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There are seven thalassa shells on this island. Xion counts them like she counts her breaths. Thirteen coconut palms, four paopu trees, sixteen lilikoi vines, innumerable poha bushes, and seven thalassa shells.
She digs two shells from the sand, and they sit warm in the center of her palm. She fishes the second from the grotto where it waits, shining, amid cowry shells in lynx and honey. Two more thalassa shells at the windward side of the island, waiting by the raft with the coconuts and fish. One by the flyfox. And the last seashell sleeps in the shallows.
In and out, her breath, like the tide.
It’s the last one she is after now, ocean lapping at her bare ankles while the seabreeze picks out a stinging flush on her face. She’s embarrassed; in rolled up shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. All skinny legs and knobbly shoulders. It’s so strange to take the black coat off her back, leave it bundled upshore, but it’s so… so safe here.
The darkness here has almost no hold. There’s no night for it to sink its teeth into, its claws scrabble from the shadows, slick without purchase. Sometimes bubbles of dread begin to froth in the secret place, where dark feelings are hidden away, buried, but the ocean is wide and bright, the sky is open ahead, the sunshine like a promise and there are seven, sleeping seashells on these shores.
There are worse places to be lost, Xion knows, than buried in the depths of Sora’s giving heart: by his warm waters, safe shores and soft breeze. This place is kind, so kind, she can’t even be angry about him existing when she can’t.
“Where…” Xion mumbles to herself, the tide tugging at her footing. She crouches down to swirl through the water with both hands. “Where are you…”
“You lose something?”
Xion looks up, sudden and self-conscious. Sometimes Roxas is ashore, and he stares at her like she’s familiar, but the memory has slipped through his fingertips. Sometimes it’s Ventus instead, who always smiles and waves at her, even though they never met in the first place.
This is Sora. Who isn’t meant to be here at all.
“Let me help,” Sora’s already surging into the water beside her, shoes kicked off and jacket pulled free. “What’re we looking for?”
“I. Uh.” Xion’s voice breaks inside her, a little wave giving out when he looks up at her from the water. He has her eyes, ocean dark and sea bright, beautifully blue.
No. No, she has his eyes.
Xion shows him the thalassa shells in her pockets, and Sora grins wide and eager as he searches in the water while she stands struck at his side.
Finally, she asks, voice cracked and high, “what are you doing here?”
“On the play island?” Sora laughs at her, arms swishing in the water, “I come out here all the time with my friends!”
“Oh.”
“I’m Sora,” he adds, holding up a hand for her to clasp. His skin shimmers with a sleek coat of water, and when she shyly places her hand in his, the shake is as slippery as it is spirited. He beams at her expectantly, and she realizes—
“O-oh! I’m Xion.” Her voice breaks like a telltale and Xion’s remnant confidence disintegrates. She twists her head round where her cloak is abandoned on the sand, before miserably looking at him with dissolving strength.
She cannot hope to hide it; they are identical in almost every way.
But he doesn’t say anything. Just pumps her hand hard and beams. “Alright, that makes us friends now.”
And without saying anything— about how she sounds like him, how she looks like him, exactly like him —Sora carries on obliviously.
Xion’s heart— at least what she thinks must be a heart, it’s racing —it’s caught painfully in her throat, throbbing frantically. If she tried to say anything, she’s sure only a feeble croak would escape her. Her whole body hurts. Her eyes sting. She has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from giving a loud sob and he didn’t even notice—
“You’re a girl, right?”
It takes Xion a few moments to realize he’s talking to her because Sora hasn’t raised his head, but cold fear has already caught her, wrapped frozen around her legs like clammy seaweed. Sora is still swishing his hands in the saltwater. Not even a glance towards her. The unreadable shape of his back.
“Mm…” Xion hums instead of replying.
There shouldn’t be a wrong answer to a simple question, but oh there is, there is a wrong answer and she doesn’t know which it is. Lying, or telling the truth.
“At least. I got the feeling…” Sora stills, before continuing. “It’s okay if I’m wrong though. I’m sorry for asking, I guess. I just… wanted to check.” He starts moving again, slowly this time. “Because I’m not.”
Xion wraps her arms around herself. “Not…?”
She doesn’t understand, so Xion looks at Sora; looks at him properly, at the gangly limbs they share. The slim hint of hip, a softness in the face, something in the curve of the arm. And bent over, fishing in the water, she catches the shadow of his chest. Because he is not a girl.
Her breath pops out of her. “Oh.”
“Mm,” Sora hums as well, and it sinks into Xion. Settles within her. Sora is a boy, Xion is a girl and in this vulnerable part of them, their fears are bare. Like her arms. Sora’s shoulders. Their shoes laid out on the sand. The half-dozen details that live in hiding beneath black cloaks and faerie-woven vestments.
“I thought…” Xion says slowly. “In here...” in Sora’s Heart, that he would be himself, his true self. As she had imagined him, known him, seen him. As he had seen himself. “I thought it would be different.”
“Oh,” Sora looks at her finally, blinking. “Because it’s who we are?”
“Yes!” Xion insists, eyes wet, betrayal ringing through her. “I thought I would be different!” She thought she would be herself. “Why aren’t I… why aren’t you?” Helplessly, she rubs the heel of her hand against her face, pushing the tears back, scattering them across her skin.
“Xion,” Sora reaches out for her, but she cowers from him.
“Why isn’t my Heart like me?” Xion pleads. “The real me.”
She crumples inwards. Head curled down, arms lashed tight around her chest, shaking and shuddering hard enough to skip breaths. The ocean is deep and dark, her heart a chasm inside her that quakes when she cries like a lost child.
Why, in this place, where Sora’s Heart has cradled her. Kept her safe, and close. Why, then, are neither of them real?
Sora doesn’t try to answer her. He leads her mauka instead, helps her out of the shallows and to the shore. He guides her to sit down on the sand, and it sticks to her wet arms and legs. Sora sits close enough that their heads press together a little, shoulders knocking, knees sliding against each other.
“Xion?” Sora asks, as she begins to hiccough between slowing sobs. “Can I tell you about when the Heartless came to my World?”
She can’t quite answer, but she can nod at him. Muffle a hand against her traitorous mouth mid-snuffle. Searching her eyes, finding them tear-bright, but sure; Sora nods back and gives her a few moments more. She’s almost caught her breath when he begins.
“I’m not sure about other Worlds, but… we don’t have a lot of magic on the Destiny Islands,” Sora explains. “At least, not that people know about, anyway. So people like me, we have different ways to change our…yanno?”
A covert gesture up and down himself. A euphemism in a quick flick of his fingertips and half-huff of laughter. Their bodies, Xion thinks bluntly.
“Some people go to the Mainland, I think. There’s surgeries and medicine you can take, and there’s like other stuff. Like the stuff they’ve used for forever, um,” Sora blushes. “You drink, um,” he leans in and whispers in her ear, “pee.”
“What?” Xion blurts out, and then giggles because she can’t help herself. It’s such a serious discussion, and Sora is talking about pee.
“Not people pee!” Sora exclaims, and Xion snorts louder, what other kind of pee could Sora be talking about? Flustered, Sora buries his face in his hands. “I just mean there’s always been people like me and you.”
The awful ache inside her is still there, but Xion smiles at Sora and nudges her foot against his. “What does this have to do with the Heartless…?”
“It doesn’t,” Sora says, then frowns. “Well it does. Before the Heartless, I wasn’t really planning to go to the Mainland.” Then shoots her a look in warning, “and I wasn’t going to drink you-know-what. I just. Wasn’t planning to change my…”
“Body,” Xion finishes as Sora trails off. “But… why? All your memories…”
Sora is a boy. He has always been a boy. Not like Xion, who grew into herself, who stopped being an object and started feeling like a person, who became a girl in a slow, inevitable changing of the tide. Sora’s been a boy since he could say it, and more than that, everyone in Sora’s life has always treated him like one. Why wouldn’t Sora change?
Sora shrugs, “everyone always knew I was a boy. I wasn’t sure if the surgeries would do a good job, I was scared they would hurt, I didn’t know if I’d ever have enough munny… lots of reasons.” He shifts, wrapping his arms around his knees. Then adds defensively. “The hormones and the doctors do do a good job. People say they don’t sometimes, but they don’t say that for the right reasons. But I still worried.”
“But,” Xion mumbles, “you did change.”
“After the Heartless. For me, no one else,” Sora nods. He smiles to himself, and the memory trickles between them; Atlantica, a rush of melody and joy. “The magic can turn me into a merdolphin, so pecs aren’t that tricky. Wish it’d give me biceps like Riku though.”
Shuffling in her spot, Xion looks down. This doesn’t answer why she isn’t different here, why her Heart carries her worries with it, why any of it.
Beside her, Sora rubs his nose with his index finger, words rushing out of him.
“I worried that if I made changes, and they were the wrong ones, then I’d be less of a boy,” he tells her, voice quivering with a fear that is abated, ebbed away but still there, sure as the horizon. “That everyone would be able to tell I wasn’t a real boy. That it’d be obvious.”
Sora sniffs, and rubs back a handful of tears, “but that’s stupid.”
“Changes don’t make me a boy. My Heart makes me a boy, no matter what I look like or where or how or why.” Sora thumps a closed fist against his chest. “I make me a boy. A real boy. In here, and out there. My Heart doesn’t have to change,” he looks at her earnestly, blue eyes bright and brimming with certainty, “you don’t have to change. Not if you don’t want to, if you’re not ready yet, or not ready ever. You’re enough.”
Enough.
She’s enough. Her Heart is enough. She doesn’t have to earn who she is, nor prove it. It’s a truth, like the seven seashells, like the tide flowing in and out, like her. Like counting her breaths.