Chapter Text
Isa fills out every page of his small journal in a week. Spiraling scrawls cover each grainy page, many questions and few memories. Every day Isa remembers something new and every day he forgets something else.
When he hands the journal to Lea, Lea does nothing but stare at it.
“You finished it?” he asks, sounding incredulous.
“Yes,” Isa says, and he does not know why his hands shake. He folds them together hands together, Isa, hands together, the congregation is watching and eyes Lea attentively.
Lea thumbs through the first few pages. He closes the journal and sets it next to him on the armchair. Silence passes. Isa is sure that Lea is angry.
Finally, Lea looks up and stares Isa straight in the eyes. Electricity meets a raging ocean. “I want to be sure,” he says, “that you want this.”
“Yes.”
Lea pauses, hesitation creasing on his forehead. “I want to make sure that you want it for you.”
The wind blows through Isa, spinning him around and around and around and when he hits the ground, Lea starts laughing, and although pain burns through Isa’s arm he can’t help but laugh too and Isa nods. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Lea replies. The shadows under his eyes are darker than ever. “Okay.”
Lea spends hours pouring over Isa’s journal, over pages wrinkled and smudged with ink and oil, only to find that he needs an entirely new journal just to write all of his answers to Isa’s questions.
Many of his inquiries are about Isa’s childhood in Radiant Garden. Others ask after Lea. And a few speak of Xemnas, although Isa clearly doesn’t remember his name; Lea leaves these questions blank, unsure of how to answer. He doesn’t want to drag Isa’s memories out of the grave. But he doesn’t want to leave Isa in the dark, either. God knows he’s had enough of that.
So he answers nearly every question, his surprisingly neat handwriting running parallel to Isa’s shaky scrawl. The first night, Lea writes so much that he only finishes three pages of Isa’s questions. The questions capture his every thought. Something quiet yet strong hums in Lea’s chest, and he sees the stains left by tears before he actually feels them trail down his cheeks.
Isa dreams, but when he wakes, he does not remember what he dreams about. It does not bother him. He knows they were nightmares. He will remember them later.
Every morning he makes his way cautiously down the long, spiraling staircase to the smallest kitchen in the castle, where he drinks watery coffee and eats a single slice of toast. A window looks out to the east of Radiant Garden, where Isa watches the brilliant sunrise approach over wild hills and the scaffolding of the city. It all feels simple. Isa appreciates it.
A girl – who Isa later remembers as Kairi – joins him for breakfast every morning. They never eat in silence. Kairi talks about everything and nothing at all, while Isa stares at her usual omelette and wonders where he’s heard that voice before. Isa divides everyone in the castle into three categories – those he knows he should know, those he thinks he should know, and those he knows he’s never met before. Kairi falls into the second category.
The rays of light catch and shimmer on Kairi’s hair. Unbidden, a memory swims to Isa through a haze, one that down by the stream, Izi. Please follow your sister, don’t get lost, and do not go swimming this time, do you understand, Izi and then it disappears again, and Isa resumes studying the way the light dances on Kairi’s scalp.
“What’re you looking at?” asks Kairi. She breaks off in the middle of a story about two boys that fall in the category of people Isa knows he’s never met before. Her fork hovers above her generous pile of scrambled eggs.
Nothing is what Isa means to say, but his thoughts are dancing with his tongue, and he says, “The sun.”
Kairi blinks, and for a moment, looks as if she’s about to laugh. But then her fork breaks against her plate. “It’s weird, huh? Everything red kind of glows in the light, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Isa manages. He stares out the window where the city begins its process of waking. “Yes.”
Kairi waits a minute before speaking. She is the only one who believes Isa has any more to say. “It’s been hard,” she half-whispers, as if she’s talking to herself. “There are things I can’t forget and the worst part is, I don’t know if I want to forget them. Everybody wants me to…” Kairi sets her fork next to her plate. “Everybody wants me to be queen.” The sunlight strips away her age and leaves behind a child. “But I didn’t even grow up here.”
Kairi is the first to take Isa outside the Castle. She leads him through the gardens he grew up in, and although they’ve changed, Isa recognizes the bricks below his feet and the barren fruit trees on the outer ring. He used to play here hi my name’s lea what’s yours do you go to school here my mom says that i’m going to be a with Lea when they were children. And although his memory is unable to summon specifics, his haze of recognition is enough to keep him walking.
“Lea said it used to be beautiful here,” Kairi says, her low voice the sister of a quiet morning. “He said they used to plant a bunch of flowers in the spring.”
“Yes, they did,” Isa murmurs. He steps over the remains of a broken clay pot.
“I want to make it beautiful again,” Kairi continues. “It’s what I’m working on right now. Cairn – he’s my advisor, although I didn’t pick him – says it’s stupid to worry about the gardens when Radiant Garden’s people are missing, and I guess he’s right, but… is it that stupid to have something beautiful for once?” Kairi pauses. The morning breeze hums, as if waiting for her command.
“I like it.”
Kairi turns, and Isa is as surprised as her to hear himself speak. But he continues. “I think…” But the words die in midair.
A smile spreads over Kairi’s face. The heart always knows what words cannot say, Izi. She looks up towards the castle, where the bricks shine in the sun’s embrace.
“I would love if you’d help me,” she says, slowly. “To remember the kinds of flowers that they used to plant and the way they used to plant them. I need some help with that.”
Isa stares at his feet. He notices a small, withered flower petal clinging to the leather of his boot. The wind whistles, and the petal vanishes on its breath, blowing up towards the trees.
“I’d like that.”
Lea shares more memories with the apprentices than he’s comfortable with. He tries his best to avoid Even, slipping through castle hallways and losing himself in rooms he’s never seen before. It’s funny, he thinks, that he spent his childhood trying to get into the castle, and now all he wants to do is get out.
Ienzo always finds him. Ienzo and his strange mind, the way he talks in a rush of words all at once, the way darkness settles on his shoulders like he’s never dropped the Organization cloak. Ienzo never says anything. Instead he stands in front of Lea, always offering a hand.
One day, however, he drops to the floor beside Lea.
“Stop following me.”
“Then stop running away.”
“I’m not running. And you should stop using those portals. You know that they’re made of darkness, right?”
Ienzo sighs, a light laugh echoing in his intake of breath. “After all this time, do you really believe that it matters?”
Lea doesn’t answer. He stares at his boots, scuffed beyond repair and twice as dirty. The darkness hangs above them. Something acrid burns at his nose.
“I needed to speak with you about an urgent matter.” Ienzo’s tongue stirs at a torrent. “I thought it best to bring it to you before I am forced to go to the Keybearers.”
“Last I checked, I was one of ‘em.”
Ienzo sighs, dark circles under his eyes stark against skin untouched by the sun. “The darkness in Radiant Garden is growing.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Lea, this is important.” Ienzo’s hands wrap around his clipboard until his knuckles bleed white. “This world is still in an infant stage. If the darkness tips the balance once more, then it may perhaps disappear altogether.”
“So go bother Sora. Sounds more like his line of work.”
Ienzo’s voice drops. “I do not have to ask you to try and understand the significant amount of bias that Sora and his company hold against those… touched by the darkness.”
“What’re you saying?”
“The ‘to any lengths’ philosophy is a dangerous one, Lea.”
Lea pulls himself to his feet, weighed down by the stones in his soul. What he’d do for a six-hour nap right about now. “When it gets to be a problem, let me know.”
“It’s a problem now,” Ienzo insists. His voice cuts through the darkness like a knife. “I’ll remind you that the last time darkness arrived in Radiant Garden and our authority failed to take care of it, we shaved thirteen years off of our lives.”
Lea gives Ienzo a look. “Well, hopefully this time, our authority isn’t sticking their noses in any sketchy shit.” He draws out the sentence, tone burning with mockery.
Ienzo purses his lips. “You would do well to heed my warning.”
“Currently heeding a lot of things right now,” Lea says over his shoulder, brushing against the doorframe. “Don’t think there’s any room left.”
“The innocent blood will not be on my hands.”
“Wow, that’s a first,” Lea retorts. He barely notices the twitch of Ienzo’s right hand.
The fire dances off the cobblestones. It’s hotter than hell, but Axel walks straight through it. It stopped trying to burn him awhile ago.
Something cracks beneath his foot. He pulls back his boot. The ash-covered white of a bone brittle from the blazing heat crumbles onto the earth. Axel tips his head to the side, tries to register anything other than mild interest, and strolls onward.
The smell of burning wood disguises the reek of the bodies. It’s funny, Axel thinks, how the bones all look the same. What was it, what was the difference between an adult’s skeleton and a child’s? They learned it in anatomy. Isa made Lea recite every bone in the body at least five times so he’d pass some stupid quiz. Oh, right. Two hundred and seventy for a kid’s skeleton and two hundred and six for an adult’s. Funny how they look the same.
The well in the center of the small town stands tall amidst still-smoldering ashes. Axel takes a seat on the edge and pulls a pack of cigarettes from one of his cloak’s pocket. It isn’t until he puts the cigarette to his lips that he notices the blood staining the sleeves of his coat. He looks down at his chest. Something pink is stuck in his coat’s zipper.
It’s funny, he thinks, because he can throw up, but he doesn’t really know why.
Lea opens his eyes to a cold floor and sweaty palms.
“You motherfucker,” he spits at Ienzo, who adopts an expression nearly as empty as his Nobody’s once was. The fire roars in Lea’s stomach, and before he knows what’s he’s doing, he lunges.
Ienzo barely has to move a muscle to send Lea to the floor. The weight of a spell marries Lea’s spine to the wood.
As he steps over Lea’s arm on the way to the door, he pauses. “I am not your enemy, Lea. I’m sorry.”
Lea spits a curse into the empty air.
The sun shines down on Isa’s back. Sweat runs rivers down his face and neck. His hands and feet, covered in dirt, blister and ache.
He hasn’t felt this alive in over thirteen years.
He thrusts the shovel back into the ground and revels in the dirt it spills on the ground above. A carton of flowers sits beside a rake off to the side. A low hum spills upon the gardens, and Isa pauses to listen. It takes him a moment to realize that the humming noise comes from his own lips.
“You gotta promise.”
“This is disgusting.”
"Whatever. Stop being a pussy. Promise," Lea says. The blood from their wrists drips from their arms onto the ground, painting the bricks of Lea’s walkway red.
“I promise.”
“That’s forever, y’know. Can’t go back on me now.”
“Even if I did, you’d probably follow me. You’re annoying like that.”
One wolfish grin, two sets of bright eyes full of future, and three promises long forgotten meet on a walkway in early July. Their summer is the summer of youth and a glorious lack of responsibility. They plan to live it to its fullest.