Bone of Contention: Chapter 13
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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ISA, THE BOY WHO'D SHATTER
- five years before death -
The day I graduated, I was assaulted by six students - four boys, two girls. They followed me when I had gone back to school for my star charts and certificate. At first, they wanted money; when it became clear I couldn't offer that to them, the ringleader decided to take my trousers instead.
I was horrified to see my legs on show. I was pale, bony, bruised. I had always made an effort to hide in high collar jumpers and trailing trouser hems, and now there was nothing to protect me from their eyes. A few moments later, they pulled my underwear; then, it was nothing about money, and all about sex. My orientation - a guarded secret until I told the wrong person - was a source of ridicule and derision. One girl was forced to reach between my legs and assault me; as she did, there was warm breath ghosting my left ear, strong hands pressing against my ribs. I shouted for it to stop, before it became too much, before I reacted.
No one listened to me, not even my own body.
When it was over for them, it started for me. I crawled into the classroom for the star charts, shut the door and sank against it. I was hard, hot and bothered, and no matter what I thought or what I felt, it wouldn't go away. I got rid of it in the only way I knew how.
This was the unabridged version of what happened to me that day - the one you never heard.
-x-
I didn't tell you, but your sister visited me a few days after it happened. She gave me a few days to accept the fact I was now a victim of sexual abuse, and then she turned up on my doorstep with a colossal revelation: that I was not the only one.
Lara was a lot like you. She was loud, confident and pretty. Everyone didn't just know her; they went out of their way to know her. She was the kind of girl who was the apex of an arrowhead, the one who led while others followed. She could balance her studies and social life to reach an impossible equilibrium with iron weights on one side and feathers on the other.
Despite all this, Lara had been seeing a counsellor for the last two years. You, your sisters and parents all thought she spent her Thursday evenings at an extra art class when really, she was treating the latest wounds her boyfriend had left her with. It was horrific, sitting in my bedroom and listening to her tell me about this. What I had suffered once, she had experienced too many times to count, and by someone she loved at that. She was so familiar with it all, that she only needed one look at my behaviour to see herself reflected back. I, on the other hand, had no idea about her true lifestyle at all.
According to Lara, Liam had had a troubled childhood, and his issues manifested in recognition of this. She was citing reasons, but to me they just sounded like excuses. Lara had visited with the intention of convincing me to seek counselling too. However, every time she asked, I returned the favour and begged her to leave Liam. I judged her, thought her stupid and foolish, until she smiled from beneath the bell of her polka dot umbrella, heading back out into the summer rain. Her eyes glazed over, as though any dissuasion automatically made her shut down. "I can't," she said. "You understand, don't you? When someone's got more flaws and errors to them than you can count, and all it does is make you love them more?"
-x-
I avoided venturing out on my own if I could. I lived in fear of it happening all over again. I faced simple, everyday tasks - like buying milk or posting a letter - and each time, I regarded them the way a plank of rotting driftwood might regard his impossible task of surfing across the sea.
I was overwhelmed. A two minute incident had submerged my world and now every one of my waking hours was a fight to stay afloat. I was kicking and writhing to keep the air reaching my lungs, and for every second that passed, the black ink below began to seem a shade kinder.
You started work as an office junior, and though you deeply resented because it cut into the time you could have spent with me, this was the push out of the water I needed. In order to climb out of the darkness, I was convinced all I needed was a purpose too.
One afternoon, I walked across town and sat on a bench in the Castle Gardens' plaza. I had taken a conservative route, away from teenagers' local haunts and well within sight of adults doing their grocery shopping. There were a few people at the plaza, but they certainly didn't linger the way I did. I wasted an hour, cross-legged on that bench, staring across the stretch of concrete at the orange flier in Highwind Connections' window.
Highwind Connections was a large shop that backed onto a private field near the Castle. I had been drawn to it, and the day before, I had studied the job advertisement they had pinned up. Its window display left a lot to be desired, with only two of six spotlights working and the shelves caked in dust. The sole item on display was an intricate blueprint. It showed an air shuttle, blown apart to illustrate how it fitted together. I had stood there for a few minutes, admiring the thin lines, neat labels, the clear dedication and respect the creator had for his subject. I had been reminded of my star charts and was enthralled by an invention that actually traversed the sky.
I took a deep breath, crossed the road and went inside. Any attempt I had made to be as subtle and unnoticed as possible was quickly destroyed when the top of the door hit a bell. The shop was more of a hangar, its walls lined with thin ribs of metal that arched over my head. I was excited to see more framed blueprints, but my heart leapt when I saw the very back of the shop. It had a sliding metal door, which had been cranked to the left to welcome the outdoors. There were three or four planes lined up on the green, their side engines casually tossing loose grass into the air.
I edged across the hangar, wondering if I could just sit in the single chair and watch the planes, when a tall figure stomped in from outside with a long stream of curses under his breath.
"Afternoon," he said, his voice harsh. "We're closed."
"I uh…" I trailed off, licked my lips and tried again. "Your sign said you were open…"
The man blinked, one hand roughly mussing up his short blond hair. "Well, I can see it from here. Says closed."
"S-so from outside, it has to read o-"
"Where do you live?" he interrupted. He lifted a toolbox from behind his desk and emptied it on the surface. Anything he didn't want made a swift exit by clattering onto the floor.
"I'm sorry?"
"I was asking where you live," he said.
"S-South Garden."
He stared at me, as though I had said I'd fallen off a comet and happened to land in his shop. "Really," he said. "You've just come here from South Garden?"
"…Well, I waited outside for an hour," I admitted. "I was nervous. Your advert for a tech assistant…I was hoping I could apply for it."
He glanced up from his tools. "Hold that thought, kid." He yelled over his shoulder, "Vin!"
He batted me away and slumped in the wheelie chair, his attention equally distributed between his toolbox and a computer monitor. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, doubly awkward in the empty space with nothing to hide behind.
"…If it's better, I can come back at a convenient time," I suggested in a mutter. "T-tomorrow, maybe?"
The blond snapped his head up. Again, he was wearing that look of disbelief. "Are you serious? There ain't no tomorrow at this rate; where have you been? Vincent!" he finished in a bellow, before uttering, "Fuck's sake."
I wasn't quite prepared for Vincent. My courage to keep making headway with my life had been bulldozed by the blond man; I was expecting similar treatment from his colleague. However, when Vincent sidled into the hangar with tangled wires over his shoulder, I took a shuddering breath in discomfort.
He was nothing like you and me, nothing like the scrawny bodies of children we had. He was tall, thin and matured enough to perhaps be someone's father; he had the uncanny ability to look perfect even in a dirty boiler suit with a collection of oil stains down the front. He wiped his cheek with the back of a hand, pushed back his short, black hair, and then threw the wires into a corner. "What is it, Cid?" he said to the blond. "FG is back and said Merlin should be sending you tether coordinates; did you get them? I've just finalised GS 16."
"A problem," Cid said. He nodded to me. "South Garden for you. I don't think he knows what's going on."
Vincent turned round. His eyes were the same colour as the deep red wine my mother used to drink in summer. "Vincent Valentine," he introduced himself. He went to shake my hand, and I noticed his lean forearms and long fingers. "What shall I call you?"
"It's Isa," I stuttered. "I was hoping to a-"
"Isa, were you told about the Castle?" Vincent cut in. "Or have you noticed its state over the last few days?"
"…I don't really go out."
Cid raised his eyebrows a little, but he made no comment. He swung the monitor arm so that Vincent could see it. "Still nothing from Merlin," he said. "Everything we're doing is gonna be useless if he can't send us a tether."
"It just means we leave without a destination and meet Merlin halfway." Vincent walked over to press a few keys, gesturing for me to follow; a model of Radiant Garden came up on the screen.
As Vincent typed, the monitor responded and rearranged its display of the Garden, blowing it apart much like the plane blueprints along the wall. I wasn't sure how I was feeling at that moment, stood in confusion with two strangers talking about something I didn't understand. It was only when Vincent took my shoulder in a gentle move that I realised I had followed all along. Even if I couldn't understand their conversation, I could read their faces.
"Isa, what I'm about to say may frighten you a little, but I want you to stay calm, all right?" Vincent's index finger took me round the virtual image of home. I hadn't realised how beautiful it was, when seen whole like this. "The Garden had a power outage and has been on a green light for a few days, before switching to black for the last twelve hours. One hour ago, Castle officials prompted a resident evacuation, starting with the south. You see how the Garden is a conical shape? It's started tipping backwards. The south side is crumbling as it lifts up; the north side is starting to submerge. We've been anticipating something like this to happen ever since those monsters started showing up at the Castle and King Ansem disappeared."
"Something tells me you were too busy practising job interview answers to pay attention to this," said Cid. "South Garden's collapsed."
I fidgeted with one of my bag straps; I had brought samples of my schoolwork to help me convince them to hire me. I had come here for a job; I hadn't asked for anything like this. I waited with struggled breaths, hoping either Cid or Vincent would suddenly announce this was just a silly joke, that I had passed and was now part of their team.
"The beach is on the west side of the Garden." Vincent pointed to it on the monitor. "It's very likely your family have been directed there along with the others in South Garden. While the beach is currently stable - much like we are, outside the Castle - the whole of the Garden is going to swing back in a fuller force, like a rocking boat. The resulting tremors will destroy any chance of the ships taking off, so we only have a small timeframe in which to escape."
"Escape?" I stammered. Vincent's hand was tight on my shoulder; if I didn't know any better, it was at my neck, choking me.
"Radiant Garden isn't going to survive," Vincent said gently.
I couldn't feel my body. Some way through Vincent's quiet explanation and Cid's gruff reminders of how time was against us, I had sunk against the desk, back turned to the monitor. For eighteen years, the ground beneath my feet and the sky above my head - I had taken them for granted. They had been a constant. No matter how good or bad my days were, at least I could be certain the world would still be here when I woke up the next morning.
I imagined it crumbling, falling to the earth like a wounded deer, and my mouth ran dry. I began to shout. They were panicked phrases, shuddering words garbled by my chokes and gasps. I had no idea what I was saying and yet, Vincent understood.
"Isa," he said, bringing me back to his eyes. He had one hand on my arm, steadying me. "It's all right; we'll find him, okay? Is Lea your brother? Is he in South Garden?"
"No, he's-he's everything, he's my best friend. We've only just made up, I've only just got him back-!"
"We'll find him." Vincent silenced me with a firm grip on my shoulder. I struggled against his grip, scrabbling for the door. "I won't let you go by yourself. We'll find him together, okay? We'll find Lea. Where is he?"
"He w-works at the Upper Gardens…"
"The Upper Gardens are stable enough, but the monsters originate from there. Watch it." Cid pulled open the desk drawer and from it, he withdrew a battered revolver. I blanched at the sight of it. "They're blanks."
"They'll do." Vincent unzipped his overalls and emerged from it in a smart suit. He transformed before my eyes, abandoning the casual attire for the fearless figure of an adult. Cid spun and then handed over the revolver; Vincent slotted it in his holster before shrugging into his blazer, as though the world ending was something all adults dealt with every day.
"Wait for Merlin to send the tether coordinates; FG will take time moving the ships anyway. I'll see you at the beach. Don't do anything stupid."
"Same to you." Cid nodded. Vincent let go of my shoulder and then, to my surprise, he kissed the corner of Cid's mouth. "Right, Isa; let's go."
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SAÏX, THE LUNA DIVINER
- forty-four days after birth -
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I keep track of your supposedly absent walk through Radiant Garden without you realising what I'm doing. You're as elusive as my home is, and since you rarely have straight answers for me any more, this is how I rewrite you into my memories. Eighteen hours into our mission, my observations come to this:
You go to the beach six times. For each occasion, you walk a different route; six sets of boot prints, short-lived in the sand, immortalised in my head.
The winding paths behind our school, which you had once taken me by the hand to see an eclipse - you go there twice.
The crumbled cobbles of the promenade, where there used to be an ice cream stand, where a bicycle had swerved to avoid you and hit me instead - three times.
The beach hut, its accompanying concrete steps and the mound of destroyed sun loungers - four times.
South Garden, where my house used to be - just once.
-x-
No one relies on an amnesiac for an interpretation of the past. An amnesiac has a carefully constructed history of lies, lies which are crowned as truth over the alternative option of having nothing at all.
No one relies on a compulsive liar, either. He forcibly twists what's real and what's happened and blinds himself with bright delusions and vivid stories, because if he can't lose his memory, you can be certain he'll bury it instead.
I don't know anything about Radiant Garden; you know too much of it. That's why when I set foot in my own home, you're already there.
There are shattered pieces of what used to matter to me and at the heart of the debris, you. You're dying ember, curled and safe in the eye of the self-inflicted storm.
There's a flask by your left foot, and we're back to where we started; you, me, the paper wishes, the stronghold.
There's brick dust on your trembling shoulders. Your back is hunched, your head in a cruel vice by your hands and knees. There are sounds coming from you that I've never heard before; rattled sobs, peppered with hitched gasps of the same phrase.
I fucked up.
I sit down, amongst broken plates and charred shelves and disembowelled drawers. My fingers to your hair, my lips to the lobe of your ear. "No, you didn't."
Your face crinkles and darkens, like paper on hot coals. You look tired, fed up with yourself, fed up with the bullshit I come out with to keep us tied together.
I fucked up. You curl up and weep, and suddenly, disagreeing seems to be the worst thing I could do for you right now. I completely fucked up.
Lea doesn't cry.
But maybe, because he knows how the story ends, Axel does.
-x-
My past is a spiteful ghost. It surfaces when I don't want it, but disintegrates when I chase after it. Like ice, I can feel its solidarity in the back of my mind, but all it takes is a curious hand, a desperate touch, and it melts away.
The less I think, the more I do. At least, that seems to be the pattern so far. The Superior knew this from the day I was born, and sought to understand me by means of a diary to record my stream of consciousness. Pages and pages of a life I don't remember liking or living, scrambled into someone else's sense; letters and words and phrases, that ring a lonely kind of hollow when I try them out.
The less I think, the more I do. The fewer times I keep going back for Isa, the further I can walk.
At twenty hours, a tall, smouldering portal appears by my side. I wait for someone to emerge, but as the seconds pass and I witness my own hand clouded in purple, I realise I have created it, solving my exhaustion with Radiant Garden for myself.
I'm supposed to call it Hollow Bastion. Zexion insists we call it that, most likely to curb our familiarity with it and to grant the Organisation another controlling weight. After all, if they make our past as irrelevant as the stones we crush under our boots, we have no better place to leave them for.
You're fighting Heartless; Zexion and Xaldin are at the Castle gates with you. They wear strange expressions - much like what you wore when you first arrived - as though they are piecing the kingdom together with old eyes, seeing bricks and mortar instead of dirt and sand. It's not just us, I soon realise, who are home.
I step backwards; no one sees me disappear. One, two, and then the portal seals shut and the corridor twists around me. It disintegrates into night, that spreads to all corners of my vision. The sky is different, haggard and empty; turrets and dormer windows glow as though they can fill the bleak space. I lift up my hood to beat the light rain and test the smooth cobbles under my boots.
Window draperies breathe in the shallow breeze and streetlamps cup a fragment of ancient sun to gleam orange; this place isn't familiar either, but I seem to walk as if it is. The buildings are orderly, with evenly spaced windows and unspoiled house paint. Traverse Town was built from scratch, after all; it hasn't been around long enough to obtain the marks of grand age and maturity. It doesn't have history.
A bit like me, I guess.
-x-
This is much is certain, when it comes to Isa:
Traverse Town took good care of him; Radiant Garden didn't.
I'm not certain which half you're in.
-x-
The clock hands go round, passing time as easily as pouring water from glass. The face reads twenty-five to one, when the darkness ripples in the corner of my eye, and a portal shuts as quickly as it opened.
Slowly, the Superior goes to stand next to me, back to the wall, arms folded. "Lexaeus alerted me to your presence in Traverse Town," he says, voice low as though I might run from it. "I believe you are still on mission time."
"I gave up." I push my weight to sit on the wall. The terrace backs onto the large white building at the head of the Second District; I can't remember why, but I used to go here often. Something about codes.
With my head a few inches above his, I successfully escape his gaze. "I'm sorry," I say after a moment. "That I can't get berserk to materialise, I mean. Xaldin and Zexion have tried; Lea won't cooperate."
The Superior makes a small sound of acknowledgement in the back of his throat. He seems comfortable in the rain, idly examining the tiny spatters on his coat arms. "Zexion proves to be disappointing," he answers. "I had rather hoped his overconfidence had ebbed, but it appears to hinder him as usual."
"…I don't understand."
"You were not the only one being tested," the Superior replies simply. He turns round to lean on the wall. There are only a handful of people at the square below. "How did you create the dark corridor, Saix?"
"Without thinking."
The corner of his mouth twitches, as if he knew this would be my answer. "Zexion took twenty days to master travel through dark corridors," he remarks. "He still accomplished it in half as much time as you have, but opening a corridor is a Nobody's hardest task. It is quite curious that you can do this and yet, you have no element and your power is tantalisingly sporadic."
"What can I say, I'm complex."
"Perhaps. Or we are just overanalysing you," the Superior concedes.
"You could just turn me into a Dusk," I return flatly. "It'd save us all a lot of trouble."
The Superior offers a faint laugh, a sharp exhale of his nose. "I shouldn't want to give Axel a legitimate reason to hold me in more contempt. You recall I said it was not only you the mission to Hollow Bastion was assessing?"
"Zexion?" I guess.
"Yes. If he cannot finish his task of understanding berserk, I will complete it personally."
I look down to meet his gaze, but at this angle, I can only see his eyelashes. His left hand drums an idle, irregular beat on the wall. "You can do that?" I ask, not bothering to mask my doubt.
"It's not difficult." The Superior gives a tiny shrug. I wonder why everyone I come across seems to enjoy pushing me down, keeping me unknowing and uninformed. "You explained it in that diary of yours."
"I did?" I drop my guard without thinking.
"A Nobody's strength is reflective of his element; his element is reflective of his core qualities. If we reverse this, then understanding Isa gives your element and consequently, explains berserk."
I scoff - a habit I learned from you. "Good luck trying to understand. From what I remember, Isa was pretty screwed up."
"And yet, something has stuck, right from the moment you were born: your sense of loyalty."
I frown. I try to connect the dots in my head, try to jump from Isa to loyalty to the destructive persona of berserk, but it makes no sense at all. The Superior gives me no time to deconstruct the information he has offered; in a swift move, he pulls me off the wall, destroying the high gaze that kept me confident.
"I want you to direct that loyalty to me," he murmurs.
"Why?" I challenge. "You've offered nothing in return. You haven't even told me your name. I don't believe a single word that comes out of your mouth."
"I realise you maintain Isa's defensiveness out of habit," he replies politely. "However, forgive me if I don't seem offended. As I recall, you only seem to believe in chronic liars."
"Then go beyond him, if you are that desperate for my loyalty," I return. "So far, besides the compulsory recruitment into the Organisation, all you've given me is a scar on my face." I whip my arm out of his grip and put some space between us.
I glower at him. I start to feel what you do when I look at him, an inexplicable surge of anger and resentment at how he has whittled me down to be as inconsequential as a drop of rain.
"All right," he says eventually. "It's Xemnas."