Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The clock read half three. Lea watched the second hand go round, and round, and round until it hurt to blink, until the slam of a door startled him so much that he dropped the laminate card. It landed at Isa's feet.

"She says I'm too impudent for my own good and I need to tone it down." Isa picked up the card and re-pinned it to the notice board outside Ms Penn's office. "Do you tell someone who's good at art to tone it down because it offends other people? Or tell a sportsman to run slower because other people want to come first? No, because rejecting excellence and settling for the group average is hardly what a teacher is employed to teach. More to the point, I merely have a degree of realism I think needs to be shared. That doesn't make me impudent."

"I dunno, Isa, I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe what Ms Penn is trying to say is that you're a bigheaded prick in debate class."

Isa slung his bag over his shoulder. A smile might have graced his face. "Really? Impudent? I'm not impudent, I'm vocally assertive."

"Call it what you like, but there's a reason why I'm always on the same side as you during debates, and it's not because I'm your friend." Lea finished off his juice and threw the carton into the plant pot of an indoor fern. "It's because you turn batshit insane when you argue and it scares the life out of me. You know," he continued to muse as they wandered towards the stairs, "if it wasn't so scary, it'd be funny. Your face goes white all over except for your cheeks and you kinda forget to blink—"

"Oh shut up." Isa vented his frustration by giving the vacuum cleaner a kick. It wheezed on impact and, seemingly having a psychic link to it, the caretaker grunted and turned round. "Sorry," he said (although coming from Isa, it sounded more like a scoff).

"Fucking kids," the caretaker uttered.

Lea pushed the door's bar and stepped into the stairwell bathed in afternoon light. "Castle Town?" he suggested. He looked behind him, and he turned in time to see the caretaker lift the vacuum cable – just as Isa was stepping over it.

"Shit!" Isa stumbled – Lea grabbed his arm in time – and then, once he ascertained what had happened, his jaw dropped open. "Wh…What was that for?! I apologised for kicking your damn vacuum cleaner—"

"Isa, leave it—" 

"It's not like I did it any damage, for goodness sake—" 

Lea shook his shoulder. "Isa, get over it. Remember – tone down your impudence." 

Isa collected himself. He straightened his shirt and tie and gave a sharp exhale. "Bastard," he spat.

 

.oOo.

 

The next day, when his boiling temper failed to simmer even by a degree, Isa returned with a vengeance. Lea just wondered why anyone would go out their way to trip up a bitterly obstinate teenager with forgiveness issues. 

The vacuum cleaner was out – a perfect repeat of yesterday – and its greyed cable snaked round the corridor's sharp corner. The caretaker was mumbling to himself, swiping down grimy armrests and doorknobs. Every now and then, his aged hands would run over the splintered surfaces of the cabinets as though he was caressing marbled flesh. 

"You ever think," Isa began in a murmur, inching his head round the corner to survey the man, "he's a bit creepy?" 

Lea nodded. "Definitely, he looks like a psycho. Are you really going to have a go at him? He might flip out and stab you." 

"What's your idea then?" 

Lea gave a quick smile. "Just this." He followed the vacuum cable to the plug socket. Then, he bent over and flicked off the switch. He snorted, pleased with his work. From the angled point of the L-shaped corridor, Isa watched the caretaker set down his cleaning rag and go to switch on the vacuum cleaner. He swore under his breath and tried a few more times. 

"And now we walk past him ignorantly." Lea did just that, beckoning Isa along with an audacious wave of his hand. The caretaker glared at them as they passed and Isa, suddenly spurred on in the caretaker's wake, seized the rag and stuffed it up the vacuum's nozzle. 

"Good one!" Lea hissed. He pushed against the heavy door of the fire escape and burst through. Their snickers echoed in the musty stairwell, and Lea waited with baited breath for the caretaker to come back, flick on the vacuum and have it explode in his face— 

—and he couldn't hold his breath any longer. 

"Where's he gone?" asked Lea. He pushed his face against the oblong panel of glass, wanting to see their practical joke in action, but Isa took his sleeve. A shadow had fallen across his face and at first, Lea thought Isa was having second thoughts. However, the more he blinked, the darker his surroundings seemed to get. Lea glanced up and down the stairwell, seeing the school grounds framed by the floor length windows. "I thought we weren't expecting rain 'til Mon—" he started, but Isa cut him off with an ashen look of a glazed statue. "What? What is it?" 

He followed Isa's gaze to the windows again, and then he caught the shadows. Mile-long billows of breathing smoke were creeping across the slabs of pavement, over the low walls, between the fenced trees. At first, Lea thought it was a fire, leeching everything in its path of form and colour; but fire didn't walk, or groan, or have an endless number of curling limbs… 

…did it? 

It looked like something out of his little brother's comic, Lea decided finally. Bordered by the windows, Lea read the animated pages, witnessing the colossal trail of monsters he had never seen before, seeing the world crumble before his eyes. He saw a schoolboy, running with his mouth warped into a voiceless scream, and then the darkness cloaked him, like ink staining paper, and the boy disappeared. 

"It's like a tidal wave," said Isa. "It's sucking everyone in." 

"What's going on," Lea asked, when what he really meant was, make it stop. 

Someone started screaming, hollering for help. Lea jumped – it felt like his own voice had clawed out of his throat – and before he knew it, there was pounding against the very door they stood behind. 

"The caretaker," hissed Lea. "It's the caretaker." He tried to look through the panel of glass lodged in the door, but standing three inches taller, Isa had that privilege. Lea watched, numb with horror and maybe fear (was it fear? He wasn't afraid of anything; he loved risks and thrills). 

Isa gave him a single, inscrutable look that terrified Lea to the core, and then his long fingers wrapped round the handle. His shoulder fell against the door. 

"What are you doing?" Lea tugged the handle. "This way's the only way out—he's being chased by monsters—" 

"—and he'll lead them right to us," Isa whispered back. "I told you, it's a tidal wave out there. We're not going to be able to escape once we let the water in." 

Lea's hand hovered near to the handle. His palm was sticky with sweat, yet in the time Lea had taken to fall into a panic, Isa had weighed up the situation and, not for the first time, made a strong decision that reeked of brutal reality. 

"Open up," begged the caretaker. "Open up, I know you're in there! Please, I'm begging you, they're coming—I…oh god—what are you all—" 

"Lea, if you want to live, help me," Isa hissed loudly. His eyes flashed and Lea knew, in that tiny moment, he couldn't deny that he had been given a choice. 

Lea squeezed his eyes shut, gripped the handle and forced his weight against the door. The caretaker – that creepy, spiteful old man whose vacuum cleaner was like his loyal dog – pounded away at the door. 

"I want to live. I want to live." Lea discovered that if he spoke soft enough, quick enough, intense enough, he couldn't hear the throttled cries from the caretaker. "Please, I want to live." 

He held on tight to the handle, gasping every time something thudded against the panel and reverberated through his bones. Hours rolled by (although it may have been mere minutes), until silence washed over, and then Lea collapsed to the floor, scratching at his dirty hands.

 

.oOo.

 

Radiant Garden fell into a power outage that even Isa couldn't explain. It was a prospering world that prided itself on technological advancement; it had practically invented the concept of backups and failsafes. However, every house had been greyed out, every streetlight was devoid of warmth. When night threaded into the lingering darkness, all they had was an emergency torch and the glowing hands of Isa's sports watch. 

"How long has it been?" Lea asked. 

"Couple of hours." 

"What happened out there?" 

"I don't know." 

"Is it safe?" 

"I don't know," Isa said again. He checked the time out of habit. Besides themselves, that stupid watch was the only thing Lea could see was still functioning. "…We should find our family. Hopefully, everyone's done the sensible thing and stayed hidden."

"What about if they were out in the open in the first place?" Lea countered. "I mean, my brother would have been walking home." 

"Well, my dad's a fireman. He would've been out there getting everyone else to safety. I imagine that given the nature of his job, I won't see him again." Isa played with the torch, directing it round the unexciting insides of the stairwell. 

After a few minutes, Lea asked, "What about the caretaker? Do you think someone's out there, waiting for him?" 

"No," Isa replied. It was dark, but Lea could still see the trace of fear in his eyes. "He was a freak."

 

.oOo.

 

They deemed it safe to leave the fire escape when Lea (and consequently Isa) realised he needed to use the bathroom. Isa went first, directing the torchlight behind him every few seconds so that Lea could see where he was going. They didn't meet anything – man or monster – along the way. 

For a few crazily bizarre seconds, the only sound in Radiant Garden was their piss. Lea wasn't sure if he was even breathing. It was as though the Garden had been switched off without warning. No light or life, no power or pulse. It was empty, as if the Garden was imploding, and everything it had ever touched was being written out of existence. 

"You know, we could always fight those monsters," Lea suggested. "It's not the first time Radiant Garden's seen creatures like those." 

"Although it is the first time she's been floored by them," Isa returned. "Look out there. The whole town's been bleached. Do you think you and your fucking frisbees stand much chance?" He inhaled sharply. "Sorry," he added. "I'm just tense."

 

.oOo.

 

Jorn was a boy one year above them, who was renowned for wearing a school jumper that never got acquainted with a washing machine. His front boasted food stains ranging from faint to painfully clear, but Lea had never thought he'd be so happy to see him. 

"I think," Jorn hissed, waving his hands for dramatic emphasis, "there was an emergency evacuation and that's where everyone else has gone. We've been left behind because they never thought to check a closed school. The one day I decided to stay late and finish my art project, eh?" 

"Actually," said Isa, "the moral repercussions of evacuating without consideration for children are colossal. Do you really think our authorities would go against one, their instinct of protecting the young and weak and two, the political interests and benefits of saving as many people as possible? There was no emergency evacuation. If there was one, we would have heard sirens and engines and someone shouting for us to respond. And hey, maybe there would have been emergency procedures, if people weren't too busy getting killed." 

Jorn blinked and stood up, perhaps regretting ever starting a conversation with Isa. "I'm starved," he announced. "Think about it. The whole of school is no longer off limits! I'm going to go to the staff room and raid their fridge. You guys coming?" 

"No," Isa answered flatly, "mainly because I think the monsters are still in the school. If you had any sense, you'd stay here with us and wait it out." 

But Jorn was hungry, and Lea was too (although he didn't dare bring this up). With an ignorant grin, Jorn fitted his arms through his rucksack and walked off to the staff room. 

The hands on Isa's watch turned and turned; and Jorn never came back.

 

.oOo.

 

The worst thing was, Lea decided in his fretful sleep, that he couldn't even mourn properly. 

The bodies of Radiant Garden were mysteriously absent. Swallowed, vaporised, utterly consumed. Lea had no idea what had hit the Garden, what creatures could leave nothing but dust in its wake. In the dank air devoid of the stench of blood and rotting corpses, he couldn't work out how to grieve in a situation he understood so little of. 

There was that, and then there was Isa. Lea had let his emotions get the better of him – on several occasions, during their harried walk to a hiding spot, he started crying – but Isa had a face of stone. His only priority was finding a safe spot. He didn't have time to cry – or perhaps he simply didn't know how. 

Lea didn't really know where he was going – the sky was so dark, it was impossible to even see the towering Castle – so he clung onto Isa's jersey with one hand, and gripped the strap of his schoolbag with the other. Isa had thrown his bag aside ages ago, preferring to carry a dust-laden fire extinguisher he had found in the school hallway. Isa had said he was going to thwack any passing monster with it. ("It might not kill them, but it'd make enough noise to stun them and give us a head start.") 

He glowed with common sense and practicality, but Lea couldn't let go of whatever possessions he had left, from his bag full of sweet wrappers and homework to the spare change in his pocket, no matter their worthlessness now. It was childish – with or without Isa's glaring contrast of sensibility – to think that by holding onto all that reminded him of home, like clinging to fraying ropes on a departing ship, it'd relent and stay. 

Eventually, Isa found a safe zone. It was a small bungalow, with a beautifully kempt front lawn and enough roses and hyacinths and petunias to give Lea hay fever for the rest of the year. 

"This isn't home," Lea muttered, drowsy. He followed Isa in through an open bay window, landing on the cushy seat inches below the sill. "All places in Radiant Garden, and you pick a place that isn't home." 

"The view is good from here. We're at the top of a hill. If we get attacked by monsters, we've got momentum to help us get away. Plus, see that black smudge over there? That's the Castle. It's not far away at all. We'll head there in the morning when it's light; I bet everyone's working their way there." Isa smiled, and it was the darkest thing Lea had seen all night. 

"Aren't you scared?" he asked. 

"No." Isa wriggled under the spare blanket he had found. They sat at opposite ends of the window seat, calves and ankles touching. 

"Then are you sad?" 

"No," Isa said again.

Lea shifted in the blanket, trying to disguise his dismay. "…But your family's probably dead. Doesn't that make you sad?" 

Isa didn't reply.

 

.oOo.

 

The monsters grew in force overnight. (Lea only assumed it was over the course of night – the sky was as dark as ever.) He jumped wide awake at the sound of the fire extinguisher colliding with metal. 

"See?" Isa smacked another monster with a smile bigger than the resulting bang. "They don't like the noise at all!" 

And Isa may have been triumphant and bold, but Lea was beside himself with fear. The creatures were hideous, with cavernous mouths and spindly fingers. He backed away, crawling on his hands and knees, and then his head rammed into someone's shin. 

"All right, boys, you're okay now." He seized Lea by the collar and pulled him onto his feet. "See that ship? Grab your friend, get in there, stay in there and don't touch anything, ya hear me?" 

"Y-yes Sir—" 

Lea didn't remember much of the journey. The final glimpse he got of his home was the cobbled pavement of an avenue that used to have small birches dotted down it like buttons on a coat. Then, the door slid shut, and despite being locked away and cocooned in a ship with Isa's hand firmly squeezing his, Lea was certain he was suspended in space and falling to pieces.

 

.oOo.

 

"Where is this?" demanded Isa. "I don't recognise it. How far did we go?" 

They landed at a refugee camp that was vaguely reminiscent of a town square. (Or was it the other way round?) Tents had been propped up around fenced trees, there was a small queue for water bottles and all around the site, there seemed to be numerous whispers of the darkness. 

Isa shook himself away from Lea and doubled his pace to keep up with Cid Highwind, their pilot and rescuer. "This is Traverse Town," replied Cid. "Some guys and I have been bringing the survivors here. We're quite a way from the Garden – try the other end of the sky – but you're alive and safe, so you got more than you bargained for huh, kid?" 

"This is temporary, isn't it," Isa said. "We recuperate, and then we go back." 

Cid laughed hollowly. "Radiant Garden's gone. Imagine a colossal foot. Now imagine it crashing down on the Garden, sucking life bone dry, sending massive arcs of shockwaves across the universe and her worlds. That's our situation. Ain't no going back unless you've got a death wish. Want someone's lap to sob into? That's the Fairy Godmother's job – she's just down there. Otherwise, make yourself useful and collect these parts for the Gummi ship. The store's straight down that alley – it's got a blue sign as bright as your hair. You—" he snatched Lea's shoulder "—can take this list and put down your names." He fumbled in his back pocket and drew out a crumpled sheet of paper. "Here. It's got everyone who made it out of Radiant Garden and landed here. See if you know anyone and tell the Fairy Godmother if you do." 

Lea was dismayed to discover that not only was his mother and brother missing on the list, said list was frightfully short. His father wasn't on it either. (And even if he had pulled through the end of the world, Lea wasn't sure he'd go out of his way to find him.)

Isa snatched the list, gave it a once over and then shook his head. "I don't know anyone on that list. There's only forty-three people on it. Do you know the population of Radiant Garden? What the embarrassingly tiny percentage forty-three people is?" 

He scribbled on the back of the list, his hand clawing out the deadly calculation. 

"Isa, don't," Lea cried, and he really didn't want to read it, but it was his face to which Isa held out the paper. 

0.172

 

.oOo.

 

Isa had only ever been an astronomer. He could recite (not without a degree of condescension) the constellations and their locations, the best time and season to see each one; he could trace the sun's path and explain the difference between a nebula and a protostar. He had three telescopes (each with their own pros and cons that Lea never bothered to memorise), a pair of binoculars and two garden tents to make his observations from. 

Two days after the world ended, Isa – from his perspective – made the mistake of looking up.  Without rhyme or reason, he had been stripped of the very sky he had grown up worshipping. 

Save for the perpetual night they were now trapped in, Lea – if he had to be frank – couldn't see a difference in the heavens at all. But by Isa's astounded stare, he knew the stars had exploded out of place. 

Isa, the master of fakery, finally crumbled. He sat on the stone step of their inn-turned-home, and sobbed into his arms for everything he had lost. Lea stood in the doorway, toeing the threshold. He watched Isa rip off his jersey and throw it, only to moan at the lack of satisfaction it brought.

"Thank God," Lea whispered to no one in particular. "Thank God. I thought I had lost him too."