Bone of Contention: Chapter 12
Rating: M for sex, violence and disturbing themes. This chapter deals with themes of humiliation, bullying and sexual assault. It also contains a short sex scene. Please only proceed if you are okay with this.
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. Also, I wrote this fic with the intention of keeping it canon. However, with the release of DDD, there are a few instances in this fic that are now canonically disproved, the biggest of which is Isa and Lea's escape to Traverse Town. Please forgive any inconsistencies and interpret them as artistic licence :)
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BONE OF CONTENTION
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LEA, THE BOY WHO'D DISAPPEAR
- five years before death -
To cope with the loss of you, I underwent a series of radical changes, the way a sea creature might keep mutating to deal with a missing limb. I became a shape shifting beggar, peddling my goods to the rich, trying on personalities and looks as if they were accessories I'd find in my drawer.
I bought a glow-in-the-dark yoyo when I was in Cal's circle of friends so that I could play with them. I fooled around with Adam's group and joined in their practical jokes, from putting soap in the fountain to daring one another to kiss girls. I went to extra science classes when I made friends with Jen. In spring, I drew ink tattoos on my arm to impress Hugo's group, and I even started throwing spitballs at the pretty girls in class, if it meant I stayed on good terms with Leroy.
I pretended I was friends with everyone and worked through the groups, as if I was King Ansem trying to shake hands with all of his citizens. I tried so hard, but I was still the overzealous brat no one really wanted around. By the time I graduated, I had no friends, no happy memories to mark that year, not a sprig of worth to me at all.
All I wanted was for you to forgive me and come back; and when you did, it was the worst I had ever felt all year.
-x-
We looked a sorry pair walking back - me without my trousers, you without your shoes. You cried the whole way, but I wasn't sure you even knew you were doing it. I had told you we were going to my house, not yours, but you had barely acknowledged me walking with you, let alone my efforts to hold a conversation. I was glad to some extent, that you were crying. It became the severe image I needed to never forget the consequences of my actions. I couldn't bear your muffled sobs or your struggle to even walk straight, such that all I could think about was a way to make sure you weren't ever hurt by me again.
I could cope with being called names or pantsed or having my family insulted, because I was happy to retaliate. If someone threw a spitball at me, I'd stick my chewing gum on their seat for next class. If someone ran off with my trousers, I'd chase them and punch them for good measure. But if someone did anything like that to you, you didn't respond. You were simply incapable of hurting others and thought everyone else was the same; you were a virgin to just how much cruelty a person could truly harbour.
The fact was, if someone hurt you, I was supposed to be there to take the hit.
You wanted me to help you, I was certain of it. The problem was, I wasn't sure how. I tried jokes, I tried coercing details from you, I even asked for the perpetrators' names so I could hunt them down. Each attempt seemingly made things worse, like slicks of glue damaging the slips of paper I was trying to piece back together.
In the silence that followed us home, I couldn't help but deconstruct the grisly facts. You had gone back for your star charts and six students had followed you - that was all you had confirmed. My mind filled in the gaps. Every time I lingered on what six people were capable of doing to a frightened introvert with a bone disease, I thought I was going to faint. I hated myself even more, for my inability to protect you, my cowardice in running from the truth. I didn't want to know, you clearly didn't want me to know and yet, this bout of silence was destroying you by the second and I knew it.
When we were walking down the promenade, you took a sudden turn off the path and staggered to a nearby bin to throw up. Your mind was constantly taking you back to the incident because nothing was stopping you. I had to jam this horrific loop of memories playing over and over again in your head.
"Hey, it's all right. I'm here now," I murmured, as if that was actually something reassuring. "It's all right, Isa. I'm going to take you back to my house; you can stay over for the night too. Is…is there anything I can do?"
Your hands clamped round the water bottle I had held out for you. "Bin them," you stammered. "Please, bin them."
I glanced back at your schoolbag, which you had thrown aside when running to the bin. "Your charts?"
You nodded and retched again. I retrieved the three rolls from the side pocket and studied the unfurled corner of one of them. Your neat writing embraced the staggered dots of constellations, fondly mapping the sky the way a proud parent would write dates on the back of family photographs. "You spent so much time on them," I said, but at the sight of the bloodstains down another chart, I did what you said and threw them in the bin.
It was when I turned to carry on walking you home, with a casual side glance that surpassed all of my previous scrutiny, that I spotted it. The implications only hit me after I had looked away and suddenly, I thought I was going to be sick too, for centimetres from the bloodstains was the faintest, dirty white smear.
-x-
"Lea, where are your trousers?! Please don't tell me you walked home in your underwear," my mum greeted me, forgetting to congratulate me on my graduation. Her face immediately softened however, when I gestured to you and said, "They're on Isa. We got water bombed. School end and that."
"Isa? Oh how lovely, are you two friends again? Is your nose all right? It's rather red." She didn't comment on your equally red eyes.
You smiled a liar's smile and practically melted into my mum's touch as she stroked your hair. "I'm fine, ma'am."
The moment she turned back to making dinner, you adopted a new, damaged expression that made me feel horribly guilty every time it surfaced. As you became reacquainted with my family, you kept doing it, lifting this mask every time someone had their eyes on you. No one could see the creases where your disguise covered your sadness, and I wondered if I was just too good at spotting my own traits, or if you were so traumatised you had perfected this coping method without even knowing it. Only now, when I saw you copying me, did I truly understand how powerless you must have felt on all those occasions I had pretended to be someone I was not.
"Is there any chance I could use your shower?" you said carefully. We had barely set foot in my room before you came out with that coherent, polite sentence that almost made you sound okay again. I leapt at the opportunity to pull you from the edge, back to safety.
"Sure, not a problem! You know where it is. I'll leave out some fresh clothes for you; those capris are a bit dirty."
I ransacked the drawers while you showered, treating the task with guilty enthusiasm. I found a pair of cargos that were too long for me and a black and midnight blue t-shirt that'd look great against your pale skin; to go the extra mile, I added some underwear, a pair of socks and a comb to the pile. For the first time in my life, I folded my clothes neatly. I left them outside the bathroom and went downstairs.
To my dismay, my dad came home early that evening. He shrugged out of his blazer and tossed it at my mum. "Power glitch," he explained gruffly. "The Castle malfunctioned this morning and has been running on a green light all day."
"So?" said Elenar. She was somehow balancing eight lots of plates and cutlery on one hand. "Hasn't the Castle gone green before?"
"Of course it has. The issue with the green light is that it puts the authorities into an alert mode which means nothing gets done. It's hardly worth fretting over." My dad slumped into his seat and bristled impatiently for his dinner. "No matter, it's only when the light goes completely that we start to worry."
We started eating dinner and though you were with us, you didn't speak at all. I had naively hoped you were too hungry to talk, but you were only playing with your food, looping strands of spaghetti round your fork and letting it uncurl, like a child playing with his mother's hair.
My dad, who had never shown an interest in you, made the mistake of trying to rectify this. "So now that you've graduated, what plans or ambitions do you have?"
"Astrology is a pretty dead end interest after all," my eldest sister Lacey remarked rather unhelpfully. You stared into your dinner.
"Isa?" my dad prompted. You jumped, so violently that your fork clattered to the floor and my mum had to reach out to stop your glass from toppling over. Elise giggled into her plastic bowl and most of us laughed it off as something endearing. The only one - save for me - who didn't miss your discomfort was Lara. She pulled a strange expression as you offered a garbled apology and tried to answer my dad. It was almost as though she had only just noticed you were there.
"I'm so sorry," you said, even though my mum had assured you enough times that no harm had been done at all. It was when you added, "I shouldn't have done it, it was disgusting," that I revisited my thoughts and realised you were apologising for something different altogether.
"Hey Dad," said Lara, steering his attention to her. Her face had softened which, for her standards, was something rare. "I graduated today too and haven't got a career lined up. Shouldn't you be interrogating me?" And she smiled at you, a kind gesture that didn't fly off target the way my ones did.
I excused us from the table as soon as I had finished eating. Given that I was still horrified about your ordeal, I only ate a little more than you. You sat down in the living room, looking rather lost, so I reacted before you could slip back into your bad memories. "Hey, I've got someone for you," I said, and I set Bunnymoon on the floor. "She's missed you."
The rabbit did laps around the room and performed the occasional binky. She settled in your arms and finally, though you couldn't quite look at me, you managed a weary smile. "Thanks, Lea."
-x-
We used to have an air mattress before Elenar took out her frustrations on it last month using her dressmaker's scissors. As such, I suggested you take my bed and I the sofa downstairs, but you wanted to sleep in our garden tent instead.
It had been up all summer - I suppose I had been hoping someone would set up his telescope there - but only my youngest sister Elise had used it. It was littered with toys a six year old would play with, so I shunted them to one side and fluffed up pillows and blankets.
I could almost pretend we were twelve and ten again, huddled together in the cemetery and waiting for the sunset to give way to the stars. I could remember those days clearly now, having had so much time in their absence to truly realise their value. I loved the way you had fought the wind when spreading out your star maps, the way you berated me if I fell asleep during a meteor shower, the way you scolded your telescope as if it consciously hid the planets from you, the times you read my horoscope in the moonlight and each week, shyly bypassed the paragraph on romantic fortune.
It upset me to think you once had so much life to you and something had snuffed that spark.
It upset me to think you were most likely sleeping in this tent because it felt safe. You weren't at school, the betraying sky was no longer in your sight, you were warm and not alone.
It upset me to think you were trying to hide from the things that hurt, when the biggest source of it was lying across the way, baking in the summer night, shivering in his guilt.
-x-
I woke up while it was still dark outside and at first, I thought I had merely fallen into a deeper stage of my nightmare. I had been talking. I could remember my mouth moving, my words semi-conscious and troubled.
"Are you awake?" you whispered.
"…Yeah. I can't sleep."
"I can't either," you said quietly. I couldn't see you at all, yet you seemed better that way, wrapped up in the dark, safe from judging faces. Your voice sounded close, though, and there was a steady warmth trailing down my left hand. I stretched my fingers, just an inch. They brushed against your lips. I might have been gently hushing you back to sleep, when all I wanted was for you to speak.
I felt you slide away, shrinking into the blackness in front of me. "Can I tell you something?"
My fingers curled round an empty space, the same way I had often reached out for you today and just met a ghost instead. "You can talk to me about anything, Isa."
"There was a boy in class," you murmured nervously. "You said I liked him."
I shivered a little at the recollection. I knew more about Myde than you would ever have assumed. My jealousy had been sated by studying the boy of your affections, observing his habits and quirks, trying to copy them as though that would make me the better person. "The musician?"
You started to fiddle with the hem of a blanket. It tapped out a tense pattern against my forearm. "I trained myself to look at him, so you wouldn't notice," you said finally.
My stomach began to channel Bunnymoon's earlier outburst, racing and turning and sending me down a spiral of sickening light headedness. "N-notice what?"
"That it was you the whole time. It's…it's always been you."
In that moment, everything you were made perfect sense. Had I been more patient, more understanding, I would have worked it all out. You shied away from my touch not because you didn't like it, but because it did other uncontrollable things. You didn't want me to rush in and change our relationship because you knew. You knew, that like a card tower in its final steps or a bridge nearly crossed, we had to be slow, patient, careful - because a bold leap would simply unravel and destroy everything we'd worked for.
You had pushed me away because you wanted me.
"So…So I ruined it," I managed.
"You did," you said, and your next words caught in your throat. "But Lea, I think you're the only one who can fix it too."
I didn't know how. My illusionist's box of tricks had landed empty in the wake of your confession. I used to be able to do it, once. Right from the moment I met you, I could take lists of your problems, fold them into birds and send them away. I could shape your world into something beautiful, something you deserved, something that reflected everything you were to me and yet, in the most crucial of moments, I couldn't remember how to do it. "I can't," I admitted. "I don't even know where to start. I've made a mess of everything."
You shifted. "Kiss me?" you whispered, a tentative suggestion that rang round the tent.
I wasn't sure if I should, regardless of how much the idea thrilled me. It seemed an odd thing for you to request so soon after your ordeal. You were confused and grappling for some form of reassurance. "…I can't see you," I reasoned lamely.
"Th-then reach out for me."
I cleared my throat, collected myself, tried to understand why after all I had done, you could still want me. And to quell that concern, I tried to also accept it didn't matter. You needed help; apparently only I could give that.
I sat up on one elbow and pushed myself along the tent to your side. Your fingers found the nape of my neck; I found the sharp beginning of your sternum. I was a little nervous. This wasn't the impulsive, destructive kiss like before; this was supposed to heal you - so I started at your heart, where it was damaged the most.
"Are you sure you want me to?"
I felt you nod against my forearm.
I tugged down the collar of your vest and pushed my lips to the thin crests of your ribs. You lay still, fingers idly burying themselves in my hair, but your heart was hammering against my hand and your chest rose and fell in panicked, anxious breaths. I couldn't help but think you were absolutely terrified, as though you were expecting me to stab you at any point.
Still, I continued, and I traced your collarbone with my mouth, then your long neck, the sharp but elegant curve of your jaw, the slight dimple in your left cheek, and then my lips brushed against yours. I wanted to trace more of you, to continue drawing a picture of you in the dark through touch alone, but you sat up on your elbows into a quick, hesitant kiss. You whispered an apology as though you had just done something out of line. "I'm not good," you admitted.
"That's all right, I can show you," I murmured back. I encouraged you to sit up with me, so that our legs jutted out and our bodies twisted in, like the entwined fish of Pisces I had once seen illustrated in your magazines. I kissed you some more, just small and light ones that, once you were comfortable, deepened into the kinds of ones I only feverishly dreamt about.
"Can teach you a bit of astrology too, if you like," I muttered between breaths and kisses. "For example, did you know that Taurus and Virgo are very compatible signs?"
"Yes," you said breathlessly. Your arms looped round my shoulders and, temporarily distracted by the smell of orange blossom, I wound up ducking my head in the crook of your neck and trying the more adventurous kisses.
"Lea?" you murmured, your chin resting on my shoulder to glance out the small window of the tent. Your arms were shaking, channelling that fear I had picked up on earlier, convinced my arms would crush you.
"Mm?"
Your eyelashes fluttered against my jaw and your voice hitched in your throat. "I still can't sleep."
I couldn't imagine what waited for you behind closed lids, if my own nightmares were this unsettling. I lay you back down, your head in the bend of my arm. "Try to sleep," I murmured. "I'll stay awake until you do." I wetted my lips and tucked you under my chin, sorting through my mind for things that'd filter the nightmares away, if only for tonight.
"If a javelin breaks while being thrown or in the air, the throw still counts. A javelin's light, so people often make the mistake of thinking a simple throw will do it." Your left hand grazed my ribs and then rested comfortably there; I carried on, emptying out the useless facts of a child's dream in time with your slowing breaths. "You use your whole body to throw. Strength doesn't come from the arm, it's right from the balls of your feet, your legs, your back. It's a deceiving sport."
I wrapped an arm round you and held you tight. "Sometimes, it's the lightest things that are the hardest to carry."
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AXEL, THE FLURRY OF DANCING FLAMES
- forty-four days after birth -
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After the latest appearance of berserk, you sit at the empty arch of a window frame, shivering in the wind, legs over the edge and hands collecting glass. You're the calm eye of the storm, sat in the middle of the destruction with nothing more than a curious tilt of the head for a response.
I sit behind you, still within the frame of that broken window. It's black and starless outside and yet it captivates you for hours. I sweep your hair aside and kiss the back of your neck, then across to an ear. Tomorrow, that blank face of yours is going to revisit the past, all for the sake of calling up that unnatural, terrifying state.
Berserk.
I fucking hate that word. It's ugly and violent and strange; it's nothing like Isa.
They're trying to break you, but if it's really Radiant Garden we're going to, I will break first.
-x-
The night before is a complex spiral that twists two directions. I'm agitated and restless, clawing and biting; you're too calm and relaxed, preferring to trace letters on my back and whisper the words you spell. The prospect of returning to Radiant Garden hovers over me like a parasitic demon and yet, it's a lullaby to you.
I'm fucking agitated. Scared and angry and horrified, and the only thing I can think of that will absolve this primal fear of the past is to take you over and over, until I've reached the same calm shores as you.
It's harder work, sleeping with you. Our bodies have changed as much as our lives have. I need to relearn and redraw the map of this body beneath me; I have to erase the mental marks of bruises and broken bones I once took extra care to memorise. And every time I do this, this necessary rearrangement of everything that made Isa beautiful, it rains somewhere between my ribs.
You wriggle in the sheets like a fish trapped in a net. For every kiss I give you, you try to return it but I shrink back in time. I'm afraid that any light touch from your lips is all it takes to unravel my secrets.
"You don't like it, do you," you murmur of your hair, when I sweep that fucking curtain aside to reach your neck. I silence you by thrusting hard, setting a frantic pace that hitches your breath and makes you squeeze your thighs against my sides. Your hands scrabble for the back of my neck, but I limit those too, taking each wrist and placing it either side of your head. Your arms bend in graceful angles, like the snapped wings of a bird.
"Keep them there," I instruct. You nod, and since we now only connect at the hips, you endeavour to make each thrust count, meeting me each time.
"Lea," you pant, fingers curling and uncurling in frustration at the invisible ties at your wrists. I ignore you, still reaching for the bone-white, fractured and frightened love of my life, still searching for a stronger taste of the past.
"Lea," you say again, touching one of my tattoos and drawing a line to my lips. I want to seize that offending hand and smack it against the headboard, colouring it red, but I shudder involuntarily at the sensation of forgiveness. "So frustrated," you manage after a wince, "aren't you? So angry." There's a smile from behind your other hand, which rests across your mouth palm up. It's a light smile, a virgin of criminal beauty with all the aces in his hand.
"It's all right, you know," you say, punctured by small gasps. "You're allowed to be frightened as well."
And though I power into you with such force you choke out a rattled scream and writhe in the relentless pain, you still say those words I dread but so need to hear.
It's okay to be weak, too.
-x-
All Zexion needs to complete his look is the skeletal hands of Death coming to collect his fees. He stands at the smoky gateway to Radiant Garden, slightly hunched, tucked into his hooded coat and smiling from under its shadow. He reminds me of an old picture book Yuffie used to be scared of but wanted to read, filled with double-spread illustrations of eerie swamps, gnarled moving trees, three-legged cats and cackling demons that haunted every page.
"Don't look so frightened, Axel; this is not a compulsory task for you," he greets languidly, and he holds up small hand to extinguish my fiery response. "I know, I know, wherever Saix goes, you go."
"Can you blame Eight for his worry, though?" Xigbar slings an arm over my shoulder and shakes his head at Zexion. "I mean, you're taking the precious and fragile Saix to be emotionally battered, which is no easy experience for anyone, let alone a Nobody as young as him."
"Please, you phrase it as though I am the one traumatising him," Zexion replies, delivering a swift smile that disconcerts more than comforts. "Radiant Garden and Saix himself will be the determiners of that, not me. I'm merely doing what I'm told and attempting to understand berserk."
"And what happens if you turn out to be right and berserk does surface, huh?" I demand, shaking Xigbar off and having half a mind to bury a chakram in him too. "Are you going to resort to this emotional torture each time you want berserk to surface? Because I'm not going to stand for it-"
"Berserk is not mine to utilise," Zexion answers with a shrug. "That remains a privilege to the Superior."
"Oh really." Even I can tell how riled and stupidly petulant I sound, but I can't stop it. "I would have thought Saix had rights to it."
The door to the room swings open and I catch your lazy glance. Xaldin is close behind you, looking annoyed about something.
"So early and you're already angry," you remark. You tuck your hair into your hood and manage a passing look at Zexion and Xigbar. "I'm ready."
"Very good," says Zexion. "Now that we're all here, I will explain our task. Ideally, we would like berserk to surface on the trigger of the distressing past and repressed memories. Saix has a twenty-four hour window. If berserk does surface, Xaldin will be responsible for bringing it under control and preventing any casualties. Axel, your duty will be to eliminate any Heartless that threaten to interfere. The Garden is quite densely populated with the creatures so if need be, I will assist you."
"Have fun, kids!" Xigbar sneers.
Zexion slinks into the dark corridor and Xaldin follows. You slip your hand into mine - because some days in the folds of the past, that was all it took to feel safe again - and then we walk through the corridor.
-x-
Here is the story:
There is a dying world and at the centre of it, three frightened boys.
Here is the confession:
I don't regret what I did.
-x-
My first thought is, It's cold. It's supposed to be, I'm home, and yet there hasn't been a pair of words so difficult to phrase in my mind, let alone believe.
It's a hazy and dark morning. The sun is so caught in the mist, it could nearly pass as the moon. I take my first step, a gravekeeper too used to the tainted earth beneath his feet, and then I look up at the skeleton of the Castle. My boots sink into the ground - there's sand, lots of it - and I can smell salt in the air, as though there are crying ghosts and spirits I can't bring myself to see.
"You must have escaped from this very beach," says Xaldin.
"Yeah." I leave stark boot prints behind me as I let go of your hand. I try to make it look like I'm wandering aimlessly instead of taking the scenic route to a preordained destination.
(Thing is, I've done a whole lot more than escape from this beach.)
The ocean's calm, as bleak and empty as the kingdom that sits in the middle of it. I keep walking, back up the beach where the sand hardens into concrete tiles. Up the grainy steps, the same steps I had carried you down. A short walk along the balcony-like promenade and then I reach the gaping doorway of the beach hut.
The cash register's open but it's on the floor, nestled amongst planks of wood torn from the ceiling. Sun loungers are still stacked in that corner. The sponge cushions have been eaten through. There are still posters on the panelled walls about precautions in water. I cross the room and look out the window, studying that drop from this shop to the concrete start of the beach below.
Fuck, that's a big fall.
"Something here?"
You stand in the doorway, but I can barely look at your shadow. "No, it's empty." I leave the hut, taking you with me.
Of course it's empty.
-x-
An hour passes and there's no sign of berserk.
Twenty-three hours left in this handcrafted hell.
I'm on the verge of asking Xaldin if he'd like to start a suicide pact.
-x-
You trail behind me as though you don't know your way round the Garden. So far, Zexion's clipboard is blank and Xaldin tries to pass the time by cracking his fingers and knuckles.
We walk through Castle Town, where there are no rattling shop bells, no ice cream stands, no voices or footsteps or the smell of fresh pastries and bread; the sun is weak, the trees are dead, the fountains can't sing, there are no reflections in the windows. There's no sound of life at all.
"Perhaps we're not revisiting the places that matter," Zexion says a way into the cutting silence.
"I'm not taking him anywhere that will traumatise him," I return flatly.
"I don't think the Garden's doing it," you admit. You sit down on the worn edge of a stone wall, blowing upwards and disturbing your hair. "I don't connect with the place. My memories are incomplete."
"That has nothing to do with your subconscious," Zexion argues. "A person can react to a trigger word or picture without having any knowledge of why. It's something you shouldn't be able to control and as such, you're executing it now. This is your subconscious reaction."
"And it's not exactly berserk, is it," remarks Xaldin. "I reckon you've made a cock up somewhere in your research, Zexion."
"I can't make two mistakes in a row, it's not possible." Zexion whacks his clipboard against his hand a few times, starting to behave his age. "If berserk isn't a defence mechanism, what on earth is it?"
-x-
You weren't joking when you said you don't feel connected to Radiant Garden. You can walk the kingdom-turned-graveyard with little more than a curious expression, while I struggle down the narrow streets and subconsciously spot the missing lampposts, shop signs and flowerboxes.
Zexion doesn't know why your subconscious isn't disturbed. Xaldin doesn't understand either, and neither do you.
I'm certain it occurs to all three of you to ask me - because as your keeper, I stand in front of all your secrets - but for the most part, I'm just ignored. The only times I'm remembered is when a Heartless strikes and I disrupt the silence with the rumble of a chakram.
"Twenty hours," says Zexion, when Xaldin asks how long we have left. It's difficult to decide who is more frustrated.
"Twenty hours!" Xaldin repeats, and he throws a furious glance at anyone who will receive it.
"Don't look at me, I didn't decide it, the Superior did." Zexion shakes his clipboard, apparently convinced he can reshuffle the words and make it say we can all go home now.
"I'm sorry." You sit on the bend of a kerb and bury one hand in your hair. "I would make these hours more interesting if I could."
"Can't you just tell us where we're going wrong?" Xaldin fires at me. I open my mouth to shoot back an impatient answer of my own, but Zexion gets there first.
"No, we can't allow that. Having Axel blurt out their past would be akin to swinging Lexaeus' tomahawk against Saix's delicate memory, which is hardly a recommended move if we have any value for it. Perhaps more to the point, Axel has little inclination to assist."
"I'm glad that's been established," I return easily.
"I'm not delicate, by the way," you say from behind me. You seem happy to let the matter go once Zexion backtracks idly and concedes with brittle instead.
I, on the other hand, struggle a bit more. I remain tight-lipped and search for a sanctuary teasing Heartless. There's something just millimetres from escaping my lips, an admittance more than a concern: that you really aren't delicate - and Isa always was. Emotionally, physically, every single mannerism. You used to sit in front of CLAYmore - hours on end - and all we could comment on was not your work but the way you sat, like paper, teetering on the edge of a cliff.
-x-
Pretty thing you have there.
-x-
We chip into the sixth hour, and I finally muster enough courage to venture beyond Castle Town. As it stands, I will need twenty-four years, not hours, to develop the strength and arrogance required to revisit my own home; I settle for yours instead.
The house is just a shell now, a blackened arc with razor edges that used to be walls. There's a staircase, but it doesn't lead to anything; a grey-tiled roof, but it's in pieces on the floor. Most objects have either disappeared or rotted away, and a mixture of old and new wood crackles beneath my feet as I walk through the doorway.
I wonder if it's still here. I mean, of all items to disappear in the walls of time, will that have been one of them, finally leeched dry of its resilience and sturdiness? I'm afraid to disturb the rubble and so I toe it instead, creating pasts for the ashes, stories of what they once were.
Upstairs is downstairs. I look at the murky sky where your room should have been and then follow the remaining wall. Cables, torn and disconnected; books, pageless and stripped of their ending; the rotting skeleton of a three-legged bed; a windowsill with no window; a house without a heart. I comb through the dirt - still with just a foot - and then I recall it had been made from metal. My mum had bought me a thermos because it was cheaper than the sportsman's flask I wanted.
Since the pipes have outlived the storage boxes and children's plates, it has to have lasted in the same way.
Radiant Garden wouldn't screw me over so badly that it'd destroy the one good thing I gave you.
It's got to be here.