There was a softness underneath him, the likes of which Lloyd had never felt. Thinking harder through the drowsiness of his mind, he thought that perhaps he had, actually, once or twice, but the memory of such comfort was vague and distant, and he decided that he preferred to simply revel in the luxury in which he found himself rather than to ponder useless recollection.
He discovered a pillow under his head, and he realized with delight that the soft object he had been lying on was a bed. With that comforting knowledge, he rolled over to go back to sleep. He deserved it, he thought, since he and all of his friends had just saved the world from Yggdrasill and Cruxis.
After settling down in his new position, something tickled his nose. He shook his head to rid himself of the tickle, but his hair just ended up falling into his face.
No, that wasn't right. He didn't have hair long enough or droopy enough to fall in his face. And, he realized with a start, he hadn't actually gone to sleep last night, and certainly not in a bed this luxurious. The last thing he remembered before this was…that earthquake. The quake had come and worn all of his friends out, and then they had passed out. Then, that rock came and trapped his foot, and he went unconscious. So why had he woken up in this bed? How did he get here? Who had saved him?
His eyes snapped open suddenly, and they were flooded with a bright red. Taken aback, he panicked for a moment before his clouded mind cleared and his eyes were able to see properly once more. The red was…just hair, but the hair wasn't his. With his unfamiliar hand shaking ever so slightly, he reached up and gently tugged on the hair. It was attached to his head, much to his horror. With that scarring knowledge, Lloyd bolted up in the bed, the long, red hair bouncing wildly around him. That was definitely not his hair.
Hesitant to confirm his terrifying suspicions, he decided to look at his surroundings. The bed on which he was still seated had a lavender comforter on top of it, and a canopy attached to the base allowed delicate, sheer fabric to drape down off of it. Light attempted to spill into the room from a large bay window at the back of the room, but thick curtains covered most of the glass, diluting the daylight and keeping the large bedroom dark. The unnerving atmosphere of the room reeked with the scent of the upper class, and each chair and table littering the room looked as if they were unused but often cleaned. He had yet to work up the nerve necessary to stand up and find a mirror, and so he looked himself over, desperate for a semblance of normalcy. Upon looking down, he found himself shirtless, with only white cotton pants clothing him. His body—should he even consider this his body—looked completely fake. This wasn't his. Not the hair, nor the body or the toned abs or the room.
But he couldn't admit it to himself. It was crazy to think this could be anything other than his. Maybe he was dreaming, or—or something. But this wasn't real. He knew what was real, and there was no way this could be. There were too many holes, too many details missing for him to believe any of this.
To prove to himself that he was stupid for ever thinking he was actually awake, he stood up. The hard, wood flooring felt all too real under his bare feet. There was no mirror in the room, but a glass case, containing several knickknacks of various expenses, sat on the opposite end of the room. He rushed to look in the glass, stumbling and tripping over himself. He seemed taller than he was used to, and as a result, he was incredibly off balance. Upon recovering, he took a deep breath and stared straight into the glass. The faint reflection of his face stared back at him, but he clenched his fists at it. The face wasn't his, either. He had seen the face stare back at him many times before, but this was the first time he had been forced to call the face "his". Lloyd stumbled back, falling into the loveseat near the glass case as his knees gave out. Of course, it was all a dream, but he had still never expected to see Zelos's face staring at him in the makeshift mirror.
He heard a knock on the bedroom door, and a muffled voice called to an absent person. "Master Zelos, are you awake?"
It was Sebastian, but Lloyd couldn't find it in him to respond to the call. In the dream, Lloyd may have looked like his friend, but there was no way he actually was the former Chosen. While he comforted himself with the thoughts, a silent voice in the back of his mind reminded him of how real the situation felt, and how terrified he was of that feeling.
"Master Zelos?" Sebastian called again, and this time, the sound of the doorknob rattling slightly came with the butler's voice. Lloyd didn't move. He couldn't move. His body felt numb, his world crashing down into him even as he desperately tried to convince himself that he was imagining the entire scenario.
The door opened and Sebastian spotted him, but Lloyd simply stared blankly at the wall. "Master Zelos, are you all right?" When Lloyd didn't respond, the butler rushed to him and helped him up. "Come to your bed, sir." The voice was soothing, and his limp body followed the commands Sebastian gave him, but his mind was awash in terror and confusion.
As the comforting hands of Zelos's butler lifted him from the loveseat and walked him toward the plush bed, Lloyd tried to recover from his stupor, reaching out into the world around him and finding some ounce of reality onto which he could cling. The butler sat him down onto the large bed, and Lloyd looked up at him.
"I-I'm sorry," he tried, though it came out broken, and Lloyd flinched at the voice that did not belong to him, but came out of his mouth anyways.
"Are you feeling ill, sir?" Sebastian asked, concern etched into every wrinkle on his aging face.
"I don't think that's the word," Lloyd mumbled, looking away from the other man. He stared down at the hands on this body, noticing every detail that differed from his own hands. There was no callousness, no roughness to them that indicated that he had worked a day in his life. They were as soft as the bed, with perfectly manicured fingers and an innate grace to them which his own hands lacked.
"Sir?" Sebastian called, pulling Lloyd from his reverie. When Lloyd jerked and glanced back to the other, Sebastian continued. "You need to be prepared by noon. Your meeting with the King cannot be delayed."
"Uh, right," Lloyd answered gracelessly. "I'll be ready by then."
Sebastian didn't speak for a moment, instead staring at Lloyd curiously, as if looking straight past the body of Zelos and directly at Lloyd, himself. "Very well, then," the butler conceded, standing to leave the room and to allow Lloyd his privacy. "If you need anything, I will be in the kitchen, preparing your breakfast. Do try to be on time, sir." With a bow, Sebastian turned and left Lloyd alone with his thoughts.
But this was just a dream, right? How does one wake themselves up? He pinched himself, and instead of bolting upright safely inside his own tiny wooden house, Lloyd merely let out a pained yelp. Thinking on his feet, he slapped himself a few times, hoping that, through pain, he would wake up from this nightmare. But as he kept finding more creative ways of waking himself up, he grew discouraged, and the tiny voice of reason within him grew stronger, forcing him to face the facts that were laid out in front of him. As he slumped back onto Zelos's bed, Lloyd acknowledged this reality and the repercussions that came with it.
Somehow, someway, Lloyd had switched bodies with Zelos.
Aw, poor Lloyd isn't the main character anymore.
Thank you for reading this story. I hope you are enjoying it. My goal is to make sure this story is well fleshed-out, and I want to take away all of the grueling corniness and shitty humor of which the original was comprised. I did change a few elements of the original, and the major differences will make themselves evident in the next chapter. And hopefully, the following chapters will be longer. I'm not amazing at long expository chapters, but things will be picking up starting next chapter.