(Heart) & (Soul), 1
Working Title: (Heart) & (Soul), Chapter 1: Boy Without a Heart
Fandom: Crossover: Harry Potter/Kingdom Hearts
Word Count: 4,604
Summary: Roxas wakes up in a world full of wizards.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Minor profanity and nudity, Completely AU on the KH side
Author’s notes: I promised fic, and here there be fic. This is one of two crossovers I’m currently writing for which I cannot possibly envision an audience. (Except for two wonderful girls who have already been acounted for.) Expect the not really long-awaited second installment of this within two weeks. Apologies for rough quality; not quite beta-ed. (This will be fixed soon.)
I. Boy Without a Heart
Great Britain
Medical intern Melissa Redd had seen plenty of hearts over the course of her life. From the time when she was fourteen and watched the movie on the Circulatory System in ninth-grade Biology, to her grandfather’s open-heart surgery in her late teens, to the display of a still-beating organ on a sterile white table in a particularly memorable day of one of her college classes. None of it prepared her for the sight of Roxas’s sternotomy.
The boy was lying on the table. His hair was a golden blonde, and lay in mostly-fallen spikes. His eyes were closed, and his chest was open. He had been wearing, when the hospital first took him in, a long black cloak that fell to his knees. They unbuttoned it in preparation for the surgery, and threw it over a chair. Beneath it, he was wearing a checkered sky-blue-and-black top and a pair of khakis. They stripped off the shirt, and underneath his flesh was a creamy color, with little adornment. The doctor hurriedly placed his stethoscope on his chest, but heard nothing. This alarmed him, so he first touched the pulse on the boy’s wrist and neck, before he finally laid his head down on his chest,.Even then, the familiar ‘lub-dub’ rhythm was completely absent. But the boy’s skin was still warm skin, so he was clearly alive.
When various efforts to jumpstart the heart failed to produce a pulse, Dr. Schmidt realized the only alternative was to cut the boy’s chest apart, as they would for open-heart surgery. “I know it sounds mad,” Dr. Schmidt hurriedly explained to the surgeon, “but all indications suggest this boy does not have a heart in his body.”
The practicing cardiac surgeonc Dr. Bella Creevey Nifen, looked him up and down, then asked, “And he’s still alive?”
“Yes,” Dr. Schmidt answered. “Yes, as far as we can tell, he’s just resting.” Dr. Nifen’s eyes opened a little wider. “He’s still breathing.”
“I’ll be right there, Dr. Schmidt.”
“Thank you.”
Melissa set up the appropriate dose of morphine for an open heart surgery, to be delivered through the boy’s IV drip., She wondered, while she worked, at how unremarkable the boy looked; she had seen far more sickly patients than this boy without a heart.
Dr. Nifen stared into the cavity. Her hands shook, and she carefully set down her scalpel, on the operating gurney to prevent dropping it. The insides of the boy were all the proper colors; everything looked and felt all right. There were the lungs, still inflating and deflating regularly. The only thing wrong was the odd absence below the ribs, in Dr. Nifen’s usual domain; a small fist-sized lacuna/gap where there was simply…nothing.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she whispered finally,. “This boy is either a medical miracle, not a human, not from Earth, or…” Dr. Nifen trailed off, and took her equipment and stitched together the separated skin of the chest. She did the task mechanically, by rote, as she had done many times at the end of successful operations.
“Maybe we should just leave him now,” she said, when she was done. “Cover him up, give him the IV, and then wait to see if he wakes up. If he does, we’ll know he’s still alive, however odd it seems. If not, we wait, say, 24 hours, then pronounce him dead on arrival.”
Dr. Schmidt nodded. “You wait here observing him while we move on to other patients, all right Melissa?”
Melissa, who had been furiously writing in her medical notebook “24 hrs - pronounce patient DOA,” looked up and grinned. Wait until the other interns hear about this, she was thinking, a boy without a heart - medical mystery - I might end up famous because of this. She had already filled nearly two full pages with observations and ponderings on the boy on the hospital bed,
~
At three o’clock in the morning, nearly five hours after the blonde boy had been brought to the hospital, he abruptly woke up.
Melissa didn’t notice at first, because his eyes opened first, blinking through a layer of gunk, and he didn’t move much else for a minute, just looking around the tiny room. Then he began to shudder - the bed was much colder than where he had come from, clearly. Maybe he was used to a warmer climate, and his body just hadn’t noticed in sleep.
Then his lips cracked open and he begin to mutter, and Melissa did take notice.
“Ah, ah - aaah,” he groaned, head slipping from side to side as if he didn’t have control of the rest of his body (he wasn’t paralyzed, they knew that, but he could still be in shock). “Aaaaaack.”
Melissa stood over him. “Ummm - I’m here,” she said. “You’re in a hospital. A safe place.”
The boy didn’t seem to quite understand her. He moaned again, then at last managed to get out what he wanted to say.
Raising his head a few inches off the hospital pillow, he gasped, “Axel.” Then he puked. (over the side?)
When Melissa had called building services to get the mess cleaned up, the kid had fallen back into a state of unconsciousness.
After speaking his one word, which Melissa still didn’t understand, and unceremoniously throwing up on himself, he was in a pretty bad state. She and a nurse found themselves with the task of cleaning him off. They slid down his khakis and briefs, laying them on the pile with his shirt and the midnight-black robe, and then gave him a scrubbing all over.
In the process, Melissa observed that the boy was, in every external way, complete. He looked just like a teenage boy would - around fifteen or sixteen, maybe a little younger. But he seemed to have all the proper parts and connections
~
Melissa had left for home, and gone to sleep. Another intern was posted to watch the blonde boy with no heart inside, with frequent visits from nurses to ensure he was okay. But he had woken once, so now anything could happen.
And indeed, rather early in the morning the next day - the intern couldn’t quite remember when, so he wrote 6:14, hoping it’d be specific enough to look plausible - the boy on the hospital bed awoke. He didn’t throw up this time, and he spent the first couple of minutes just squirming, as if getting used to his body lying down on a bed with a paper-thin hospital gown draped over him instead of his customary cloak.
“Blimey, you’re okay?” was the intern’s first response. “I mean - how are you?”
“I’ve…been better,” the boy drawled.
“Ummm - I’d say so. You don’t have a heart, you know that?” In retrospect, the intern thought, it was probably a stupid thing to ask that, but the boy didn’t, and if that wasn’t remarkable to him too, that was his issue.
“Yeah,” he replied.
”How’d all that happen?”
The boy misunderstood. “Magic.” After saying this, Roxas swooned and nearly passed out again. When Dr. Schmidt arrived again, he ordered in a standard meal of some dry crackers, meat, and a mashed potato. But the boy didn’t speak again for quite a while.
And Dr. Nifen, out in the hallway, made a phone call. When she first saw the boy’s unusual state, she’d thought of her nephew Colin, who had been going for the past four years to some school with a queer name where they learned about sorcery. And if a boy living without a heart in his chest for at least nine hours wasn’t sorcery, what else could it be?
Within twenty minutes of dialing her brother’s number, Dr. Nifen was out of the hospital and recalling the events of the night shift to two men in official-looking black robes that just cemented the connection in her mind between the boy and the mysterious, magical world of her nephew.
One of the wizards, whose name was Flanders, pointed his wand at first Dr. Schmidt and then the intern and whispered, “Obliviate,” and his companion seized Melissa’s notebook. Then they walked out into the parking lot and simply disappeared, like shadows into the oncoming dawn.
~
Assistant Healer Demi Avalto had seen several hearts in her two years at St. Mungo’s Magical Hospital for Maladies & Injuries. There were a number of magical diseases and conditions that caused that particular organ to be compromised - dragonheart fever, for instance.
But after the attendant senior Healer had used his wand to make the patients’s skin transparent, then sliced him open to be certain, she still couldn’t see a heart in this boy.
Demi couldn’t think of anything to say, so she just gazed on and murmured, “Well, it looks like the Muggle hospital’s report was correct.”
“Yes,” the other Healer said, running his hand idly over his beard. “Indeed it does. If you would go get Healer Selwyn, please; with luck, she’ll know what to do with this boy.”
She nodded, consulted a map on the door, and then hurried out of the room, heading for the third floor.
~
Master Healer Andromeda Selwyn had seen hundreds of hearts in her years. She’d worked at St. Mungo’s, on all five floors, since 1928, and she had no intention of retiring any time soon - especially not when she had just two years before she’d be given the Silver Rod, the hospital’s traditional award for 60 years of exemplary service. She knew the intricacies of a wizard’s (or witch’s) body like some people knew the winding streets of their own neighborhoods. She could, given a patient, put her wand over their heart within an inch or two while blindfolded. But, frankly, this case was pretty baffling.
She looked a little deeper into the boy’s magically-translucent chest, muttering “Cardia illumina!” Ordinarily, a bright golden glow would’ve sprung up in the torso, but it remained looking like ordinary tissue. “This-” she muttered- “this is some strange new sorcery.” She Disapparated, and returned a moment later with a licence. “Permit to Perform Otherwise Wretched Sorcery in Pursuit of Determining Life,” it read. “Not a man alive couldn’t respond to this foul stuff,” she said.
Before Demi knew what was going to happen, Selwyn’s wand was pressed to Roxas’s throat, and she whispered, “Imperio.” The lidded eyes flickered open and his right arm reached up of its own accord, then his left - and he clapped his hands together.
“Then he’s alive?” Demi asked.
Master Healer Selwyn then raised her arm and cried, “Cruc-”
“THEN HE’S ALIVE?” Demi cried.
“Ah, yes - certainly. Got carried away, y’know. Thanks, Miss Avalto. Now I’m certain it’s deep old magic - I know of only one other possible explanation for a man going on living deprived of such a vital organ.”
“What?”
“Shhh,” she hissed. “This is a dark and terrible matter, Miss Avalto.”
Demi raised her eyebrow. “I passed through Slytherin house, Master. Many of my friend’s parents are Death Eaters. You can certainly talk to me about Dark magic.”
A nod. “I suppose so. But not here.” She took her and, and they were gone.
“Where have we Apparated to?”
”My private study. Out words are safer here. Too many of You-Know-Who’s people might be around listening, no?” She shuddered. “Would you like some tea?” Demi nodded. “Black or green?”
Demi shrugged. “Black is fine.”
Master Healer Selwyn shuffled off and returned with a pot and two cups, one of which she offered to Demi, who took it and drank.
Once she had taken a few sips, Healer Selwyn leaned back in her chair. “Now, there are such things as Horcruxes. They are some of the foulest dark instruments possible - imaginable. You have heard that murder severs a person’s soul?”
Demi nodded.
“It is very literally true, my dear. And a Horcrux permits a wizard or witch to safeguard a piece of a fragmented soul in a physical container. It could be as harmless, as inoffensive and subtle as this tea set. Could be a magic sword, or a crown, or a locket, it could be a book, a cup, or anything a wizard is tempted to. And while this Horcrux exists, no mortal can kill the spellbinder fiend that it protects. For while this piece of soul exists outside the body, nothing can kill the wizard or witch to whom it belongs. The body, of course, is deprived of a piece of the soul - so the wicked one leads a cursed life. Just a fragment of soul is nowhere near enough to sustain a full life on. Bloody miserable.”
“Like the effects of unicorn blood?” Demi asked. “Life prolonged indefinitely, bur at the cost of your being able to really live?”
“Precisely, Demi.”
She trembled. “They sound monstrous, Master.”
“Oh, indeed,” Healer Selwyn agreed, taking another sip of black tea. “But if a man had a Horcrux, you could scoop the beating heart right out of his chest and sew him back up even and he’d keep on living, however illogically, because his body would simply refuse to stop living.”
“You - you think this boy, has killed someone and channeled his torn piece of soul into a Horcrux? He looks like he’s fifteen!”
“Well. Yes. But…it’s all I can think of.”
“Are they common, among Dark wizards, I mean?”
“About as common as elder wands. There have only been six known to wizardkind in the last five centuries; the last recorded case was of Sillabub the Sinister, who died in 1786, and even the merest rumor of a Horcrux was almost half a century ago.”
“Oh?” Demi raised an eyebrow.
Healer Selwyn nodded. “One of Grindelwald’s lieutenants, Ivan Demitri Dragovich. A few days after his wand was lost in combat with Aurors, his body was bitten in half by a dragon, a wound that would’ve easily killed a grown wizard. And yet he lived on to flee to Krakow for the last years of the war. That raised quite a bit of speculation amidst the older and subtler circles of wizarding society. But whether it was a Horcrux, an unseen other wizard, or simply superior medical care, no one will ever know.”
She shrugged. “So is there any way to tell whether this boy might’ve made one of these Horcruxes?” Master Healer Selwyn deflated a little. “No.”
“Really? None? Then - then he could have made half a dozen Horcruxes, this kid, and we’d have no clue if one turned up on our doorstep tomorrow?”
The elder witch shook her head. “But perhaps there is some other, stranger and newer magic at work here. We’ll simply let him recover for a while, watching him carefully, and…we’ll see.”
Master Healer Selwyn stood up, and it was clear the conversation had ended. Nevertheless, once they had both Apparated back to St. Mungo’s, Demi took her supervisor by the sleeve and asked, breathlessly, “No way of knowing?”
“None whatsoever.”
~
Two weeks later, the boy had mostly recovered his facilities. He was eating and drinking the things the Healers were giving him, and even if he still found it a little bizarre that these wizards like the texture of pumpkin juice so much and that they make chocolate ice cream instead of sea salt, he didn’t complain. He’d walked to the bathroom by himself for a week and a half, and can bathe himself as well. Demi came to call him Richard, as a nickname, to be slightly more personal and friendly than his patient ID number. She’d always liked the name, and if it was partly because of a Muggle play about an insane king, the other Healers didn’t need to know. This eventually spread to the others as his official nickname, and he became Richard - to them.
It was in this third week of the boy’s time in this world that he began to truly observe and begin to comprehend it. He’d been half-asleep most of the time prior, but now he was beginning to wake. He still didn’t speak or move much if he didn’t have to, because it often hurt, but his eyes and other senses were plenty active.
Organization XIII had taught him well the ways to explore another world. And while those skills were mostly intended for surveying a world for future conquest, they applied well enough to figuring out any general alien environment that he felt they could still be useful. He couldn’t remember the Organization, but he could remember that they’d the skills he’d learned from them.
His day-to-day routine mostly consisted of watching the various Healers passing through. He had been assigned a new room, one on the ground floor - since his true cause for being there hadn’t really been established, they decided to put him in the ward they thought suited him most and could do him the least harm, in the Artifact Damage section. His bed was between that a man who’d been badly burned by an exploding teapot and a plump witch (for the boy was learning that all the people around were witches and wizards, who used magic regularly) who’d been bucked off a broomstick into a field of angry nettle. The latter had been assured that she had only minor injuries, and they were really just keeping her to ensure no nettle poisoning developed.
This world was a quiet one, so far as Roxas had seen. He liked it. It was called something like “Bri’in” and reminded him of somewhere he’d been before - but he couldn’t remember.
“How are you feeling today, Richard?” Demi asked him. She’d already asked twice, at 8:30 and noon and now again in the afternoon, but she was trying to determine for certain if he had a case of amnesia, or was simply very reluctant to divulge any details from his past. “Richard” wasn’t so certain either.
“Numb,” the boy replied, his usual answer. Sometimes he said “hot” or “cold,” or perhaps “okay,” but never much more. Truth be told, he didn’t feel much, at any time. He just watched.
“All right,” Demi said, annoyed by the answer but not expecting much more, “thanks.” She recorded his non-answer on a chart.
“And before you ask, my I/O levels are fine.”
“Really?”
Richard sighed, and recited, in a completely flat tone, “In: one hamburger, fish and chips, a muffin, two glasses of water, and a mug of pumpkin juice. Out: 310 milliliters. That okay?”
Demi grinned and wrote the values all down, then said, “All right, and Healer Selwyn wants a blood sample again, okay?” Richard groaned. “Oh come on, it takes thirty seconds.” Demi actually agreed, that blood-taking was a singularly unpleasant sensation, but Richard actually took it very well. He didn’t seem scared of the sight of his own blood at all, unlike her.
“Fine,” Richard said. Demi whispered a few words, pointing her wand at a small, sterilized needle. It flew up and pricked Richard’s finger. The wound glowed crimson for a moment, and then the vial Demi held began filling. When it reached the appropriate point, she used a spell to seal the wound off, and gave him a dose of Butterfly Weed Balm just to be safe. Then she grinned, thanked the patient, and moved on in her rounds.
Demi was pretty, Roxas thought, but never in an interested way. It was just a fact. Besides, even if he’d found her unusually fascinating, the Assistant Healer had a boyfriend, a slightly-older wizard named Zeke who worked on the Fourth Floor, in Spell Damage (Richard had memorized several facts about St. Mungo’s in his time there). Sometimes Zeke would visit her while she was visiting the patients. He would kiss her on the ear or the forehead and she would scold him about making out on work hours and he would grin, sometimes telling her to lighten up, and dance away, vanishing back to his room. Then Demi would smile, sigh, and turn back to the matter at hand.
~
The next morning, Richard awoke to the subtle tickling feeling of Demi turning his chest transparent. She said, “Cardia illumina,” softly in case he was still trying to sleep, and was always the slightest bit disappointed when nothing had changed. “Nope, still heartless, hehe.”
“Oh,” she said when she saw him watching her, “Good morning, Richard.”
“Morning.”
“Any interesting dreams?”
“Yes.” Demi’s question had somehow taken Richard by surprise, so he replied truthfully.
“Really?” Demi asked, much more interested. She flipped Richard’s chart over and began to make notes on the back. “What happened?”
“Um - well. There was a man wearing a black cloak. He was pretty tall, I think, and his hair was on fire. I was following him across an alleyway, and then we came out, and there was this castle right in front of us. Or, um, above us. I don’t really remember.”
“Do you know what happened next?” Demi asked.
“It felt like I should know!” Richard said, uncharacteristically frustrated. “It’s just - just not coming to me. But we were both acting, in the dream, like we’d been there a thousand times, like everyone knew what happened next. But I didn’t.”
This was the most Richard had ever said to her, certainly the most in one sitting. “So you do you think this man with the fire might’ve been from your past?”
“Well - maybe. But I don’t remember him at all.”
Demi sighed. “Thank you, Richard. I’ll go tell this to Healer Selwyn,” she said, “I think she’ll find this interesting. I’m glad you opened up about that.”
Richard was about to ask her what she meant, but Demi was gone too quick, leaving just a rush of air behind her. And it wasn’t until she had Disapparated that it occurred to Richard to ask her why she had changed the sheets on his bed overnight.
Within a few minutes, though, there was the faint pop of people Apparating into a room. This time, Demi had Healer Selwyn along with her. She was just finishing a sentence, “seemed nearly identical.”
“Good morning,” she said, nodding not only to Richard but the witch on his left, who was evidently also awake. “As I was just telling Miss Avalto here, I believe I may have figured out your mystery, little Richard. And it explains why you don’t exactly know why your heart is missing.” She turned back to Demi. “Now, take him up to the fourth floor, and ask Zeke about the Imaginary Ward - or the Unknowable Ward. And mention the word “hollow.” Be careful, and Merlin’s speed, Miss Avalto.”
She nodded. “Come, Richard, the stairs are right this way.”
He already knew where the stairs were. He did wonder for a moment why they weren’t simply Apparating up three floors, but then concluded perhaps only Healers were able to Apparate freely within St. Mungo’s.
Once they were at the fourth floor landing, Demi ushered Richard through a series of doors and turns, finally ending up in a small office. A red-haired woman whose nameplate stated her to be “Eleanor Pye, Secretary” looked up when they got there, then nodded at Demi and gestured to the back and the left. Demi went that way, and arrived at Zeke’s desk. “Hi again,” he said, looking a little confused. “Who’s this?”
“A patient,” Demi said quickly. “Healer Selwyn sent me here. Where and what is the Unknowable Ward?” Zeke’s eyes widened a little. “Password’s ‘hollow,’ I believe.”
“Yeah - yeah, that’s right.” Zeke stood up, the paperwork he’d been filling out completely abandoned. “This way. Quick, before too many people wake up.”
She shuffled after him, Richard bringing up the rear, as he took them down another series of hallways, ending in front of a blank stone wall. “Hollow,” Zeke said. He spoke very quietly, although there was no one around. Slowly, a portrait of a vampire in an ornate golden frame appeared. Zeke looked him straight in the eyes. “I seek entrance to the Unknowable Ward.”
The vampire nodded. “Step back.”
The three of them did, and then looked down as the six feet of flooring closest to the wall faded away, revealing a long stone staircase leading directly down. The vampire grinned, and then disappeared as well.
Zeke gaped at the floor; clearly he was not much more prepared than Demi for what had happened. “Come on,” he said at last, gesturing for them to follow. “I’ll explain on the way.”
~
“In the late 18th century,” Zeke began, “Rosalie the Rapacious became the first witch to receive a life sentence in Azkaban.”
“A prison,” Demi whispered to Richard when he gave her a blank look.
“She was, of course, eager to break out, believing she could succeed where no wizard ever had. She did partly make it, however. Back then, Azkaban still employed human guards, as they only had a few Dementors.” (This term confused Richard as well, but Demi didn’t notice and he figured he’d catch on.) “She seduced and evaded the wizard watching her cell, then stole his wand and jinxed the pants off of him. She then fled down the hall, killing or torturing every guard she found before they could do anything. Finally, she got to the stairs, and ran to the highest tower, figuring they’d all expect her to run for the ground exit. Up there, she killed the night watchman, shattered his window, and was prepared to steal his broom and make a clean fly for it. She got about ten meters out before the real security force got to her. It was only two Dementors, but the Patronus spell was little-known then, so she struggled in vain while they went ahead and gave her the Kiss.”
Demi shuddered. Richard had no idea what he meant. They kissed her? Why was that so terrible?
“The Dementor’s Kiss,” Demi explained, “is when these foul creatures suck out a wizard or witch’s soul. Many consider it to be the most grievous punishment in the world, and there is no way to counteract it. The affected person does not die, just lives on, incomplete, without soul, without emotions, without rhyme or reason.”
“Exactly,” said Zeke. “The current head of St. Mungo’s contacted Azkaban when they heard the news, and said they’d be interested in seeing - studying - the effects of the Dementor’s Kiss on a witch, as Rosalie was the first known female victim. The Ministry had been planning to just throw her body off a cliff into the North Sea, so they were fine with releasing her to the hospital. So they created this secret ward to study her life without a soul.
“Eventually, a few years later, a wizard tried to commit suicide at Azkaban and got the Kiss too. The Ministry remembered our offer, and we said sure, we’ll take him. Since then, the Unknowable Ward has remained a kind of secret commune for the soulless. We’ve even gotten a couple of people from Australia, and a Muggle kid from north Surrey that got the Kiss accidentally.”
“So Healer Selwyn thinks this is what might’ve happened to Richard?” Demi asked. She thought for a moment. “I could see that…”
“I suppose I do feel somewhat soulless. I guess?”
A minute later, they arrived at a door. Zeke knocked. None of them were entirely sure what to expect on the other side, but it was a tall, black-haired woman who might’ve been beautiful a hundred years ago, and a sallow-faced man with hair the color of straw. Behind them was a blonde wizard dressed in the customary white robes of St. Mungo’s uniforms.
“Welcome,” he said simply, “to the Ward that Wasn’t."