Work Text:
At the end of it all, Lea only gets a glance at them.
More than anything, he recognizes their light. He watches, too far from them as they spring to life, feels warmth in his chest the moment he sees their distant figures, bright and blazing. But as soon and sudden as they come, they are gone.
Lea can't bear to be around Sora or Kairi for weeks after the end. He knows it's irrational. Sora didn't decide to leave him. Kairi didn't choose her face. But still when he sees them, when he sees the night black names on the insides of their arms, his heart drops into his stomach, he feels sick.
He knows he can't blame them, he doesn't want to but when Sora finally corners him, exhausted after training in Yen Sid's tower, he can't stop the angry, hurt words that fall from his mouth.
"I don't even remember what she was like," He says, "I never got to tell her good bye."
Sora isn't shocked at Lea's outburst. Instead his holds the taller man when he finally crumples to the floor, contains the I'm sorry on the tip of his tongue as Lea sobs and shudders.
When they're sitting there later, silent, Sora asks, "Do you resent me."
Lea pulls Sora's hand's from his shoulders, flips them over so he can see Kairi and Riku's names on his wrist, "Every day."
Somehow, Sora can't bring himself to be upset. He watches Lea study the skin of his hands and wishes he could give this man anything and everything that would bring him happiness.
When Lea is brought back, his wrists come back blanker than they were in his first life. He studies them for days, feeling forlorn at the sight of the blank skin.
More than the empty space where he once carried Ïsa's name as a child, the absence of the two names he knows he should wear leaves him feeling emptier than his days in the Organization.
His skin is lying. He knows what he had. He knows what he's missing. He knows there's nothing he can do to bring it back.
In the end, he ponders, not even Sora's name mars his wrist. But that makes sense, he supposes. After all, Sora has always had two people who love him more than Lea could ever dream of.
Lea can never bring himself to love Sora the way he loves them, but for the rest of his life, he stays a good friend.
He lives a good life.
When Xion is five, she dreams continuously of a red sunset that morphs into a nightmare of ink-black monsters and falling.
For all her life she has this reoccurring dream. Sometimes, in them, she meets a boy with blond hair, and a man with eyes greener than her grandmother's fanciest emerald necklace.
When she's awake, she wonders why she was born with only one name on her skin. She wonders if Axel's wrist holds her name, or Roxas's. She wonders when she'll meet him, when she'll meet them.
She never does.
She grows old alone. But, she thinks one day, as she watches the red sunset, propped up in her bed, at least this time she grows old at all.
Lea and Ïsa are born to each other again in this lifetime as they were so many lifetimes ago.
Lea cries on the day he recalls the trauma of their past, and holds Ïsa against his chest in the dim light of his room. The shorter boy hums to him as Lea's sobs die out.
"Did you know?" He asks after a while, "How long did you know?"
Ïsa fiddles with the band on Lea's blank wrist, "I've always known."
Lea nods, like that's the end of the discussion, but already, he has so many questions to ask.
He stays up that night, tracing Ïsa's face with his eyes and fingers, and although it's familiar in so many ways, and he loves it, Lea can't help but feel something's off.
Lea spends his days with his hand in Ïsa's. He spends his days thinking of Ïsa and in this life, Ïsa hands him his whole heart. But the other boy has always known that Lea's heart is not his alone.
They're still young when they leave, barely out of their teens. Ïsa holds Lea's wrist, the one that doesn't carry his name, and slowly traces out two names with the tip of his fingers.
"I was never the only one in your heart," He says, softly. He smiles at Lea, his eyes shine with mischief, "We always said we'd see the world one day. The faster we start looking, the faster we'll find them."
Lea's heart swells at Ïsa's tender tone, and he crushes the other boy against him in a hug.
"I've always loved you." He says, firmly, "Always."
Lea and Ïsa see the world, but they never find Lea's missing pieces.
Xion and Roxas are born as fraternal twins. They both have brown hair and brown eyes and neither of them wear names on their wrists.
Everyone who meets them throughout their lifetime tell them how lucky it is that they have each other, that they're always so close.
It almost makes up for their blank skin.
They grow up happy, despite longing for the third that makes them whole.
Axel see's her when he turns the corner, waiting for the next train.
Her hair is longer, and she's taller than in his memories but as she turns her face to watch the incoming train, he knows there's no way he could mistake her.
He feels his blood pulse.
"Xion!" He yells, running for the train as she boards the car.
He sees her start as she catches his eyes. She grins, excited as she starts to push her way off the car but the door signals it's closure. She presses her hand against the glass as Axel comes to a halt in front of her. When she sees him panic as the train begins to move, she gestures frantically at him to stay where he is.
Still, Axel moves with the train as it make its way out of the station and then watches it till it's out of sight.
When Xion gets off the train on the opposite platform, he's still waiting at the farthest end of the station.
She waves frantically at him, "Axel!" She yells, getting his attention, "I'll meet you at the ticket booth!"
She takes the stairs up two at a time, and when she finally sees him, coming up the escalator, she can't help the running jump she makes at him.
"I missed you!" She says, holding him tightly around the waist.
He cards a hand through her hair, pressing a kiss against her forehead, "I missed you so much."
Neither of them wear a second name on their skin.
"This time, I'm going to have both of you."
Roxas says this pressed up against Lea on his mom's couch.
He grins as he traces the letter's of Xion's name on his wrist, still new and faint.
It puzzles both their parents, Xion's name on their wrists, but there have been stranger cases in the past. Lea and Roxas are fourteen; young and bright, ecstatic about the new addition to their skin.
When Axel finally meet her, he's twenty-eight.
At the start of the new school year, Xion and Naminé, just out of middle school, join Axel's after-school media program. He's a youth worker and they're from a small family, just them and their mother.
She remembers him, but she's skeptical. She's young and tired and he's so much older than she's ever met him.
"This is really weird. Sorry." He says to her, one month after the start of the program.
"Yep." She replies, watching his face through the lens of a borrowed camera.
Axel makes a face and she laughs at him. He shows her how to put music to the video she took of Naminé skateboarding in the parking lot.
When she's sixteen, she spends and afternoon crying on him about failing grades and fallouts with her mother. She listens as he maps out a way to get through the semester and asks if he'll talk to her mother for her.
When she's seventeen she meets Roxas, Axel's husband, at their family barbeque. Naminé is there, and so are all her other friends and peers who see Axel as their mentor.
When she's nineteen, Roxas interns her at his photography studio. Over the summer of her second year in college, she follows him across Europe while he works, while he shows her how he captures precious moments.
When she's twenty-two she meets their daughter, who is only seven and new to the family. She's small and shy but adores Xion the way she adores her fathers.
When she's twenty-six, Roxas cries as Xion says her vows. They squeeze her between them in congratulations as she laughs, the happiest they've ever seen her.
When her husband comes to sweep her away, he grins at them, and ask them to treat him well.
Axel and Roxas are forty when they watch Xion's husband cradle her hands in his, thumbs brushing the black of their names on her skin. He's never minded her names of her mentors on her wrists.
Roxas grabs her arm over the counter after she hands him his drink.
She blinks slowly at him, before the recognition dawns.
"I'm off in twenty minutes," she says, voice cracking, and Roxas inhales sharply at the tremble of it.
When she finally comes around to him, she's grinning.
"It's 'they' actually, this time," she - they tell him, tacking on a laugh and a soft, "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry." He says in dismissal, "Do you dye your hair?"
They grin, flushing as they pull a hand through their hair, "Yeah, I guess it's due for a touch up."
"I know someone who could do it for you." Roxas tells them, "If you - if you want to meet him."
Xion's heart thumps in their chest and they pull a chair out with their ankle so they can sit across from him.
"You've met him." the words are a whisper.
Roxas grins at them over the brim of his cup. "He's two years younger than me this time."
Xion laughs, "No way! Wait -- How old are you?"
"I'm only twenty-three!"
"Hah!" They exclaim, pointing a finger in Roxas's face, "I'm twenty-four, I'm the oldest." Roxas scoffs, shoving their finger away from his face.
He follows Xion to the green market and then to the bus stop where they part ways.
Xion grins at him, holding one of Roxas's hands, the one that doesn't have their name on it.
"I'll see you later," they say, "I missed you." they kiss Roxas's wrist softy, grinning, "Both of you!"
"I'll see you!" Roxas crushes them in a hug as the bus pulls up, waving as they get on.
He's still grinning when he calls Lea on his walk home.
Xion gets a phone call from an unknown number just as they step into the lobby of their apartment.
"If you don't come over to see me as soon as possible, I swear I will break up with you."
Their laugh is loud in the empty lobby of the building. "We're not even dating yet, Ax- Oh! Lea."
Lea doesn't mind the slip up, instead, scoffing into the phone, "We're dating now." he says, "Unless you take forever to come see me."
Xion hums as they step into the elevator, "I won't," they say, turning their wrist so they can see the dark letters of Lea's name on their wrist, "I've been waiting my whole life to see you."