reference to the former as "uncle."
Come to think of it, recognition had lit Donald's eyes after returning to Radiant Garden's present. Char didn't know why she hadn't seen it sooner.
Scrooge peered down at his nephew. "Well, if it isn't my favorite nephew, come t'visit my shop!" he laughed, putting his hands on his blue-clad hips. "Takin' a gander at yer old uncle's newest business venture, eh?"
"Uh –" Goofy snapped out of his trance and lifted one finger to correct him, but Sora dropped his hand from his chin to press it over the knight's mouth.
Protesting noises muffled themselves against the boy's hand as he spoke. "Yeah," Sora lied, and Char groaned softly, pushing her bangs off her face. Her fingers in her hair tightened into a fist at his poor deception; from the skepticism on Scrooge's face, he picked it up as well, though neither girl nor merchant said anything of it.
"So are you bringing sea-salt ice cream to Radiant Garden?" Donald prompted.
"Well," the older duck chuckled, "I suppose you could say I am." He gave the frozen surface beneath his hand a couple of hearty pats, seemingly immune to the cold burn that had forced his nephew away. "On my travels a while back, I found this delectable frozen treat. Salty, yet sweet: the ultimate paradox, don't ye think?"
Char rolled her eyes while Donald bobbed his head up and down in emphatic agreement. "More like the ultimate cavity maker," she muttered under her breath. From where he stood next to her, Sora drove a startled sidelong glance in her direction.
Oblivious to her snide remark, Scrooge went on. "And so I sought to spread sea-salt ice cream throughout the land as best I could."
"Gawrsh, Scrooge, d'you think maybe we could have four of those sea-salt ice cream bars?" Goofy queried, looking at Sora. Oh yeah, Char remembered belatedly, he's got all the munny.
Sora perked up at the promise of food, as did Donald, whose interest in his uncle's explanation had faded into near-boredom. Already, the boy was digging around in his pockets for the right amount. "How much is it?" he asked.
Char fought back a sigh. Spending all their hard-earned munny on food. Typical men.
But Scrooge only laughed and shook his head. "I could never ask for money from me own nephew and his friends." He curled both hands under the edge along his side of the counter and pulled gently up. Part of the icy surface slid out and upward to reveal multiple sea-salt ice cream bars, some crystallized together in their frozen state within the cooler. Well, Char reflected, at least the old duck kept it well refrigerated. Twilight Town had done the same, seeing as how it was a local delicacy and the natives liked the stuff a little too much.
Which begged the question as to how exactly Scrooge had brought Twilight Town food over to Radiant Garden at all.
Her mind quickly stamped the conclusion that Mickey had probably sent him here over the question, as he was offering four of the despicable things to them, two in each hand. "One for you, m'boy," he handed one to Donald, who fell back onto his haunches at once and began inhaling his ice cream, "and you," to Sora, who smiled in thanks, "and you," to Goofy, who looked mildly guilty at accepting it without pay, "and finally, to the bonny lass here."
Char blinked the spots produced by bright blue's sudden influx to her vision and shook her head. "No offense, sir, but I'm really not fond of this stuff."
"I'll take it!" Donald immediately darted over and snatched it out of his uncle's grasp. The redhead rolled her eyes, while the others chuckled at his haste.
"Are you sure you don't want us to pay you?" Sora questioned Scrooge, who was regarding his nephew's greed with the affection of an indulgent parent.
The whiskered duck waved a hand at them. "Don't worry about it," he rebuffed merrily. Seeing what almost resembled an older Donald this jovial, Char felt awkward bemusement shudder violently inside her. A talking duck was weird on its own; a happy talking duck sent her remaining sense of logic toppling over itself.
"Well, all right." Sora still sounded dubious, but apparently knew when to take hospitality when given to him.
"Thanks, Scrooge," Goofy said.
"No problem at all, laddies! And call me Uncle Scrooge. Most do," the shopkeeper said.
As the four of them turned on their heel and stepped away from Scrooge's shop, Char heard a "hm" emit from Donald's direction. She glanced down at him and grimaced at the sight she found. Already, he'd finished one ice cream bar and was tucking its remaining stick away into his pocket. "What's up?" she asked.
Donald looked back up at her with a start, as though in his hungry trance he'd forgotten he walked alongside his friends. Beside him, Goofy licked at his own ice cream, carefully at first, then began to eat more quickly at the taste of the food he had only seen in the realm of darkness.
The mage shrugged. "It's just weird to see Uncle Scrooge act that… nice."
"Why's that?" Sora asked, leaning forward to catch an errant drop rolling off his melting ice cream.
"Because believe it or not…" Donald paused, took a few licks at what had been Char's food, relished the dramatic effect. Must. Not. Roll. Eyes. Then he lowered his frozen treat and gazed at the others. "He used to be a pretty big jerk. He liked money way too much."
"Oh yeah, I remember when he was like that." Goofy surfaced from his meal to interject. He nodded in slow reminiscence as the memory flowed back to him. "Me and Donald were training with His Majesty, and Scrooge barged right on in."
"Wanting a raise, right?" Char quipped.
"Yeah," Donald confirmed. "But something happened to him." His bill crinkled as he went on, bemusement marking every word. "Overnight, he turned into a big charity case. And he asked the king if he could spread his goods beyond Disney Town."
"And so Mickey agreed and sent him here," Sora filled in the blanks. He earned a grunt in response from Donald, as his second ice cream bar took the place of any words.
Char raised an eyebrow at Donald's terseness. "If I didn't know any better," she couldn't help remarking, "I'd think you almost liked him better when he was a jerk."
Cyan droplets scattered as Donald yanked the ice cream back from his mouth and glared at her. "What I don't like is how he never explained what happened to him," he growled.
"Maybe it didn't need explanation," Char pointed out. "Maybe he thought it'd be better if he just focused on changing himself."
Donald snorted, waving the stick holding the ice cream dismissively. "I'm not surprised you think like that. Secrets and all."
His tone resonated with every bit of causticity he had expressed toward her since her untimely return, making her eyes narrow. Rage pooled together and simmered, low and volatile, in her belly; it channeled its heated influence up to her throat and rendered her all but speechless.
Sora's gaze shifted from one to the other, and he opened his mouth to speak. But Goofy, in his longtime role as mediator, beat him to it, with a nervous chuckle that caused girl and duck to whirl toward him. "Maybe we should find a place to sit."
"Maybe we should," Char muttered, feeling her throat unclench. The liquid fury dropped back into oblivion, though her heartbeat still spluttered out of that fury's remnants. Fury, and something else.
Donald's bark hurt more than his bite; she knew that. But in light of her realization after that untimely kiss with Sora – that she cared what Donald and Goofy thought of her and her choice in love – it almost hurt that the duck had lost whatever kernel of trust he had for her.
Almost.
Oddly enough, the group found a spot to sit within minutes. Despite the crowds strung about the marketplace, Radiant Garden's populace mostly concentrated itself closer to the restaurants lining its main expanse at the center. As a result, the perimeter remained relatively empty, and Char spotted a café's relatively empty tables sitting nearby. A woman, obviously an employee by her dark green apron and white pantsuit, was rubbing a damp rag over one table, leaving reflective stripes in its path along the dark surface.
The idle chatter of civilians below nearly blotted out Sora's voice as he approached the woman to ask if they could sit outside the shop. He had to raise his voice to be heard, but she picked up his request nonetheless and allowed them to sit down. Judging by the obvious wonder in her voice, the restoration committee had already come by and announced the presence of the people who had saved the town.
Either that, or the cuts mottling Char's face combined with the dried crimson on Donald's feathers and Goofy's fur told the story.
Regardless, she moved away from the table she had just cleaned off to let them sit down. "We haven't really had any customers today," she explained ruefully. "What with all the danger and everything…" Her voice trailed off, and she ducked her head in visible fear before shuffling back into the café.
As the door swung shut behind her, the four of them got comfortable in their chairs. Since only three chairs surrounded the round table, Char ended up having to retrieve an extra for herself from one of its fellows nearby. Its weight nearly toppled her, much to her shame. Even with her suddenly-inflamed muscles howling in protest, though, she managed to drag the chair over.
Trying not to wince at the fire moving along her sides, she stared down at the table's surface and idly listened to the others' conversation. It was ironic: barely an hour ago she had longed to hear the respective timbres mingling with the late afternoon breeze, yet now that her wish had been granted, she found herself hesitating to graze the notion of joining them. Mundane though their words were, they had to use all those unnecessary topics before tomorrow came and replaced them with battle cries and acrimonious insults toward the Organization.
Sora laughed at something Goofy had said, and Char felt herself cringe. Suddenly she found herself riveted on the still-glistening streak running along the table, at her cheekbone's roundness vaguely reflected in that clean spot, instead of the others and their smiles. For some reason, she felt like if she looked up and saw them – Donald's inevitable annoyance, and Goofy's apologetic indulgence, and especially Sora's blithe, naïve, stupid happiness – it would be like staring right into the sun.
It would blind her, and hurt her, and force her nose to nose with tomorrow's reality all over again.
"You know," Sora suddenly began, and the thoughtfulness in those two words alone surprised Char enough to swing her head up. Contemplation dulled the brightness she only now suppressed recoiling from; once she caught on that he was actually thinking about something, she blinked. Really, she was more curious about what he would say next than surprised at his reflections.
"Scrooge was in Tron's flashbacks, right?" he mused aloud, turning to Donald.
The mage nodded. "Yeah, giving out stuff to Hollow Bastion people, I guess."
"Radiant Garden, Donald," Goofy reminded him with a gentle shoulder prod.
"I know that!" Donald snapped back. "I'm just used to calling this place Hollow Bastion, is all."
Sora nodded. "So he might know something about that girl…" He folded his arms, resting his forearms on the table, and tilted his head down. From the visible knit of his brow, he was staring down at the table's reflective surface out of contemplation, not uncertainty.
"Girl?" Char echoed. "You mean the one with the blue hair?" The very last image had confounded her for a couple of seconds, mostly because even on her few outings with the other apprentices, Char couldn't recall that purposeful stride or the intelligence in those dark blue eyes. Both of those traits would have burned themselves into the back of her mind.
Then again, if Braig or Even had spotted the girl – woman, rather – wandering about town, Char would have heard about it, through respective lecherous remarks and loud, heavy sighs.
"I can't explain why," Sora admitted, "but… she looked really, really familiar."
"Really? Have you met her before?" Goofy questioned.
Déjà vu crept up with invisible fingers dancing along Char's spine; she wondered for a few seconds at its origin before realizing it. Back then, the skies above had cast an orange sheen, not bright, cloudless blue, and Twilight Town's alleys had surrounded them, not relieved crowds just recovering from their town's traumatic near-invasion.
And this time, Char couldn't quite blame Sora's sense of familiarity on Roxas. Unless the Nobody had somehow been around at Radiant Garden's initial completion, of course.
Sure enough, the knight's question met with a decisive headshake from Sora. "I don't think so." Despite his peremptory action, his words carried none of that firmness; if anything, the last word's increase in pitch made him sound more like he was asking a question.
"Yeah, Sora would've remembered someone that pretty," Donald teased, pointing one of the sea-salt ice cream sticks – the final remnant of his sated appetite – at Sora.
Char rolled her eyes as Sora backpedaled, sputtering in surprise at the duck's change of tack. The newfound color in his cheeks screamed his agreement more than obviously, though. Somewhere deep inside her heart, she knew that fact should have stoked her jealousy, an emotion that had stirred far too often as of late. Ironically, though, Sora's blush didn't inflict the same rush on Char that his pining after Kairi did.
Maybe that meant she was finally getting over herself and coming to terms with his feelings directing toward her.
"Well, anyway." Sora cleared his throat awkwardly and leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up and crossing his legs. He ducked his head to catch the final droplet of his neglected ice cream as it slid down its stick. "I just remembered I could've asked Scrooge about it," he finished.
Char folded her arms, though the table's rim concealing the action stole its effect. She couldn't help but remember the last time an unbidden sense of déjà vu had driven Sora to ask a world native about it. The Agrabah peddler's whimpers resonated in her memory as loudly as they had that night. Here's hoping he doesn't get Donald's uncle at Keyblade point this time.
"You could still do it," Donald suggested. "I don't think he'd mind."
Sora sighed. Char saw his fist clench over the popsicle stick on the table and knew he was remembering asking – if that word even fit what he had done – the peddler about Roxas' affiliation with him. Even though she had unintentionally eavesdropped on Sora's bout of viciousness, she recalled it all too easily.
"Nah, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually." His voice threatened to crack under the weight of his dismissive tone's falseness. Char allowed her eyes to squeeze shut momentarily. You're a liar. You're gonna let it eat at you until you can't take it anymore.
Her eyes opened just in time to see Sora watching her almost expectantly. "What?" she asked, forcing her voice to remain level. Sympathy for him nearly dragged it into trembling territory, though, and she allowed herself a second to lament her own hypocrisy. Why she felt she had to hide her emotions even now remained a mystery to her, yet Sora didn't get the same privilege.
Meticulously as she had overlaid calmness into her question, some minor tremor must have wormed its way past that, because Goofy angled his head just a bit to the side at her. Donald's open hostility had died down, aided both by time's passage and idle conversation's dulling capabilities, but he narrowed his eyes anyway. Both Disney residents' faces held that unspoken question, that desire to know why she had acted so odd today, albeit in different manifestations.
Sora didn't seem to notice. If he did, he had the good grace not to say what everyone else was thinking. "You lived here when the town was built," he recalled aloud, still addressing Char. "Did you ever see that blue-haired girl walking around?"
Char shook her head, to a disappointed groan from the Keybearer. "If I did, I would've remembered," she told him. "Besides, Ansem didn't find me until Radiant Garden had been built for a while. She might've shown up before I got here."
Well, she assured her completely irrational guilt at disappointing him, that wasn't entirely a lie. Ansem had discovered her cowering near the back of the postern, a six-year-old girl with only blankness where any memory of parents would be, and only five apprentices had greeted her; they'd taken in Xehanort not long after she had settled in to her new life as a researcher. If Char didn't recognize the blue-haired girl, then the latter had probably arrived at Radiant Garden just before the former did.
Sora sighed again and dropped his feet from the table. Just in time, too: something seared along Char's shoulder, the invisible trail created by someone else's glare coming from the café's direction. She glanced over in time to see the employee straightening haughtily before whirling around and scrubbing the pitcher in her grasp with renewed vigor.
"All right… I thought it was worth asking," Sora conceded, though again, the audible drag in his seemingly-dismissive comment threatened to overtake its illusion. "Thanks anyway."
"No big deal," Char mumbled, raising and lowering one shoulder.
As Goofy hastily cut in, trying to steer the conversation to something much less serious, Char found her eyes inexplicably drawn toward the stick still in Sora's grasp. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around it that a small line had begun to climb its surface and threatened to fracture it, but she could still see a brown star positioned above two letters. WI read out before its remainder vanished beneath Sora's palm.
In the end, she stopped wondering what it said. It probably wasn't important, anyway.
"Way to ruin your dinner, guys," Char sighed.
Merlin just shook his head with a haughty sigh. "I don't understand how you boys could stomach ice cream just before dinnertime," he said. Next to him, Yuffie was laughing unabashedly at the expressions on the trio's faces.
Sora groaned, chin dropping to his chest as though just holding his head up proved too much effort now. "I'm just not hungry right now," he mumbled, though his furrowed brow and wrinkled nose cast vague disgust to illuminate that lie.
"Yeah, it's not that Cid's cooking is bad or nothin'," Goofy added hastily. "We're just full on ice cream, that's all." He punctuated the final part by pushing his bowl of mashed potatoes a little away from him.
Cid spun around in his chair at the computer to properly glare at them. "If it ain't that bad, why are you three not eating it?" he growled, squinting one eye. Char saw Donald glance over at the new stare resting on him, only to squawk and cling to his armrests at the vehemence behind Cid's dour stare.
"I liked it fine," Char said with a shrug. Using her fork, she tapped the edge of her own bowl, whose inside was flecked with foamy white remains of her hunger's pillage. "I might get seconds, actually."
Although Yuffie's continuous cackles almost drowned it out, Char heard the others let out a simultaneous groan and felt a smirk dance across her mouth.
Leon folded his arms and stepped forward from where he had leaned against the wall, just as solid a presence as ever. Char could almost see the muscles in the back of his eyes struggling to keep them from rolling up to the ceiling. "You guys are gonna need all the strength you can get for tomorrow," he reminded them. Sora cringed, clearly knowing the older brunette was right. "And that means food."
"Ah, let 'em alone, Squall," Yuffie managed at last, rubbing imaginary tears out of her eyes and poking at the air with her fork. At least, they looked imaginary until the light actually caught their gleam as Yuffie flicked them away from her cheeks and into the air. "If they spoiled themselves on ice cream, that just means more for us, right?"
Leon's eye twitched, just the smallest tic plucking beneath one heavy brow. "Are you ever going to call me Leon in this lifetime?"
"Nope!" Yuffie replied cheerfully, bouncing to her feet. "I'm gonna go get some more food!" With that, she spun around and darted over to the other side of the room, toward Merlin's round desk, where a larger bowl sat.
Synchronized, Sora, Donald, and Goofy groaned and slumped forward, faces against the wooden table's surface. Merlin jerked in surprise at their melodramatic response, while Leon completed the action that had threatened to win over his manners and rolled his eyes. Cid threw up his hands before turning back to the computer, and although Yuffie failed to muster her giggle fit's true extent a second time, a very unceremonious snort erupted from her direction before she hunched further over the bowl of mashed potatoes.
While Char had successfully repressed her smirk, she found it manifesting itself on her face again. Yuffie was still shoving more food into her bowl, Cid was death-glaring at the code striping the computer screen, Leon had gone back to leaning against the wall, and Merlin was sighing indulgently at the trio still face-down on the table – yet the emotion that swept her instinct to stay neutral into the shadows was not spiteful amusement. The feeling was warmth, warmth at these people who had taken her old home and made it a little like its old self.
In that regard, the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee had succeeded in its goal.
Dual raps at the door drew her gaze away from the sight before her. "Now who could that be?" Merlin muttered under his breath.
No sooner had Yuffie's body touched the seat of her chair did she suddenly jerk up one finger, a noise of realization making its way past her closed lips. "That's probably Aerith," she said.
Sora lifted his head from the table; Char noticed him wince, an action that the lamp lined up on the opposite wall illuminated to her, and fought back a sigh. His bangs concealed the true extent of how badly that Heartless' hilt had pummeled him, but his reactions revealed everything just as easily. "Didn't you say she was out picking up supplies?" he addressed Leon.
The older man just nodded in response, already moving to let Aerith in. Through the growing insistence of the following knocks on the door's wooden surface, Char heard Leon mutter "don't everyone get up at once."
Sure enough, when Leon stepped aside, he revealed the newcomer's trademark pink dress and braid, which flared out behind Aerith as she stepped inside. In both hands she held bags threatening to burst at their seams with their contents. "Good evening, everyone," she greeted, sweeping her gaze across Merlin and his guests. She closed the door behind her and stepped fully inside; when Leon extended one hand to take one of her bags, she shook her head decisively, even though Char could practically see the strain on her wrists.
"What's up, Aerith?" Sora said. "That looks like a lot of stuff."
"Yes," Merlin said. "Just, ah, put them on the side table over there, would you?" He motioned with one long hand, surprisingly free of prominent veins, to the round desk where his lamp sat.
As Aerith nodded and walked over to put one bag down, she answered Sora's unspoken question. "I thought it'd be a good idea to pick up some stuff for you guys." She hesitated, slowed in setting one bulging burden down; its contents rattled upon pressing against the table's surface and nearly toppled as they unbalanced against one opened book, but the healing items inside did not fall out. "With tomorrow and all," she finished a little lamely, as though her momentary search for a gentle way to phrase the group's task had brought up few results.
Char didn't blame her at all; tomorrow was tomorrow, a confrontation she had strived for and anticipated for months now. Her own hesitation and nervousness aside, nothing could change that.
"Really?" Donald cried, fingers clenching into fists on either side of his bowl of food. Enthusiasm curled his bill's edges upward, and his fists tightened in a vain attempt to contain it. "Thanks, Aerith!"
"Yeah, considering you guys spent all day eating ice cream and didn't get healing supplies like you should have," Char cut in dryly.
Sora spun toward her, eyes narrowing in a not-quite-playful way. "You're never gonna let us hear the end of that, are you?"
The redhead shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not." Her cryptic words earned an eye-roll from him. He glared down at his bowl, as though the heat of his stare could restore the food within from its cold state; then he jerked his head away at the reminder of just why he had let his dinner get that way in the first place. And Char swore she heard him mutter "I didn't hear you objecting" under his breath.
Oddly enough, his display of annoyance broke another chain wound so tightly about her emotions and created a tangible tug at the corners of her lips.
She opened her mouth to speak, only to close it again when another, much softer knock reverberated from outside – really, its volume, or lack thereof, fit the term tap more than knock. Donald and Goofy exchanged confused glances, while Cid glanced over his shoulder and asked, "We expectin' anybody else tonight?"
Yuffie finally surfaced from inhaling her second helping of potatoes to reply. "I don't think so," she replied. Mild disgust blossomed in Char's gut at the ninja's refusal to swallow her food before speaking.
Reluctantly, Leon turned back around and closed his fingers around the doorknob again. Tenseness marked every movement, every twitch of his fingers against the wood; Merlin's steady eye on his back probably prevented him from clutching the knob harder, but enough agitation coiled into his fist that he could have crushed it. From where Char sat, she caught the fur along where his jacket met his neck shift further up and knew he was readying himself to summon his Gunblade if necessary.
Then he opened the door and revealed another familiar face.
"Cloud?" Goofy said incredulously. "What're you doing back here?"
Cloud's gray-blue eyes flicked toward Goofy before returning to the man who stood before him. Leon's shoulders still remained in their tensed position, even though not five days ago the two of them had fought together to preserve Radiant Garden's safety. Alias change or no, Cloud was as much a part of the Restoration Committee at this point as Sora or Aerith or Leon.
Still, Char thought she could understand the hostility that simmered between the two men. It was definitely a guy thing, so its true nature lay hidden to her; then again… She glanced back at Sora and found anxiety in his wide blue eyes as they shifted from Leon to Cloud and back again; the same emotion lay in Donald and Goofy's gazes as well.
Maybe Leon and Cloud had too much in common to truly get along with one another. That, at least, was universal – after all, Char had failed to negotiate a legitimate truce with Falcon until the latter had all but poured venom into her with her eyes for three days straight.
Three days. The amount of time that Char had spent – so paltry in comparison to all this – hit her then. Despite her mulling over as much in the past, only now did it truly strike her. Combined with today's other revelations – finding out how the apprentices had died; discovering that Donald and Goofy not only knew about her and Sora's feelings, but they approved of them; Sora thinking about that mysterious girl in a much more focused way than she was accustomed to seeing from him – the fact that only three days ago she had been trying to sort out Falcon and Copperhead's situation almost hurt. Especially because the only connection Falcon had with Sora was the fact that their two Nobodies felt at least the heart's vestiges of love toward one another.
A physical shiver of her shoulders accompanied her attempt to shake that mental tangent out of her mind and focus on the situation at hand: Leon and Cloud were still staring each other down. Cid groaned from the other side of the room and turned back to the computer, but even that failed to break the silence.
Ironically, though, Aerith's quiet voice trickling out into the tense quiet did. "Welcome back," she said to Cloud, smiling.
Cloud's pupils slid across to the healer, who was approaching to stand beside Leon. At the table, where the lamplight wove the smallest amount of illumination across the opposite side of the room, Char swore she saw the tiniest crack in his blank expression. Just the slightest hint of a smile.
Then he broke his glare with Leon entirely and stared down at the ground. "Thanks," he muttered.
"Good to see you!" Sora blustered, thumping the empty chair next to him with one hand. Char heard a groan ring out and looked over in time to see Yuffie's palm land solidly against her forehead, a sight that made the redhead quirk her eyebrow.
"He doesn't even try to make it sound natural, does he?" Char asked, low enough for only the ninja to hear.
Yuffie sighed, the sound starkly loud in comparison to Char's attempt at tact, and raised the same palm up to the ceiling. "Men," she groaned, voice raspy with exasperation with all three of them. This time, Char couldn't hold back a chuckle.
Her display of amusement, anomalous for today though it was, went unnoticed in the wake of Cloud's appearance. Guilty relief washed over her as she watched Cloud mill about a moment longer, then steel himself and take the seat Sora had offered for him.
"So," Donald spoke up, "did you ever find that Sephiroth guy?"
Sephiroth. The name tasted odd and unfamiliar to Char, and she blinked a couple of times, during which she dug through her memory to find out why Donald remembered and she didn't. When they had arrived at Radiant Garden a few days ago, drawn by darkness' sudden influx in hold on her old home, they'd found Cloud first. And he had mentioned something about returning to Radiant Garden to find his darkness and destroy it – or rather, him.
Then Aerith had shown up, and Cloud had promised he would come back no matter how far away he went. Even now, hot embarrassment lanced along her spine at recalling the sense of intimacy around Cloud and Aerith as the group had watched them talk.
"Sephiroth?" Leon echoed. He had stepped aside, albeit grudgingly and under the influence of Aerith's stare, to let Cloud walk past. Now he moved forward, speed denoting only a fraction of his aggressiveness: that, and near-accusation at the secret Cloud had spoken only to Sora and his companions. Merlin's eyes widened, while Yuffie looked back and forth from one to the other. Sora cringed, knowing that Cloud had trusted them with his secret and Donald had just blabbed it.
To Cloud's credit, he didn't flinch under Leon's glare, nor did he glare at Donald, though the duck had the good grace to jolt up and slap one hand over his beak. "It's nothing," was all the blonde said. "It's my problem, and I'll deal with it."
Why even tell us about it, then? Char wanted to scream, but remained silent.
"Besides," Cloud went on, leather gloves creaking as he curled one hand into a fist against the table, "I know where he is. I just stopped for tonight to get some rest before I fight him tomorrow."
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Char had never realized how much she loathed that word and the future it implied until Riku had shoved her nose to nose with it last night.
She had thought that Sora's presence would calm her heart down, not send it rolling into fear and emotional conflict again. Yet here she was, fighting tension and trying to figure out the past as rigorously as she had with Falcon and Copperhead.
Abruptly, she stood up, making everyone's heads turn to her. "Can I be excused?" she blurted out. The instant the question escaped her lips she knew its idiocy; her fingers braced against the table and twitched in repressed shame. She didn't think she had used that tone since right after Ansem had taken her in.
Here she was, channeling her inner six-year-old. Gods.
Yuffie blinked, fork half-hanging out of her mouth, staring with round dark eyes. Even Cid turned back around with a final takkety-tak at the computer's keys, at which the screen went dark.
"Well, ah, I suppose," Merlin finally spoke up, with a final confused stare around at everyone else. It made sense that he had taken it upon himself to respond, since this was his house. "But what seems to be the –"
Char didn't wait to hear the rest of his question. Without entirely knowing why, she yanked the chair out to free herself and made a beeline back through the hallway to her room.
The instant the door slammed behind her, she took a deep breath and pressed her back against it. Counted the seconds till someone came after her. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven –
She felt more than heard the single knock at the door; the sound vibrated through her spine and made her tense. For some reason, she prayed she wouldn't find brown spikes and worried blue eyes as she turned around and closed her fingers over the knob.
As it turned out, the spikes reflected a honey-gold hue, and the eyes more gray-blue than sapphire.
Cloud stared at her a moment longer, a distinctively gauging look in his gaze that made discomfort ripple along her body. The last time this had happened, a nightmare had throttled her awake, and he had sat at her bedside observing. Creepy, really.
She was about to voice as much when he spoke. His normally-soft voice had taken up residence at a volume even lower than normal, so that she had to strain to hear. Once she did, though, she couldn't hold back a surprised grunt.
"You're not the only one who has nightmares about the past, you know."
Well, she thought in one final attempt at dryness, that explained why he had expressed that morbid fascination toward her behavior when that nightmare had finished tossing her emotions about.
"I heard about what you guys did for the town," Cloud went on. "It wasn't hard to. The Restoration Committee went around the marketplace and told everyone you saved them. And Sora told me about you guys' mission."
Not knowing what to say, Char remained silent. The man had never spoken this many words at once before; the fact that he was choosing to do so now signified a relevance that demanded her attention.
Cloud sighed, shifted his weight to the opposite leg and folded his arms. Char had never realized how much taller he stood than she – not near to the extent of Riku's Xehanort guise, but past the point where she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. In spite of his half-slumped position, he still towered above her.
"No matter how many battles we fight tomorrow," he said, "we always need to find the light. Somebody told me that once, and I've never stopped clinging to it."
He surveyed her a moment longer, giving her a chance to mull over his words, then continued, in a tone that suggested he was leaving her this last bit to think on. "They're your light, aren't they? Sora, Donald, and Goofy."
Char's eyes widened.
He turned back around in a rush of black and strode down the hall. The rhythm of his footsteps tapping against the floor wormed into her mind and refused to leave, long after it had gone quiet.
Char found a certain stroke of irony in her current actions. The last time she had roused herself from an emotional low long enough to pull together her remaining courage and follow Sora to his room – the last time she had found it in herself to push her pride aside and address the concern at hand – the encounter had ended with their first kiss. Riku's untimely appearance had effectively cut off any emotional conflict that would have followed, or at least muted it, but the fact remained that things would end very differently this time than the last.
At least, if Sora recognized her assailant's way of holding his weapon, or even the weapon itself, which had clashed with the Keybearer's own silver key in Hollow Bastion. Clad in the Organization coat that set him apart from the Land of Dragons' snow, Riku couldn't hide his battle stance or the bat's wing blade he wielded.
Honestly, the knowledge that Sora would ask her about just who had taken her hovered in the back of Char's mind, buzzing insistently. He's going to ask. He can't not ask after I just up and disappeared for four straight days. Xemnas' casual mention of her knowing more about Riku than she let on pushed the sick anticipation to the forefront of her thoughts, gave it more inevitability than before. Standing outside his room, Char felt her fist waver not an inch away from it, knuckles brushing the surface in the tremor she could not hide.
Unnerving silence permeated the air, a state she would have once reveled in, but only increased her sense of desperation. The Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee had departed for their homes, even Cloud, who claimed he had found a place to stay the night before his big confrontation with Sephiroth. Char had expected one last, meaningful glance from him before he left, but surprisingly, he only spoke to Sora individually. The blonde had shoved something into the younger boy's hand and left before Sora could ask about it.
As it turned out, Cloud had bestowed a Keychain on Sora. Its charm vaguely resembled the fox-head badge adorning Cloud's chest; Char had spent a moment wondering where he had acquired a Keychain before dismissing the matter. Sora had found other Keyblades just scattered around the worlds, after all.
Her thoughts immediately crashed to a halt when the barrier between her and Sora's room swung ajar.
The Keybearer stood there, bare-shouldered and tired-eyed. One hand rubbed through his unruly hair, as though working through tangles; he winced and tugged harder to free one, only to widen his eyes when he saw just who stood before him. "Char?" He quickly straightened, not-so-stealthily shifting the hand in his hair down to the back of his neck.
Char forced a smile onto her face. "Hey," she answered. "Can I come in?"
Sora blinked, arm dropping back down to his side. Something flashed across his face momentarily, something she felt her breath catch at; not suspicion, but an emotion treading a little too close to anticipation for her liking. With the rational part of her mind she understood that she should be annoyed that he just expected her to pour out the truth; but it was a logical expectation, considering she had used her time not spent on dodging Heartless or ruminating over tomorrow's clash explaining more about the Organization.
"Uh, yeah, sure." He stepped aside and swept one hand out in an extravagant gesture. "Right this way, ma'am," he announced dramatically. His attempt to turn the conversation in a lighter direction couldn't have been more obvious, yet Char grinned back as she followed his instructions.
Fortunately for her sensibilities, he had yet to demolish the sheets' foundations, and the pillows lay relatively intact on the bed. He had turned the lamp on, causing soft yellow light to reflect off the window and mar the nighttime sky beyond with its reflection on the glass pane. Next to the lamp on the bedside table, his black jacket lay, clearly tossed in a haphazard position: the only evidence to his less-than-organized tendencies.
Glancing over her shoulder at Sora, who was closing the door, she asked, "Why were you going outside, anyway?"
The Keybearer glanced up at her, smile sloughing off his face in lieu of embarrassment. "I was going to go to the bathroom," he confessed, "but I can hold it –"
Char's brow wrinkled. "Too much information, Key-boy." She stood a moment longer, suddenly not knowing what to do or say. Somehow, just sitting down and making herself comfortable on his bed seemed like an obscene, unnecessary move; she had done it in the past, but he had always stretched out there first. And although she would have loved to send him off and wait for him to finish his little mission, something like impatience was clawing its way up inside her and strangling that desire in its tracks.
He noticed her indecision and flopped down on his bed. Tanned arms stretched above his head and his fingers entwined themselves in midair as he let out a jaw-snapping yawn. "I'm tired," he confessed obviously, keeping his arms over his head so his fingers dangled off the bed's edge.
Tentatively, Char joined him, though not without near the same flourish he had. She remained sitting up while he lay on his back, gazing up at the ceiling. In the dim light, the fuzzy yellow glow thrown up around the spikes of Sora's hair, Char found herself suddenly remembering the last time lamplight had illuminated someone close by.
Suddenly, her fingers clenching in the sheets under her hands were ruining any semblance of neatness it had.
Sora's gaze flicked down to the influx of movement, only for his eyes to widen and focus right on her. "You okay?" he asked.
Char took a deep breath. Inhale, exhale. "Yeah," she answered, carefully. "Just… thinking about tomorrow."
It wasn't the first lie she had told on this journey, but he believed it nonetheless. "Oh." He blinked, then folded his arms across his chest. "Yeah, I'm kind of nervous too."
Char narrowed her eyes. "You don't look that nervous to me."
Sora sat up, one hand flying out to his side to stave off the dizziness at the abrupt shift in gravity. He turned his head to look at her. "Well, I mean… it's the Organization. And the last Nobody we fought almost beat us."
The redhead shrugged one shoulder. "Demyx wasn't that bad. Goofy got more beaten up than any of us did."
"Demyx…?" Sora trailed off, only to let out a sound of realization. "Oh yeah," he said, "you weren't there. We took out that Xaldin guy at Beast's Castle while you were gone."
Char's eyes widened. "What?" she gasped, rage and disappointment swirling together and injecting an extra burst of energy into her heartbeat. Not only had they fought Jafar, but Dilan, too?
She was going to kill Riku when they found him for snatching her away from all the action.
"Yeah, we did," Sora barreled on, seemingly oblivious to her mounting anger. "It… really hurt, though." He grazed his ribs with one hand and winced, though a smile made its way past his pained expression.
So Char had been right, that day she had sat at the Shadowed Desert's saloon with Riku and Copperhead and assumed the group had gone ahead to Beast's Castle. The imposing turrets and snarling gargoyles strewn about the castle's exterior had appeared after the Land of Dragons' dojo on the Gummi ship's map, and she had advised them to keep searching for a way to the Organization's world. It stood to reason that they had moved on without her; in fact, if they had stuck around… just the thought of the latter made her hold back an already-irritated sigh.
Dilan could have at least waited until I got back to fight them, though. Her fellow apprentices didn't exactly revel in doing what she wanted, though. If anything, Dilan had reveled in darting behind her at the last possible moment during their training sessions and lashing out with his lance. His laughter rang through her head, and the shallow cuts that had littered her back for days after created a phantom sting beneath her shirt.
"Who else did you guys beat up without me?" Char demanded, rounding on Sora.
He recoiled, but she didn't let up in her glare in the slightest. Hesitantly, he began counting off on one hand. "Uh… a Heartless that wanted gold, a Heartless that wanted presents, a Heartless made out of Scar's ghost, Jafar…"
Char raised one eyebrow as his voice dropped off after the vizier's name. "And?" she prompted.
Sora hesitated before speaking the final name. "Hades," he mumbled.
She threw up her hands. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah," he squeaked.
Char struggled with the incredulous fury now simmering freely inside her body and transferring its heat into her skin a few moments longer; but the visible fear on his face – an expression he hadn't directed toward her in gods knew how long – deadened that flame. She sighed, brushed her fingers over her bangs. "I'm gonna kill that guy," she repeated the thought she had had earlier.
"Guy?" Sora straightened, tilted his head to the side at her.
Char froze. Her ability to speak shut down, causing her mind to flood to the brim with everything she couldn't say.
What's the matter with you, you knew this would come up eventually, you should've been ready for it –
"Do you mean the one that kidnapped you?" the Keybearer pressed. Eagerness strained to be set forth, the desire for answers struggling to break the chains of tact and attempts at gently coaxing the truth out of her. Only a few seconds passed before those chains broke and he clenched his fists against his thighs, staring expectantly at her. "Do you know who it was?"
His enthusiasm, as it always had, found its way past the bindings wound about her own honesty: the bindings formed from duty and loyalty and the need to keep Riku's promise. As it turned out, that duty and loyalty and need had also throttled her voice in her throat.
But he was so eager and his eyes were so blue and before she knew it he had freed her ability to speak from its chains.
"Don't you?" she shot back, before her common sense could reel her back in.
Sora leaned forward, so abruptly that he nearly reopened his forehead wound bashing his skull into hers. As it was, she surfaced from her own shock and self-chiding long enough to pull back before impact. "So it was Riku!" he declared, leaping to his feet. Char thought his eyes would burst out of his head, they had gotten so wide. The sun she had tried to avoid blinding herself with had condensed itself into his face, happiness making him shine brighter than the lamp in the corner did.
"Where is he? Where did he take you? Is he all right? Does he know we were traveling together? Does he –"
Thankfully, Sora's mouth had yet to defy physics' laws like his eyes had. As a result, even though he was babbling at this point, Char managed to catch his lips with her finger and avoid getting his spit on her hand. Immediately, his jaw snapped shut, though his grin's intensity threatened to burst past the closed-mouthed barrier her finger had put on it.
"Look," she said, "I never said it was actually Riku. All I'll tell you is that the hint you got put us on the right track."
She would have spent another moment deciding whether to leave her revelation at that – at the fact that Riku would be waiting for them, if he had in fact found Ansem's machine, in the World That Never Was – but as always, Sora finished that thought for her.
Something closed around her wrist: gentle, almost tender to the touch, and she felt her finger slide across his chin as Sora tugged her hand away from his mouth. With the barrier gone, he allowed his smile to fully manifest on his face, a big toothy abomination that almost proved contagious to her. Almost.
Then he was moving forward, and she tensed. For a couple of nerve-wracking, horrifically heart-pounding seconds, she thought he would return the action she'd so impulsively done to him and kiss her – but then his arms were coming around her with a fierceness that nearly knocked her on her back.
"What in the –" she spluttered, hands flung out on either side of her. His body heat was already soaking into hers, or maybe that was just her own blush spreading to the rest of her. Either way, his heartbeat melding into her chest from where it pressed to his created a rhythm that harmonized and twined with her own heartbeat, making her breathless.
Yet despite the near-blazing heat and decreased ability to breathe, she couldn't manage to pull herself away.
Any obligatory protest died at the tip of her tongue when she felt his bony little chin settle on her shoulder and one hand sift into her hair.
"Thanks, Char," Sora murmured into her ear, tightening his grip on her. Just like he had so many times before.
This, she realized, was what she had missed: the camaraderie and the trust and the presence of the boy who loved her. And, honestly, who she loved back.
She heard him chuckle when she brought her arms up and returned his hold.
Btw: I watched Dream Drop Distance's ending on YouTube last night. I'm not gonna spoil anything, but. Um. I cried. A lot. Tears and dry heaving and everything. It was BAD.
Anyway, my point here is that we can add another KH game to TSA's "disregard for the sake of this AU" list. Kay? Kay.