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“They hate me, don’t they,” Isa says out of the blue one day. It’s late in the afternoon and he’s working on a jigsaw puzzle on the kitchen table. He’d gotten into them during his first few days of reforming, when everything about being human felt overwhelming. Lea teased him for liking a hobby that ought to be for an old grandpa, but puzzles helped keep Isa distracted without his mind having to really think.
Lea, who sat perpendicular to him at the table and had been messing around with his gummiphone, looked up in surprise. He knew exactly who “They” were but decided to play dumb.
“Oh? They, as in the residents of Twilight Town? Or more specifically do you mean Hayner, Pence, and Olette? Or do you mean King Mickey, Donald, and Goofy? Aqua, Terra, Ven—?”
Isa throws him a look that, in the Organization, would have meant he’d have double duty for a week. But Lea only laughs. Isa places another puzzle piece into its correct slot.
Silence fills the room and Lea waits for a reply he never gets, so he offers, “They don’t hate you Isa. They watched you die. It’s a little hard to hate someone after that, don’t you think?”
Isa blinks down at his puzzle. Logically, what Lea says makes sense. But it doesn’t quell the pit in his stomach, or the bitter ache in his chest that he knows will come back the minute Lea tries to make them all spend time together again.
Lea can’t help feeling empathetic. He’d gone through the same thing with Kairi the first time Yen Sid had made them meet to go training together. He thought she would yell at him, call him out for all the wrongs he’d done. Somehow it had almost been worse that instead she had smiled and forgiven him, just like that. So he could understand what Isa felt. If only he could wrap his tongue around the words that would make Isa know it was okay.
“Do you hate me?” Isa finally replies.
Lea gives Isa an incredulous look, but Isa is looking down, a puzzle piece in his hand even though he’s not really searching for its place. “Did you, ever?” Isa asks, softer this time.
“...No.” Lea rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. This is not where Lea had expected Isa to go with this. He had felt a lot of things for both Isa and Saix over the past ten and something years, but no, hate had never been one of them. “I’ve never hated you,” Lea finishes.
It happens so quickly Lea barely has time to register it—Isa’s normally stoic, uncaring expression crumbles before him and the tears start gushing from his eyes. Lea has never seen Isa cry. Maybe he had once, when they were children and tears were meaninglessly shed like laughter, but never like this.
Isa drops the puzzle piece he’s holding and brings his hands to cover his face. He’s saying something in between sobs—it sounds like “Sorry.”
Lea isn’t sure if he’s apologizing for the tears or for everything he’d ever done as Saix. Maybe both. Lea gets up from the table and crosses over to where Isa sits, face buried in his hands. He pulls Isa up out of his chair and reaches his arms around Isa’s shoulders and holds him. He can feel Isa trembling.
They stay like that for a bit, till Isa’s sobs turn to quiet gasps for air, and finally silence.
“Being human’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Lea says quietly.
Isa starts trembling again, but this time Lea recognizes it as laughter. It still surprises him how fickle the heart can be; hurting one moment, laughing the next. Isa feels so warm in his arms.
“I promise you, no one hates you. Least of all Roxas and Xion,” Lea reassures him. Isa sniffs, and pulls away from Lea, hands resting on Lea’s chest. Isa’s eyes are watery and his cheeks are tear-stained but Lea can’t help the flutter in his chest at seeing him so vulnerable and utterly human.
Isa narrows his eyes at Lea, unconvinced. The look is so characteristically Isa that a smile breaks across Lea’s face.
“You’re laughing at me,” Isa accuses, but he makes no inclination of leaving Lea’s arms.
“’I’m just happy to have to have you home,” Lea presses Isa into a deeper hug, and for now he knows this is all he can do. Humanity, Lea has come to find, is like the jigsaw puzzles Isa can’t seem to grow out of. Piece by piece, it eventually comes together.