Chapter Text
“You two will be exploring any towns you can to see if there are any signs of the lesser nobodies in them. Roxas, you’ll begin in Twilight Town. Xion, Radiant Garden. Keep tabs on each other so you don’t overlap. Report back to us if you see anything, do not engage. This is no more than recon and it is not Lea’s style of recon. Take potions with you just in case,” Isa had plans formulated to track down as many lesser nobodies as possible with the limited number of people they had. Since it was Lea’s idea, he couldn’t stop Lea from bringing the kids on. Still, having to tell them what to do made him uncomfortable and he feared it was visible on his face.
Roxas and Xion didn’t seem to notice, which Isa was grateful for. The two teens mocked Lea briefly then saluted Isa, grinning and leaving with their keyblades the way Ventus had taught them.
Lea waited a few feet away with two coats draped over his arm. The clothes they had were resistant to the dark, but it was comfortable wearing what they knew would work. The discomfort of wearing the coats couldn’t compare to the comfort in knowing they were safe.
Sliding the coats on together kept them from feeling like they were getting away from themselves. That’s what they’d agreed on. They’d agreed on it before, they’d never agree on it again.
“Ready to go, Isa?”
Isa reached over and adjusted Lea’s coat slightly before nodding. “As I’ll ever be, I suppose. Are you ready?”
“Well, now that you’ve got my coat taken care of,” Lea said with a laugh, reaching up to play with Isa’s jacket. Isa had his on properly, but that didn’t mean that Lea couldn’t unzip it slightly and pretend it had been that way the entire time. He zipped it right back up and smiled, gloved hands resting on Isa’s chest. “And your coat is set too.”
“It’s been fine, but whatever you say, Lea,” Isa sighed and shook his head. The lack of a visual sign that Isa thought he was being stupid concerned Lea. Isa lifted his hand and summoned a dark corridor. Lea sighed; he’d wanted to learn how to use the keyblades to get around like Ven had been able to do, but Isa was still so shaky with the weapon that Lea hadn’t even suggested that mode of transportation.
Lea tried to grab for Isa’s hand so they could walk through the portal together, like the first time they’d gone through one, but Isa pushed Lea’s hand away. It didn’t stop Lea from trying again, though, this time grabbing Isa’s hand.
“Lea, I shouldn’t have to tell you that I’m not in the mood. We’re going somewhere to do things that neither of us really wants to do. We’re putting people in states that may require medical attention. They may not wake up again, even if they’re back to being themselves. We don’t know how much luck has been on our side so far.” Isa’s voice was harsh, but Lea knew what he was saying was the truth.
Their walk through the corridor was silent and fast. They entered the World through the castle, Lea still trying to hold Isa’s hand despite him not holding back. The moment they exited the corridor, Isa reached down to make sure his coat was completely zipped up. It seemed like an anxious fidget more than anything, his hand lingering.
Lea watched Isa’s already tense shoulders get even tighter as he walked towards the window, standing to look out to the empty sky. Lea leaned against the back of one of the seats, watching Isa’s hand move to clutch at the fabric laying over his heart. Maybe staying in the castle wasn’t the best idea.
“Are we gonna sit around and stare at the empty sky for hours or are we gonna get this party started?”
Irritation manifested instantly on Isa’s face, an eye twitched and his lips flattened into a thin line as he held back from snapping. “Lea, you need to get serious while we’re here, stop joking around and focus on the task at hand. You want this as much as I do, don’t you? We’re looking for our parents, not just mine, shouldn’t you be able to focus too?”
“Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir,” Lea said with a wave of his hand.
Something seemed to snap in the air between them. Isa’s already incredibly tense form began to curl in on itself, arms folded in front of him and head slowly going down. It looked like he was about to sink to the floor in some kind of fetal position if he wasn’t stopped.
“Isa, hey, what’s wrong?” Lea reached out and touched Isa’s shoulder, wanting to offer a form of grounding. It worked before, bringing Isa back to the present with a touch, maybe it could work again. “You wanna go h-”
“Silence!” Isa shoved Lea’s arm away, his scar splitting open as he growled.
It wasn’t often that Isa actually used magic. He really wasn’t very good at most forms of it. Lea had certainly never felt it used against him. There were times where his own anxiety made his tongue feel heavy in his mouth, leaving him unable to speak, but this was somehow worse. Maybe it was the knowledge that Isa was doing this, maybe it was just how silencing felt, he wasn’t sure.
Fingers went to his lips, trying to calm himself and force the fear off his face. He’d had this happen plenty of times when up against heartless, but having this here, against Isa? He was terrified. He felt hope he’d found for the future slipping from his mouth in the place of words.
They stood together, eyes locked.
Isa looked away from Lea, wincing at what he’d done. Still, the silenced man tried to reach up and wipe the blood off of his friend’s face, forcing himself to move to comfort the other. He knew Isa rarely reacted violently… to anything, really. The growl in his voice likely would’ve shocked Lea into silence even if it had been something completely different, something non-magical. Lea was shoved away once more.
He waited.
The spell wore off and Lea tried once more to comfort Isa, placing his hand on Isa’s shoulder and squeezing it gently while speaking gently, “It’s okay, Isa. We’re okay.”
He was again shoved away, Isa’s voice repeating the spell, in a somehow harsher tone. Panic stole Lea’s ability to process what noises were around them just as Isa had stolen his ability to make them. Twice.
Lea stared at his hand, the one that had been shoved away, then up at Isa, too shaken to even tear up over this. Something in his very core was being crushed, was that his heart? It had to be. A sharp pain in his chest that he recognized as his heart being torn and taken. It scared him. Isa was scaring him.
Sinking to the floor shaking, Isa watched as Lea slowly backed away. Neither of them sure why it was happening, why anything was happening. He was finally really a monster, wasn’t he? Hurting Lea was unforgivable. He’d never done it before… never. He couldn’t. He was broken. He was finally really, truly done. They had their go, Isa felt his heart shattering as he looked at Lea’s face while feeling blood sliding down his own.
Isa curled in on himself, hiding his face against his knees and wishing he could silence his own sobs. That would have been a much better thing to have just happened.
Dusks walked past, completely ignoring both of the men. Their feet dragged on the floor in a familiar way and Lea stared at his gloved hands. They couldn’t look at each other. Moving to comfort one another wasn’t an option, no matter how much they both wanted to.
Lea couldn’t even look at Isa. The spell must have been too potent, he felt as if he couldn’t speak even after the time passed where he should have been able to. His tongue was heavy and his eyes were burning. Finally, tears began to slide down his face soundlessly. He could feel each one way too clearly against his skin. It was all too much. Looking at Isa again wasn’t an option, he couldn’t move his face to look up even if he wanted to.
Lea continued to slowly back away, hearing distorted sobs. Distorted everything. His hands shook as he backed up right into something that moved upon contact, weird noise following the movement. Lea turned around, vision blurry, and expected to see a nobody or a piece of furniture he didn’t remember. Instead, green eyes met his and a small hand reached up. His hand was brought down slowly.
“It’s okay, Lea,” the young, soft voice said as a gentle, small hand rubbed over his gloved one. “You’re not alone.”
He’d forgotten her eyes were green now. When had that happened? Why? He hadn’t bothered questioning it. Her voice was calming, though, soft and kind.
The girl moved past Lea, towards Isa.
Lea backed into a dark corridor as she knelt next to Isa, reaching to take his hand, only to be shoved away just as Lea had been. Xion didn’t back down. She reached for his hand again, stumbling backwards as she was shoved at again. She tried once more, anger boiling to the surface of Isa’s face again.
Blood had already left trails, following along where tears had fallen. He managed to keep from uttering the spell that threatened to spill from his lips once more, though it wouldn’t do much. Xion hadn’t spoken a single word to him yet. She just kept trying to take his hand and letting herself get shoved away. It would have been difficult to watch if Lea hadn’t already left.
Isa shoved Xion backwards once more, curling down and letting out a scream. He didn’t want to yell at her, he didn’t want to hurt her, he couldn’t stop not seeing her. It felt overlayed with her real face. Isa couldn’t see her, he couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. He knew her face, it was her real face, her real heart. Was he really so horrible that he could lose that again?
“It’s alright,” Xion said, her voice distorted in Isa’s mind. He didn’t want her to talk, he didn’t want to hear her in Xion’s voice again. He couldn’t do it. She wasn’t there, he was just hearing things.
Again, anger built up inside him only to explode out in a rage, “Silence!”
“It’s okay,” Xion’s voice sounded again, spell falling flat against her.
“Silence,” Isa said in another attempt to not have to hear his mistakes weighing against him in the voice of a child. She embodied everything he’d failed to protect, failed to do. Why she loved him after all he’d done, he’d never know. She cared about him too much for all he’d done to her. She’d been hurt by him since the moment she began and still, she was trying to comfort him.
“It’s okay, Isa,” she spoke again, unfazed by his most recent attempt at a spell.
“Silence…” Request more than spell, Isa’s words were losing anger, but growing in desperation. Something about her voice was different than expected when she spoke his name. There was a heavier drop to the last syllable, but only under her voice. It was getting to be too much, too much.
She reached forward and under the collar of his coat, running her fingers along it to pull hidden chain out. She smiled when he looked up at her, eyes soft with tears. She let go of Isa’s necklace, taking his hands and bringing them to rest on the pendant.
“You have him with you all the time in your heart, even when you push him away.” Her voice was soft, becoming more her own again. He could no longer hear Her voice, but Xion’s voice was still layered and disorienting. It was still a direct knife into his heart. He’d lost his temper, something he’d thought he’d had a handle on. He had a handle on.
He hadn’t lashed out like that the entire time he was forcing himself to play along with the man who had hurt and taken away his friend. He hadn’t lashed out when he realized he was without his heart again, that he may very well never get it back. He hadn’t lashed out. He didn’t know why he did this time. He’d been there before, it wasn’t new.
Xion wrapped her hands around his and kept them from falling to his sides. “Things are hard now, hearts hurt.” Her words remained gentle, the remaining voice overlayed in hers seemed to be melting away as she continued. “You’ve known that longer than I’ve been alive, though, and you wanted it back the entire time. All the pain comes with love, doesn’t it? But it can be better, you can let it be better. I think you know how to help yourself move on, don’t you?”
Isa took in a deep breath, steeling himself for what he felt coming. He could feel his rage boiling up again, his urge to scream and yell and throw things. He rarely let himself do that, he kept shoving it down and shoving it down and shoving it down.
And Xion was there, acting like it was some kind of necessary. Maybe she would know, she had always seemed more volatile than any of the other soft-hearted children. She was probably right.
He used his one last moment of control to gently move Xion back, she let him this time. She stepped back to put more distance between the two of them, the connection between the two of them telling her exactly what he would do.
He let out a heart wrenching scream, curling in on himself and shaking as he began to sob. Blood mingled with tears again, his guilt swam to the surface to try to pull him under again, but Xion returned and wrapped her arms around him. She herself was breathing raggedly, as if she’d been crying.
Isa didn’t want to know, but, still, he asked, “Are you okay?”
Xion didn’t respond, arms tightening around him instead.
“Xion, how did you know that I… would be hurting like this? What in the way I was gave it away that Lea wouldn’t be able to handle it?”
“Nothing gave that away,” she mumbled, hiding her face from him. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I realized where you were going and… saw how you looked and realized you’d be in a difficult place. I want all my family to be okay.”
“I’m sorry.” The brokenness in their voices echoed each other, making the cracks seem more stable, the hurt felt less all-consuming.
“For being sad?”
“For everything I did to you, Xion.”
“You’ve already apologized.” Her voice danced beneath her tears, shaking her head and turning her knuckles white with her grip on Isa’s coat. “I don’t want you to keep apologizing when you’ve done so much to fix it.”
“Xion, I still-”
She cut him off instantly, “You were hurt too. You’ve explained yourself. I’m all for talking, but sometimes… it’s just you needing to move on. I forgive you, Isa.”
“For hurting you?”
“Lea did too.”
“For calling you a thing?”
“Everyone did.”
“For saying you shouldn’t have been made?”
It took her a moment longer, a moment where she buried her face deeper in the hug. “Do you think that now?”
Isa hesitated as well, then placed his hand on the back of the girl’s head. “Of course not. You’re my family now.”
“You’re not a monster, Isa, I promise. No more than a formerly faceless puppet is.”
Xion finally loosened her grip and Isa followed suit, letting the girl move back so they could look at each other. She held out her hand.
“Please, I’ll take you home.”
Isa reached out, ready to agree, before looking around near-frantic. “Lea? Did he…?”
“He left, yeah,” Xion said quietly. “But… isn’t the best way to make things okay to not ignore them?”
Isa rolled his eyes and wiped tears out from under his eyes, blood smearing and making him look all the worse. It was sticky. He sighed and took the girl’s hand. “You shouldn’t be as wise as you are. It’s never good to be young and wise.”
Xion smiled. “I’m just glad I’m not alone.”
They return through the dark corridor, neither of them sure how safe two people on one keyblade glider would be. It’s a straight shot into the living room of Lea and Isa’s home. Xion leaves out the door instantly, giving them the privacy they needed.
Lea had a moment of fear flash over his face, but he quickly shoved it aside as he got up. He took Isa’s hand and pulled him to the couch. “Sit.”
Isa listened.
Lea walked away.
He returned quickly, despite Isa’s worry, warm washcloth in hand. Silence continued to fill the room as Lea sat next to Isa, but it wasn’t the forced kind, it was somehow soft. Lea took the washcloth to Isa’s face, cleaning the blood that had been smeared on and gently running it over the scar. It was comforting.
“I don’t like that this opened up again, Isa.” Lea’s voice was calmer than his earlier face would’ve hinted at being possible. “I’m glad you’re home.”
Isa nodded, tearing up again. He wasn’t the crybaby, but he couldn’t stop them. He… wasn’t going to try anymore.
Startled, Lea wiped away a tear with his thumb, leaving his hand cupping Isa’s face afterwards. “Isa, are you okay? Are you still…”
“No, Lea. Thank you.” He leaned forward, letting his head rest against Lea’s shoulder.
“Tap out next time you’re getting… overwhelmed, okay? Can you promise me that?”
“I promise,” Isa’s words were sincere, soft in comparison to his earlier words, the words before the spells had taken root. “We’ll get past things. Finally let them go.”