Bone of Contention: Chapter 8
Rating: M for sex and disturbing themes
Characters: Isa, Lea, Saïx, Axel, Xemnas
Pairings: Lea/Isa, Axel/Saïx, Xemnas/Saïx
Genre: Drama/Angst
Summary: Isa suffers from a rare bone disease, osteogenesis imperfecta. When Lea overlooks this in favour of having someone
to himself, Isa leaps at the opportunity and so begins their downward spiral from friends to lovers to Nobodies.
Disclaimer: Characters and setting copyright to Square Enix.
LEA, THE BOY WHO'D DISAPPEAR
- eight years before death -
Three years into our friendship, there was one moment where you were round my house, and all I did was blink.
In all fairness, Bunnymoon had an extraordinary ability to make anyone in her vicinity look adorable, but there you were, playing with her in the garden, watching her do binkies and running your thin fingers over her floppy ears. Your breath came out in cold wisps, and they ran like a dragon's breath across the January air. You had your rodding surgery leaflet poking out your schoolbag's side pocket and behind it was a freebie horoscope guide to the new year you got with your astrology magazine.
"Can I read that?" I pointed to the guide.
You glanced up at me from your awkward position - flat on your back, Bunnymoon curled on your neck like a scarf. You nodded your answer and I seized the booklet. I turned the waffling pages that described destiny in the stars, one by one, as though I wasn't looking for anything in particular. When I reached the double spread page that described the compatibility between Virgo and Taurus, I had to fight to keep down my triumphant smile.
I sat next to you on the dried grass of my garden, and I blinked - and suddenly, I reopened my eyes and realised you were utterly beautiful.
-x-
It snowed for five days in February. By the second day, I was fed up of throwing snowballs at my sisters and speaking from behind a snowman to trick old Mrs Pemberton into thinking it was alive. So, on the third, when you finally braved the cold, you prevented my untimely death by boredom.
You must have been wearing about six layers, for when you stepped out of your house, the only visible part of you was the top half of your face. You were wearing high grip boots and a knitted hat, and your arms had to stick out somewhat to accommodate your padded coat. I had to laugh at you.
"What? It's cold," you snapped. "It's not funny, so stop laughing!"
But I didn't, and your face went as red as my hair; and it only took a few more seconds before the anger fizzed out - the way I knew it always did - and you grinned tiredly. "Fine, I look like a prat," you said. "Just so you know, I'm not going anywhere that's downhill. And you're not allowed to throw anything at me."
"I won't, I promise," I said.
I was thirteen and you fifteen, but we walked at the pace of old and arthritic men as you tested your feet against the powdery snow. "It's not too slippery," I said. "When it starts to freeze over, then you'll have to be extra careful. Still, at least you're all padded out so if you do take a fall, you'll practically bounce back up again."
"Shut up," you replied automatically. After a few seconds of letting the humour slide, you added tentatively, "I can't afford to break anything while considering rodding surgery."
"Are you going to do it?" I asked. Your nervous smile was carefully hidden behind your scarf. "I think you should. I mean, if it prevents future breakages, it's a good thing, right? And having metal in your leg isn't too strange a thing. People put metal in their ears and bellybuttons all the time."
"I think this is different." You staggered a little, abruptly throwing off the steady pace of left, right, left, right. "I'm not trying to make a fashion statement."
"But how cool would it be if you were bionic? You know, like a half robot half human with superpowers."
"Be serious, Lea," you said, suddenly grumpy.
I was attempting to play down the daunting prospect in a way that'd reassure us both, but you didn't seem too impressed by this approach. After all, it was a procedure that could change your life forever, and I was talking about it as if I was discussing the specifics of a comic book.
In all honesty, although you often demanded it, I was afraid of my own seriousness. I only adopted it when I felt threatened, like a wild dog backed into a corner, and the jokes and quips were no longer enough to keep my perfect reality glued together. Once, my dad had sat me down and told me to think seriously of my future ("Really? An athlete?"), and all I did was snigger at a spot he missed when shaving and tried to see up his nose.
I had grown up seeing the rest of the world through a foggy lens of distortion, which hid away my expendability and worthlessness. The call for being serious shattered that lifesaving lens of fakery and cowardice, and it rendered me into someone so terrified of growing up and seeing the world in its truest form of cruelty, that there was hardly ever logic to my reactions at all.
"Hey, I don't want to spoil your fun," you said. We came to a stop at the square. "If you want a snowball fight with the others, then go ahead." There was a crowd of kids from our school having a snowball fight. They had left stark marks in the blanket of snow where they had scooped up the balls and footprints were squashed onto more footprints. Amidst the friendly battle, there was one familiar girl with her chin tucked into a disgusting furry scarf, as if she had just skinned a ferret on her way here, and she stared longer than anyone else upon our arrival.
Then, she waved, and with a painful twist of my gut, I remembered who she was.
"That's Megan, isn't it?" You leaned forwards a little bit in an attempt to see her better.
"Isa!" she called. She pushed up her hat - it was three times too big and threatening to fall over her eyes - and beckoned for you to come over. You looked between the slippery slope and the jagged steps, at a loss for which precarious route to take. I was about to remark on Megan's inconsideration when out the corner of my eye, I saw you take a few nervous steps down the slope. You gripped the half wall with one hand, clawing for the hard surface by ripping away the thin layer of snow. Your breaths came out in sharp pants of anxiety, but I was certain you were smiling.
"Are you sure-" I started, but you ended my sentence with a fierce nod. Megan sauntered over to the bottom of the ramp. Her cheeks were bright red.
"Hi," you managed to say to her, before going straight to introducing me. "This is my friend, Lea. Lea - you already know Megan, I've told you about her, remember?"
How could I forget?
Of course I knew Megan. From the day you were put next to her in your science class (you were a set lower than me), you hadn't been able to shut up about her. She was fat and had acne hidden by a choppy fringe, but you took an instant liking to her because she was a social outcast and you could relate perfectly to that. Megan had it a lot worse than you because she didn't have a disease she could palm off the bullying to. She was simply fat, to the point the school kids dropped the 'n' off her name and shouted 'Watch out, it's Mega!' across the playground. Her dad was a magician, and when people were bored of calling her all variances of obese, they slandered her father's apparently paedophilic career instead.
I did feel a bit sorry for her. She couldn't help being big, the same way I couldn't help having red hair and you having OI. And being a magician was a career as much as a prosecutor was. Megan was an easy target because she was different, that was all there was to it.
All this reasoning and yet, I resented her more than ever as you walked downhill to greet her.
You had explicitly told me you wouldn't attempt any hills. So why was it suddenly feasible, if Megan was waiting at the foot instead of me? Who was Megan to you? Why did she matter? More to the point, where was she when you were wheelchair bound? I mean, she hadn't pushed you around for a whole year to lessons, nor had she gone along to your hospital appointments to help you rehabilitate. She didn't even acknowledge your existence. She didn't know the first thing about you.
I squeezed a smile onto my face, but with such force, it probably looked like an executioner's sneer instead. "Hey, Mega," I said. You gave me a sharp look. "-n," I added.
"It's nice to see you out and about," Megan said to you. "You didn't slip at all, did you?"
"No, I'm fine," you said. "Actually, it's not as bad as I thought it would be."
You glanced around at the amicable atmosphere of the whitened Garden and colourful scarves. I had pinched one of my dad's cashmere scarves again, but so far, no one had commented on how grown up and expensive it looked in comparison to the drossy knitted wraps everyone else wore.
"We could build something?" you suggested, and you gave a small nod towards a group of students creating what might have been a small fort. I felt like remarking that whatever you chose to build, be it an ice fortress or a snowman, Megan would still be the biggest thing on this square; and this contempt worked its way onto my face to become a dirty expression of envy.
I joined in merely to humour you. I let you talk about your science classes. I let Megan go on about her family troubles. I let you reciprocate as you talked about your unpleasant cousin and how difficult it was for your aunt to be more accommodating of your illness. I hid behind the snowman we were building, whacked its body into shape until my palms ached from the effort, and I effectively disappeared for a half hour for Megan's and your benefit.
You wouldn't have had the confidence to speak to Megan, were it not for me encouraging you to step outdoors.
You wouldn't have made a mark on the world altogether, were it not for me.
You couldn't throw me away just for a spotty fatso.
Could you?
I peered round our headless snowman to see you and her, together in the snow, and I watched you peel off your gloves to lend to her when her fingers got too cold. It was as though I was peering through the foggy window of my own sitting room, witnessing how well my dad could mingle with his family, without me, and now you could do it too.
My lips tightened, my cheeks flushed with poisonous jealousy, and then my gaze wandered over to the top heavy bin, glistening in the winter sun. I ran over to it, snapped an icicle that dangled off its lid and too eager to see the consequences, I lifted the furry scarf and dropped it down Megan's back.
"Aah!" she cried, and I grinned behind my scarf. She hopped awkwardly, but her arm was too stubby to reach up her back to retrieve the icicle and her jumper had been tucked into her trousers. You tried to help, but your fingers barely went close; you were far too afraid to touch her. In the echoing sniggers of the other kids watching Megan's struggle, I relished the destruction I had caused. You glared at me before trying to recover the situation. "I'm so sorry," you said on my behalf, as Megan shivered and circled her shoulders. "Lea's a bit of a joker."
"Yeah, no hard feelings, Mega," I lied. I couldn't stop grinning at her bright cheeks of humiliation and your similar expression of crossness. My vindictive glee was, however, short lived.
"Huh," said Megan, undeterred, and she offered me a painfully warm smile. "I'll have to get you back."
She began to roll up a snowball, and bloody Megan hung out with us for the rest of the year.
-x-
I suppose I had always envisioned you as the resigned boy on the bench with his unattainable wishes, who had unwittingly waited for me. I liked that quality about you - that kind acknowledgement of my existence, but even though you would always be the shattering boy or the wheelchair kid, it wasn't long before everyone else discovered just how much kindness you had in you - if only they gave you a chance.
You crawled out of your shell and started to put your hand up in class. You began to smile more, talk more, at others and especially my older sisters. I caught the frequent occasions where Lara asked you to help with her physics homework, and I caught the interest in your eyes as Lacey enthused about her wonderful boyfriend. You were fast making great choices for yourself without me to guide you, and though your success and happiness was infectious, I still wanted the guarantee I'd be a permanent staple of your life.
At some point, I realised being your friend wasn't going to be enough.
"So," you said from behind the tombstone, on that chilly November evening I've never forgotten, "are you going to explain why you went out of your way to stick salad cream instead of custard on Megan's apple crumble?"
"It was a mistake, honest," I said, and I ducked behind your telescope to adjust its focus. There was supposed to be a good view of a planet tonight, but you were more preoccupied ironing out the creases of your star charts on your knees.
"Well, you play more pranks on her than on all the teachers combined." You exhaled, and you might have come across as angry were it not for the tired expression on your face. "It's a good job she has a sense of humour or else you'd get sent to the head's office and your dad would have to come in again. I mean, do you have a grudge against her or something?"
You shook out one star chart and pinned each corner with a small stone. "You're civil enough, but there are times I do think you're crossing the line. Lea, don't do that, it's fragile." And you whacked the tense grip of my hand away from the telescope's lens. You looked up at the sky, momentarily distracted as you somehow located Saturn (I think) amongst the billion pin pricks above us. I studied your cheekbones, cut out in the sharp light of the gibbous moon; and not for the first time, I thought about telling you the bone white skin of your face that was more perfect than the glow of any celestial wonder, was the absence of colour I so envied and wanted.
"I don't have a grudge against her, per se." I shuffled to rest my back against the nearest tombstone. Dry and dead grass tickled me at the bare skin where my trousers didn't quite reach my trainer socks, but the true sensation of prickly discomfort was at the back of my throat. "I just think that if you're that desperate for a girlfriend, you can do so much better than fat Megan, s'all. You deserve better," I amended.
You tilted your head away from the eyepiece, and that was all you favoured me with, before returning to tracking Saturn.
"Okay, so she's not bad personality-wise," I tried. "She can be funny (sometimes). But seriously, she's big. She's probably three times your weight, and you want to avoid fractures, right? Plus she thinks astrology's a load of baloney. She told me so. That's hardly grounds for a serious relationsh-"
"Here." You patted the body of the telescope and stepped away. "Saturn."
I got up and peered through the lens to see a tiny speck in the blackened sky that was presumably Saturn.
"See the rings?" you murmured. "It's in opposition."
"Yeah, pretty hard to miss those massive rings. I can see about three," I lied (because by now, I was slightly rocking the telescope and disrupting its vision and I was not actually interested in the blasted planet at all). "So…are you going to ask her out?"
"Ask whom out," you said absently. You hid behind another star chart and began to manoeuvre the telescope to point to another area of the sky.
"Megan." I crossed my legs and witnessed my remarks fall on deaf ears, and realised perhaps I was vying for information the wrong way. You were clearly in one of your odd moods of hypersensitivity. I tried a roundabout way and weaved our two topics of conversation together in a move I thought was pretty good. "Hey, you should show Saturn to Megan. She'd like that."
"Why," you snapped into your star chart, "so you can tell her we've found something bigger than her?"
I grinned as you flushed immediately. "You said that, not me."
You scowled, and for a wild moment, I thought I had gone a bit too far; yet you somehow regained stony dignity. You pursed your lips, folded up your star chart and took a shuddering breath, as though you were in the defendant's box and awaiting your verdict.
"I need you to listen to me, Lea," you said. "For real this time."
"I always listen to you," I returned.
Your serious frown wrinkled itself into a glower of offense. "Are you serious? I just tested you - I was showing you Mars earlier, not Saturn! Mars doesn't have any rings, and yet you somehow saw three!"
"Fine, fine," I relented, as your cheeks went a similar shade to that of the planet I had failed to recognise. "I admit I wasn't listening then, but that's because I was asking you about Megan and you were avoiding the question."
You sat next to me, your back just shy of the headstone. When I studied us like this, legs and shoulders parallel to one another, I could see the disjointed harmony everyone spoke of.
(The disabled and the able; one who ran, the one who stayed; one beautiful, one not.)
And still - buried beneath the endless, weightless night, surely we looked the same from the sky?
"Listen," you began. "No, seriously, listen to me. I haven't told this to anyone." You folded your arms in a dual attempt to keep warm and create a defensive stance. "…I don't like Megan that way." You wetted your lips. "I don't think I like any girl that way, actually," you revised.
You adopted an expression I had never seen on you before. At first, I pegged it as embarrassment, but I quickly uncovered its various layers of mixed pride and shame, of relief and stress and comfort so great it ached. I smiled, and like a smoky mirror, you offered a shaky grin in return. "You won't tell anyone, will you?" you said. "I'm enough of a freak as it is."
But I didn't think you were a freak. I thought you were amazing, for in one fell swoop, you had highlighted the crucial difference between you and me.
You knew who you were, and you were happy with that discovery. I was still waking up to the ghost in the mirror, hiding behind a cashmere scarf that wasn't mine, thriving off a witless and banal humour I had copied off someone else. I was still the faceless mannequin who chopped and changed outfits to suit the occasion. Underneath the guises, there was nothing.
"Lea?" Your voice echoed across the cool and empty air of the cemetery. "You've gone quiet. You're bothered by it, aren't you."
I wriggled to sit up straight. "Of course I'm not. You're still my best friend, and your secret's safe with me. I'm all right with it." I punched your shoulder lightly, and you grinned, and the expression of relief and assurance that followed all but convinced me there was one fundamental purpose I was destined to always serve.
AXEL, THE FLURRY OF DANCING FLAMES
- thirty days after birth -
I don't know if you remember it as well as I do, but one time when we were young, we saw a magician. He was pretty naff and cheesy, but one of his tricks still bothers me. It went a bit like this:
Magician takes a long rope and cuts it cleanly into half.
Magician ties ropes together.
Magician says a spell and like magic, he slides the knot down the length of the rope and it disappears.
Rope is whole.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because you and the Superior are the rope, the two halves of an impossible whole;
and I'm the knot.
-x-
You're pretty easy to find. I don't know how big this prison of a castle is - it might go on forever for all I know - but there's only a select number of places you frequent. You're in the lounge this evening, and at first I think you're asleep, but you're merely staring across the room and out the vast expanse of the windows. I sit next to you, slowly and wordlessly, and you inhale deeply through your nose, as though my quiet interruption has been as pleasant as the roar of the dead.
"Hey," I say after a moment.
"Hey," you return, and for several awful minutes, that's all we're able to say to one another. Admittedly, I have a lot to say to you, but none of it is pleasant and it's taking a conscious effort on my part to bite down on the words which one by one, will move you inch by inch, away from me and towards somebody else.
"Can I look at this?" I pick up your book of scribbles. The pages have yellowed round the edges and the spine is in danger of falling apart. It seems likely you've taken it everywhere with you, and the Superior's constant abuse of flicking through your life story has rendered it into damaged goods.
You lean across to inspect it. I want you to settle against my shoulder, the way you used to, but you don't - not until I shift closer and you get the hint. "It doesn't make much sense."
"Maybe not to you," I utter, although I half want to be heard. I'm half tempted to push your memory and feed you the past, just to see what steering you to the edge is like; yet my body seizes up when the book is in my hands. I've never seen what you've written. I think it might be an unconscious attempt to reject who I twisted you into. My mind lingers on Zexion's unhelpful advice and in the wake of it, I have to wonder if it is possible at all, to truly move on when you are the embodiment of my past.
You sit back, sinking into the cushions and glancing up at me. You don't question me when I return the book to your lap, unopened. "Do you remember a girl called Megan?" you say.
"…Your friend at school?"
"Yeah," you say. "I was just thinking about her. You kept calling her fat." And you smile naively, as though we're talking about an average girl buried in the folds of troubled school years, and not the bravest person I knew.
"I drew a start chart today," you continue, "and it seemed to go hand in hand with Megan."
Those stupid giant maps - full of dots and lines and ridiculous proclamations about the future to come. I haven't seen a star chart in years. I'd almost forgotten you used to be an astrology nerd. It seems years ago and yet, that's where you are. You're still tasting the innocent beginnings of the bell curve of our life together, when it was all about school and friends and fucking star charts.
You haven't crashed yet. You hear fragments of poignant history but where you think they're just random and insignificant - like Megan, Elenar and Bunnymoon - they are to me, a heavy reminder of what I'm truly capable of.
"You've been quiet for the last few days," you say after a minute. "I can tell you're not happy with the arrangement, with you on missions and me with the Superior, but…you do know I'm not keeping anything from you, don't you?"
"Course I do." And I shift over and kiss you, because that's always covered the silences of exposed truth. "I know that," I answer more firmly. I trace your hairline with my lips and it's strange, tousled, unkempt. "I'm going to get us out of here. We'll go back to our normal lives, just the way you wanted it."
And you smile because you really think you said that. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, it aches to tell that necessary lie. You don't know how badly you tried to break free from me, once you realised my warm hold of overprotection had mutated into desperate claws piercing vulnerable flesh.
The thing is, I'm rotting away underneath.
-x-
I would be lying if I said your high regard of the Superior doesn't piss me off. I get that he's responsible for the roof over your head but beyond that, any other favours he's doing you is misinterpreted, in my opinion. Keeping you from participating in missions isn't an act of kindness to your fragile amnesia, but a choker disguised as something harmless. Making you write your stream of consciousness isn't a move to find your lost self, it's a scheme set up so that you hand yourself straight into his hands.
Part of me wants to pick you up and carry you away from harm, before he really hurts you.
Most of me thinks you deserve it. It will serve you right if you leave me.
"The Superior has asked we cover all bases for Saix's recovery. I'm here to make sure you understand the fragility of one's memory." That sanctimonious midget Zexion approaches me just after another mundane mission. I'm caked in sweat and muddy rain, but he seems spitefully oblivious of my clear signs of effort. "You have already been warned to refrain from encouraging Saix's memory to resurface, lest it collapses in on itself from the sudden weight."
He walks round me and his nose wrinkles for a fraction of a second. "It would be kinder to rebuild the structure at a steady and manageable pace. Rabbits are easily startled, but they relent to slow and unthreatening movement." Zexion folds his arms, and his clipboard pushes against his chest. "Of course, you were already elusive of your past the moment you got here. While Saix fails to retrieve his memory, you consciously sweep yours under the carpet and pretend it never happened. We all deem it interesting. You seem to possess a staggering number of skeletons in your closet."
I scoff and circle my left shoulder. "You can consider your message received, Zexion. Cross off your mission complete box and go grate someone else."
Zexion stares up at me, and his mouth thins. "I will go beyond what is required of me at this stage and offer you a little advice." He ticks off his box as I said he would. "Whatever it is that makes you keep going back to the past, let it go."
"Why?" I counter for the sake of it. I'm only paying half as much attention as I should be. My arm is actually killing me. Something about it just…hurts. "What happens if I don't? Does someone get assigned the mission of taking it by force?"
"No," says Zexion. "You'll let it go unconsciously, and forget it ever mattered in the first place. And then, when you do reflect back on it, it will only be by chance. It will be an afterthought. The ache is less when you let go of the past of your own accord. You give it its due justice."
I circle my shoulder, clockwise, clockwise, then anticlockwise. It won't set.
Zexion blinks. "Is there a problem with your arm?"
"Just a persistent itch I can't scratch," I answer dismissively. "Catch you later."
I wander off down the maze of white corridors and take a shower. I flick the taps from lukewarm to scalding, and I burn my skin until I can't feel that fucking shoulder, and I knock it against the faultless tiles and dig my nails in so hard they might just leave permanent frowns.
My left arm shouldn't be there.
-x-
Something you should know about me that you've long forgotten: I'm dangerous, I'm easily frightened and I have a knack for overreacting. It's never easy to work out which one comes first. Still, in all cases, the remaining two always follow, so you might as well consider it a welded trio of emotional instability.
You can thank my father and his fucking cashmere scarf for that.
He's the reason why I behave like this.
We're just kissing tonight. They're harmless, chaste moves of affection and save for the security of our rooms, the only tangible assurance we have left. Yet words and manipulative lies that leave the mouths of this Castle have stirred your wariness awake and leave you guarded and careful, and I need to reroute this carefulness back as trust in me, so that when I tell you another lie, it will never occur to you to question it.
That's how the Superior catches us on the skyway, patching up the broken and burnt bridges between us. He's got Xigbar in tow, and the silence that penetrates the cloudless night resounds like a thunderstorm. You break away from me slowly, and your hand flies to tug your hair straight as it crumples at your hood.
The Superior looks at us as though we revolt him in some way, and that would have been fine. His reaction does not stop there, though. He starts walking away, and Xigbar whistles a merry tune I think I've heard somewhere before, and you open your mouth to murmur something.
And then, without any warning, a gash splits across your face, left to right, and I turn just in time to see a beam of glowing red, a flash of cruelty that darts back to the Superior's left hand and then disperses, swallowed by the night.
Your breath hitches, and I think I stop breathing there and then. You lift a shaking hand to your face, but it never quite reaches the wound. I call up my chakrams in a swift move of controlled fire.
"Careful now," says Xigbar, an arrowgun materialising in his hand. The Superior hasn't even bothered to turn round.
I don't aim for him, though. I aim for you, and I'm so, so sorry.
You don't really understand because you don't consider yourself as something worth having - you never have. The Superior's split second attack on you isn't a punishment because you're associating with me; it's an invitation, a challenge, a haughty leader's way of demonstrating he can destroy and hurt whatever he likes and it will always crawl back to his palm.
The chakram whirrs up your face in an opposite slash to what you already have. You groan, fall backwards and hit the wall of the skyway. You somehow stay standing. Your fingers try to stem the flow of blood, but you can barely see what you're doing.
The Superior turns round. He smiles, a callous acknowledgement of my response, a cold complement to Xigbar's whistling. Your shallow breaths pierce the otherwise quiet night, as I stand in the stench of blood.
I've rotted away underneath.