Work Text:
[estate:
canta la tortorella e 'l gardellino,
zeffiro dolce spira.]
It was the pang of her head against the window that woke her up. It didn’t hurt, but for a moment her brain rattled in her skull. Her cellphone was still playing a faint music in her ear, the plug dangerously close to falling off - it took her a couple of seconds to recognize the song. On the bus, the loud voices that lulled her to sleep had quieted down to a regular chit chat between seats.
On her side, Roxas had woken up with a jolt as well. « Are we there yet?»
The green hills outside and the total absence of human settlements told her it wasn’t the case. Not that she actually minded - after all, she just recently found out how nice and comforting car rides could get.
Xion shook her head, sticking the plug in her ear once again. « Not yet,» she said.
He groaned and removed his glasses to rub at his eyes - it’s been a couple of months now, but Xion still had trouble to adjust to see Roxas sporting a pair of glasses. But again it was way better than having to deal with a brother constantly squinting his eyes and pretending that whoever had written that far away board at the restaurant just didn’t know how to write properly.
« It’s been hours already,» he groaned, sticking the other end of Xion’s plug in his ear and leaning back onto his shoulder.
« Barely two hours,» Xion replied, shooting a look down on her phone. It wasn’t eleven in the morning just yet. They had left Twilight Town at nine, after being lectured by Lea for the second time in a row that same morning: they needed to be careful, follow their teachers super close and, most of all, behave. Isa, standing right next to him, just told them to have fun - nothing more than that and maybe Xion saw a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips but she couldn’t be sure now.
She didn’t want to dwell on the thought further either.
They didn’t talk much for the rest of the trip, but sometimes, between staring out of the window or answering a text, Roxas would show Xion a funny video he found - mostly cats with heart sunglasses strutting around or tiny fruit bats all wrapped up in blankets and getting fed.
« Let me choose the next song,» Roxas said, trying to snag the phone from her grasp.
« Absolutely not, you’re gonna just put a musical number, I know you,» and from the hurtful look he shot her, she knew she had just pinpointed the exact genre he was about to put her through.
« No, I swear!» and he tried to lunge for the phone once again.
« Liar!»
Aside from the occasional (and destined to fail) tries from Roxas of stealing her own phone to play dj, it was, in every way, an uneventful trip. But Xion had learnt to appreciate even these tiny moments of stillness. Coming down from the bus was welcomed with a collective sigh of relief - Xion was sure she just heard Roxas’ shoulder popping when he stretched out. The city wasn’t exactly as Xion envisioned it when they first talked about it in class: it was way better. There was a sea salt smell all around as soon as she got off the bus, and from the balconies of the buildings around the plaza, green tendrils were hanging out and softly billowing in the wind.
Upon entering the inner streets, the smell coming from the sea seemed to scatter in ten, twenty different things - flowers, perfumes, spices, and this whole range of colours all around, starting from the tiny flags hanging above their heads to the window shops, to the small vendor’s tables selling sweets and souvenirs. Xion didn’t even remember the last time she had seen so many colours - maybe the very first time Lea and Isa brought them to Radiant Garden and showed them its big plazas and its fountains.
But this was different. She was surrounded by friends who kept pulling her close to the shops and showing her around and vendors saying hi back; she was encouraged from her teachers to give the answer and was getting an elbow in her side from her brother everytime she was right (“nerd”, he would say, but there was none of the teasing she would expect from everyone else. Not from him).
The sea as well was nothing like she expected it. She had seen it many times already, but, somehow, it still felt like it was the first time she dipped her feet in the sand. The teacher was talking their ears off about the different kinds of rocks and the effect of the sea on the land - a subject she remembered studying just the previous week, but now it felt like a distant memory. Like the water was washing all away.
They were all half listening and Xion was one of them. She had tried to focus and refocus, but everytime her eyes fixed on a new shell, her concentration flew out of the window, again and again. She stayed a bit behind the group, the teacher’s voice faintly filling her ears while picking up a little, pinkish shell. Its corner was chipped, but it was still beautiful nonetheless. Xion tried not to dwell on that thought for far too long either.
« Look at this one.»
Roxas had stayed a bit behind as well. He had his shoes in one hand and a shell in the other: it was way bigger than the one Xion was holding and, beneath all the grain of sand, it was strikingly white; and perfectly intact. Not a single corner was chipped and there were no cracks on the surface.
« It’s nice.»
« We could take it home,» he said, tucking the shell away in one of his pockets - it came to her that some habits would never possibly leave them, like tucking each and every nice object they’d found on their way as it was a memory to keep close to their hearts. Maybe they would never unlearnt that, maybe some habits were meant to stay with them.
Up this close, there was no other smell but the sea. The gentle crashing of the water on the shore was the only clear audible sound - aside from her teacher’s voice, still plaguing everyone’s ears about the different attributes of the rocks on the side of the shore.
She took her shoes off as well and left them behind her. The water was frigid cold, but Xion knew how to yield - has been taught to yield since the day she opened up her eyes in a white lab, wearing a dark coat. She looked down to her feet, to the sand clinging to her toes before being washed away from the next wave.
Roxas came up to stand to her side. He, too, had abandoned his shoes somewhere behind. He gasped. « Cold!»
« It’s nice,» Xion said, watching the thin line at the horizon. She always thought it would be harder to spot where the sea ended and the sky started, but now that her eyes were set on this blue vastness, Xion truly realized how easy it was to pinpoint the exact shade. It was one quite similar to her own eyes.
When her fingers tentatively brushed against Roxas’ knuckles, he took her hand and held it. He didn’t interlock fingers and his grasp was light enough for her to get away if she wanted - but she didn’t want to. Xion had everything she needed in the palm of her hand.
« You okay?» He asked, eyes set on the horizon in front of him. The lenses of his glasses were getting dirty again and on his cheek he had a smear of something not well identified. He had a small smile playing on his lips, but there was no actual mirth in his eyes - he just seemed content.
« Yeah,» Xion said. She gave a tight squeeze to his hand. The water could wash everything away, but Xion had nothing to leave with the waves.
Everything she had, she wanted it to stay with her, like a scar on the skin or a kiss on the cheek.
« Yeah, everything is great.»
And she was surprised to find out it actually was.
°
[ autunno:
ferita minaccia
Languida di fuggire, mà oppressa muore ]
She barely remembered the first hours after the war. In her mind, everything was kind of a blur - most for the fatigue than anything else. The only thing that has been plaguing her mind since then is the weight of the keyblade in her hand, the points in which her bones had started to ache from the grip. She was still wearing black, but the coat was starting to feel tight around the ribcage, her arms, around her neck - like a rope tightening and tightening.
« I’m gonna take them with me.»
Lea had been the first to talk. He had been the first to let go of the keyblade, both hands resting on top of their shoulders - one on Xion and one on Roxas. She remembered the urgency in his light grip, as if he was eager to leave the battlefield.
Aqua had said something, but Xion was sure her mind had stopped registering at that point. Lea had shaken his head - when he did, a strand of hair tumbled down in front of his face, just in front of his right eye. That was a detail that Xion remembered - maybe because of the dark marks she had seen under his eyes or maybe because of the lines of tiredness she could see across all his face (he had looked so old for a second, just a second).
« I don’t care,» he had said, and this time, Xion had felt his grip around their shoulders tightening, just a slight as if to urge them to walk away. « I’m bringing them home. Isa as well. They’re all coming home with me.»
Home was the first word Xion had learnt to connect with Lea.
Even when they found their own place and they started to fill it up with nice things, redecorating the walls with warm colours and filling up the shelves with different kind of books and records and dvds and everyone had started to form their own independent routine, Xion still connected the word home to him specifically.
It didn’t come as a surprise: Lea was the first in everything. He was the first who burned their coats, the first to light a match and the last to go back inside the house once he was sure nothing but ashes remained of those awful things; he was the first to accept not to paint the walls of their house white; he was there the first time they walked into their new school; he was the first quarrel and the first to go to Xion’s room and apologize.
He was the first to know .
Xion wasn’t blind: she could see the struggles, the evenings passed on the kitchen table making the same calculations over and over again until Lea knew every number and their result by heart. She had seen both Lea and Isa bending over the papers and trying to make sense of the future.
He struggled.
« Hey,» he called her one day from the living room, papers and screws and a drill dropped everywhere around him. He had his hair tied back and there was a tired smile on his lips - he had dark marks under his eyes as well, but Xion pretended it was the smudge of the eyeliner. « Do you think you can help me here?»
He struggled in more ways than others.
But not once this weighed on her shoulders.
Xion smiled. « Yeah, sure,» she said, dropping next to him. « But I’ve never built anything before. What are you doing?»
« A desk for Isa,» he told her, crossing his legs and picking up the papers next to him to show her. It was a nice desk, with three shelves built on top of the structure and a nice drawer just underneath. It didn’t allow much space, but it was nice. « So he can study properly in his own space and everything.»
Xion looked up at him. « Big sale?»
« Yep.» He seemed proud of that. « And don’t worry, I don’t know what I’m doing either. But I guess four eyes are better than just two.»
The instructions weren’t much clearer to Xion either: a bunch of lines and numbers and tiny figures that made her brain go dizzy rather quickly. But Lea seemed excited nonetheless, even in his blissful ignorance. He pretended to study the paper close, but his eyes kept scanning every line without ever actually stopping on a single point.
Building a desk wasn’t supposed to be hard - shouldn’t even take that long. But Lea had the concentration of a goldfish in regards to constructions: he picked up something just to abandon it a few seconds later to repeat the same motion at least two or three times with different tools and screws. Xion didn’t do much, but she liked the company - she liked staying close to him and she liked even the fact that Lea had to talk his way through most of the process ( « Okay, I take this A screw… many A screws… and it should go in this E point… no, wait, it’s backward.» ).
But Lea treated her like she was the missing piece - like without her, he wouldn’t be able to build this thing, always asking her opinions, always telling her how good it was starting to look together. No matter if at some point Xion skipped a passage and forgot the shelves and no matter if at some point they realized the legs were mounted upside down.
« You’re doing great,» he told her at some point, when the desk was mostly finished - after two hours full of distractions and Lea humming to ten different songs in the span of half an hour even though the radio was playing something completely different.
Xion shrugged. « I’m not doing much.»
Lea fastened a screw in - the last of the shelves. He was smiling as usual. « You are doing great to me,,» he said, puffing a sound when the screw didn’t give in immediately under the force.
« Let me try,» Xion said, taking the screwdriver from him. It was actually harder than it looked fastening that in, but at least she didn’t struggle as much as Lea made it look like. When she was finished, they both took a step back to admire their hard work: it was even better than the picture and Xion could actually feel Lea beaming at her side.
« You’re getting stronger than me now,» he said, looking down at her. Xion was starting to gain centimetres after centimetres - she knew that detail didn’t elude him. One day, their shoulders would have been able to touch maybe and Lea would have found another way to joke about her height. But for the moment, he still looked down at her.
« Of course I am,» she said, showing off her arms as if they could be bigger than Lea - who had no muscular mass whatsoever for starters.
Lea ruffled her hair. « Thank you for your help.»
Xion briefly wondered for a moment if he wanted to say something else, but he seemed to leave it at that. He didn’t need to say anything either: he had his heart on his sleeve. Xion was learning to be the same, but that she couldn’t know.
« You’re doing good in school?»
Xion nodded at his question. He asked almost daily about her school life. She was waiting for the day that question turned annoying but for now, Xion liked the care.
« I like it,» she answered, picking up the papers and the loose piece of cartoons lying around. « Did I tell you what happened today?»
Xion knew she did.
But Lea just smiled wide. He shook his head. « No, what happened?»
It was that kind of care that would leave a handprint on her heart. That kind of listening ear and supporting shoulders that Xion had found once in a friend, a lifetime before. It was nice knowing she could still find the same thing in a father.
°
[ inverno :
caminar sopra il ghiaccio, e a passo lento
per timore di cadere bene
Nightmares never failed to plague her - she would have liked to call it a habit she grew out of, but it wasn’t. It was more like a sickness that never left her, as if the coat she was so used to wear had somehow left stains under the skin.
There was no gentleness in her dreams, nor the same colours she was so used to see around her now. It was a black and white texture, aside from this brief, brilliant moment where everything would have been swallowed by shade of blue. Blue not like the sea, nor the sky, but an artificial one that she had learnt to hate ( be afraid of) . There were hands and eyes in her dreams and they tugged and pushed and shoved and the eyes never left her, following every step and misstep of her.
Waking up felt like coming up for air, mouth open around a shout that didn’t come out, as if it was stuck in her throat. It took her a while to come down from the frenzy and even when her body stopped shaking and her eyes returned to actually see, Xion still felt like there were eyes all over her.
It was almost two in the morning. There was no moon hanging out in the sky and the stars seemed mute to her.
She got up from bed, still feeling like her legs could give out any second now. Out of the door of her room, she expected to find the hall dark, but instead, there was a light coming out from the kitchen. No sound came aside from the clinking of the spoon against a mug. It was too early for everyone in the house, even for Lea who usually was the first one to wake up.
Xion approached the kitchen with slow steps and peeked in: sitting at the kitchen table, there was Isa. He had a mug in front of him and he was rubbing his eyes as if he could remove any trace of sleep hanging still from his lashes.
He spotted her right away.
« It’s two in the morning,» he said. He didn’t even say hi, nor did he show any kind of surprise in finding her there. It was as though it was a completely normal day and not some sort of “meeting for the big traumatized that desperately needed therapy”. But that Xion didn’t say - it was that kind of joke that she knew she could share with Roxas, but had trouble understanding if Isa was one of those people who could find offence in that.
« I had a nightmare,» she replied. « I wanted to go to the bathroom, but I saw the light in the kitchen. Just wanted to check.» Xion didn’t even know why she had to explain in full details her reasonings: the man in front of her wasn’t Saix, she didn’t need to report anything to him.
The small smile Isa gave her just confirmed that. He didn’t say anything: he got up from his chair and went to the stove. He poured the content of the kettle in a mug - Xion’s mug, the one that had a cartoon drawing of a pomeranian with a knife in its mouth (Roxas gave it to her, told her it reminded him of her. Xion still had a hard time understanding if it was a good thing or not).
Instead of offering the mug directly to her, Isa placed it carefully on the counter and returned to his seat. Xion thought it to be a nice gesture, a careful choice: he didn’t place the mug on the table, as if to imply that she would drink it there with him, but neither he went to give it to her directly - as if he didn’t want to come in close contact with her, like her touch might burn him.
If there was something that Xion treasured about him, even if Isa was hard to read and understand most of the times, it was his abilities to place choices in front of her without ever telling her she had to choose. Everything, from the very first day, was up to her and Isa made sure of that every single day, from choosing what kind of cereal to eat for breakfast to her fashion choices, to the colours of her room, to the books she liked to read.
Xion took the mug and placed it carefully on the table. She wanted to stay there a bit. Isa didn’t say anything, silently sipping from his cup - a black one with tiny constellations all over the surface. It was just his style, but Xion had a hard time remembering if that was a gift from someone in the house or he had just bought it for himself.
She looked down at the content of the cup. « Tea?»
Isa nodded. « It helps sometimes.»
Xion nodded as well. They both took a sip in silence and placed the mug down once again.
It wasn’t exactly hard to have a conversation with Isa. Sometimes, they’d even share the same table so they could study together and, most of the time, they worked in perfect and comfortable silence. But there were times where Xion definitely felt like they were two radios not getting the same frequency, as if their wavelength were too disconnected to even cross paths somehow.
It wasn’t hard to talk to Isa. But after the nightmares, she had to admit: some times were harder than others.
« I had a nightmare as well,» Isa said after a moment of silence, playing with the spoon inside the mug. « Sometimes I stay awake all night, until morning comes.»
Xion took the cup between her hands and drew her knees against her chest. « Do you get scared?»
Isa nodded. « Yes.»
Xion said nothing for a while, trying to find something comforting to say. But her mouth was dry: she had no comfort word to offer. Not the words that Lea had offered her the very first night when Xion had a nightmare, nor the constant distractions that Roxas had given her when the nightmares shook her so much she was incapable to stop thinking. She wasn’t like them.
« I get scared, too,» Xion said, regretting already what came out of her mouth. Of course she was scared. She had been scared of going to sleep most of her life. « But it’s just for a moment. I know I’m okay when I wake up.»
« Are you?»
Xion felt the question like a pivotal moment in her life. It was a moment of sharing between the two of them and if she wasn’t careful enough, the ice she was walking on could have been fractured.
Xion smiled. « Why wouldn’t I be? I have all of you with me.»
But there was no ice under her feet. Xion had started to walk on a well paved road: there were bumps and holes she had to fix up in the future, but she had made the conscious decision to take one day at a time. There were no cracks, nor fractures in this road she was walking on. She was alright. Xion would have learnt to be alright, because there was no other choice for her.
Isa said nothing for a while, but Xion could see a shadow of a smile on his lips.
« It’s a school day tomorrow,» Isa said, mug now empty. « You should go to sleep.»
« Can I keep you company for a little while?»
Isa just stared at her - not like she was made of glass, but like the girl of steel that Xion was learning to feel like: unbending under the pressure.
He smiled. « Just ten minutes. Then you go to sleep.»
« Fine,» she said, sipping her tea.
They spent two hours together. With time, Xion would have learnt that some choices were meant to be regretted in the morning, sleep deprived and with bags under her eyes.
But not this one.
°
[primavera:
danzan Ninfe e Pastor nel tetto amato
di primavera all'apparir brillante]
Xion is in her room - one in which she has decided colours and amount of pillows she deems decent on her bed. She has three different dresses with her and she can’t decide which one would go best with her. It’s not the first time she makes a choice, but it always feels like it. She tries on the yellow dress knowing full well that her long, human existence will be filled with choices and she cannot wait to have them all in front of her.
But for now, it’s enough choosing the dress she’s gonna wear tonight.
In Xion’s room, there’s a huge board above her desk: there’s a photo she’s particularly proud where she’s with the rest of the gang: there’s Ventus and Roxas who are making a fake surprised face to each other and Namine seems annoyed at the joke (but Xion knows she still secretly laugh at it); there’s Kairi and Riku as well and they seem tired, but content. Xion is barely visible in the corner of the photo - it’s not her greatest selfie, but she treasures it nonetheless.
There are dozens of postcards, places she visited and that she was afraid to forget about;, a white and a pink shell glued to the corner of the board, the one that Roxas and her had picked up on their first school trip. There’s a photo of Lea and Isa holding champagne flutes. It’s a memory board and Xion feels warm all over every time she lays her eyes on it.
Right on the side, there’s a list of things that Xion updates every single day with a new thing. She has crossed out just a few things and the list is still long, but she knows she has thousands of days ahead of her and a heart that is so full is gonna burst at some point.
She goes with the yellow dress. She knows that Namine will probably like it, she always tells her yellow is her colour and Xion has to agree.
There’s a knock at the door.
It’s Isa talking on the other side. « Xion, you alright?»
Her eyes are still on the board, at the little piece of paper pinned there.
« Yeah,» she says, in a room full of memory and in clothes that she has chosen for herself, with a group of people she has chosen to call family at some point. There are bright days ahead of her and she cannot wait to see them all, cannot wait to try all the choices she has.
« Yeah, I’m ready.»