An Arrant Thief 3/3
An Arrant Thief PART THREE
.V.
“No. No, the Beast tried to woo me the first night he stole me away.” Belle laughs, eyes distant, looking back on an image in her mind’s eye. “Demanded I come to dinner.”
“Such a gentleman,” Jasmine drawls, almond eyes rolling, because she’s had more than her fair share of suitors. Belle smiles a secret smile.
“I declined of course.”
“Naturally,” Aurora agrees.
“Duh,” Kairi supplies.
“The poor dear,” Snow White murmurs, because no one is ever ugly to her. Alice makes a small aside about tea time and going hungry.
“Oh, I ventured out that night. I missed no dinner. In fact... it was much easier, really. Making friends with him, the beast, I mean. Once you are already friends with those around him. Get them on your side,” she says, and winks.
Kairi’s laugh is clear and bright and echoing.
*
Kairi wasn’t laughing. Wasn’t breathing. Was staying completely quiet as she edged out of Saïx’s room.
She hadn’t even gotten the door closed before she stopped in her tracks. Her breath caught suddenly in her throat and she willed her heart to stop beating. Standing to either side of the door were two huge stone statues, a tall anchor-shaped weapon clutched in each of their grip’s - the same stone shape Saïx had slammed down near her.
Swallowing slowly, Kairi took a tentative step forward. Then another. It wasn’t until the fourth step that they seemed to stir, began to hum quietly and light softly. All or nothing, she decided and broke into a run. The things were moving now, the anchors pounding into the ground and chasing after her with an echoing thump thump thump and oh god she was going to die.
Tearing around a corner, she held back the scream that was waiting impatiently to be freed from her throat, and instead concentrated on finding enough turns and twists in the hallway to hopefully confuse the things following her.
“-sounds like Saïx, but I don’t know why-” and a door opened where she could have sworn blank wall had been before. Could have sworn because she was running straight along it, and if she had thought there was a door, not only would she have used it for escape, but she would have been able to avoid its sudden swinging motion.
Instead, of course, she ran right into the person walking out. Her momentum wouldn’t let her stop. In fact, her momentum was so hell bent on making her move, that if she couldn’t move forward, she’d have to move backward. She teetered a few steps and then fell down, already feeling the formation of new bruise over old.
She looked up at the man leaning in the doorway, looking down at her with detached curiousity and something else, and his eyes weren’t really on her as much as they were lower where -
“Pervert,” Kairi called him, closing her legs and tugging at her skirt that had ridden up her thighs in her stumble. They stared at one another for a few moments before the thumping noise of her earlier pursuers got louder and louder and-
“Well?” the man said, stepping back and sweeping his hands into the room behind him in offering. Kairi paused to consider for the amount of time it took the next THUMP to shake the floor she sat on, then decided, pervert or not, she’d take her chances.
The room she was pulled into was housed mostly by a round table and three men sitting at it. She felt a hand along her back from a fourth man as he pushed her gently further into the room.
At the table the young man who had bent and twisted her bars with water stared back at her, maybe afraid and maybe shocked, and she wondered what Saïx had done to him for his impromptu music session. Beside him, one-eyed and grinning like a wolf was the man that had threatened her should she fall asleep.
“Look what Xaldin found us, boys,” he said, and Kairi had to remind herself that she was not little red riding hood. He wouldn’t gobble her up.
Then a third man, one she hadn’t met, was flipping cards so fast in his hands she couldn’t see them actually shuffle.
“You know cards?” he called.
“Are you crazy?” The young guitar boy spat, turning to stare at the man still shuffling a deck of cards. “Do you know who she is? You can’t just pull her in here. Saïx is going to-”
He was interrupted by the sudden scraping of a chair across flooring as the empty chair flew out a foot from the table.
“You know cards?” completed the invitation. Dry mouthed, heart still beating a frantic staccato rhythm against her rib cage, and her mind shouting to run run run, Kairi hesitantly took a seat.
*
“I’m just... I’m not very good at Poker.”
“Clearly.”
“No. Shit.”
“Didn’t you have cards in your world?”
“Of course. We just... didn’t play Poker.”
“What did you play?”
“Um. Go Fish? Kings? ... Hearts?”
She sat back in surprise at their reactions, glancing at each of them. Water-boy was still scowling the way Sora did sometimes when they were doing something they were of course going to get in trouble for, no matter what Riku said. But he also began to nervously glance at the others in the room, waiting for one of them to react. The patched man was grinning, less tooth, less wolf, and more genuine amusement. Xaldin, eyes narrowed and thoughtful, said nothing, and Kairi got the impression he was staring at her rather than at what she said.
The man with the cards passed her the deck.
“Deal.”
*
After one round she picked up their names by the casual insults they threw at one another.
After two she categorised their style of playing. Xaldin with his poker face and careful placing of cards. Xigbar who smugly tossed down a card without particular strategy other than Avoid the Hearts. And Luxord, who scrutinized and calculated and who was now holding twelve hearts and the queen of spades.
“You’re going to be doing heartless duty for a week,” Luxord chanted, shuffling his pile of discarded hearts, smirking at his opponents.
“Actually, you’re losing, princess,” Xigbar sneered at Luxord, who scowled.
“Actually, I doubt there’s anything we can do to stop his winning,” Xaldin frowned, glancing at all his low suited cards. “It was well played,” he grudgingly said, tossing a lonely diamond down, the only one left of the suit. Demyx said nothing, sitting this round out, as Hearts was a four-player game.
“Actually, your face was well played.” And while Xaldin commented that that didn’t even make sense, Kairi cleared her throat quietly.
“Actually...” she said, placing the ace of hearts down and allowing herself a tiny grin. Xigbar stared at it, Luxord’s jaw slowly crept down, and Xaldin laughed while taking the card as his own.
“We’re keeping her,” he said.
After three rounds, Kairi remembered how to laugh. Clear and bright and echoing.
*
Kairi snuck back into Saïx’s room, and the man was still sleeping, eyes closed and scar not quite so jagged. She tiptoed to the bed and collapsed on it, staring at the dark ceiling and smiling.
They had told her it was best to go back to Saïx. Told her they’d bring her there if she didn’t go herself, and then Saïx would know she had escaped. She took their offer for what it was, imprisonment with the chance of temporary freedom once again.
She clenched her fingers in the sheets and rolled over, back to Saïx. In the pale moonlight she squinted at the ace of hearts she had been given. “For the look on Luxord’s face,” Xigbar had said, snatching it from Xaldin’s pile.
Carefully and quietly she reached over the edge of the bed and nudged the playing card between the two mattresses. He wouldn’t find it there. Why would he? Wouldn’t be able to feel it certainly, like a pea and a princess.
But Kairi knew it was there. She felt it burning into her back in the morning when Saïx ran ungloved fingers up her arm and scrapped them back down with nails digging. And that burning was all that warmed her when his more deeper touches managed to chill her skin deep.
*
“And where were you last night, hmm? Demyx is a complete hmm-hmm at Hearts,” Luxord said, leaning in Saïx’s doorway. Kairi grinned a little at his self censoring. He stared at her across the room, arms folded, as she sat bored at Saïx’s desk munching on leftover breakfast.
“He locked the door,” she shrugged.
Luxord rolled his eyes, made a strange gesture and pointed at her.
“Locked doors are no excuse to keep one away from their game. No excuse at all.”
They had a quick stare-off as he drummed his fingers against his folded arms and she twitched hers against the table.
Then he was turning on his heel and walking away. Kairi stared at the empty door for a moment before looking down at her food. How had she come to this? If she played with them would it really help her escape?
Maybe not from the castle, came the obvious answer. But it did help her escape from Saïx’s eyes and sleeping body and his touch in the morning because, ooh, her heart beat just so when he did.
Kairi closed her eyes. Dropped her forehead to the table.
She wanted to go home. To the beaches and the sea-salt air and the bitter taste of missing her boys. She wanted Sora’s laugh ringing in her ear. She wanted Riku’s smirk making her own lips smile. She wanted wanted wanted.
What a selfish girl you are, her mind hissed at her. You were sad to find the door locked, weren’t you? Not because it meant you were stuck with him for a night, but because it meant you couldn’t go off and play card games. Such a selfish, tragic girl. What would Sora say if he saw you now? Sora, who is looking for you. Sora, who is going to rescue you one day soon.
But Kairi couldn’t hear Sora in her mind anymore. Her imagination was as dry as her insides felt. Dry and crumbling with each breath. Each breath that caught in her throat and threatened to bring tears as revenge.
Because how dare she laugh and actually enjoy herself in this place when Sora was out there. How dare she, horrid horrid child.
Something brushed her arm and Kairi glanced down. A playing card. The two of hearts.
Don’t be late was scrawled across the back. A key taped to the front.
And then she did cry.
*
“Sleeping, sleeping child. Did you not sleep during the night?”
She could feel his fingers through her hair but didn’t care. Fingers that tugged and twisted and slipped from her scalp to her jaw line to her neck and down down down. Two fingers paused to rest at the bone between her breasts.
“Your heart is sleeping. You will tell me your dreams when you wake.”
Kairi wasn’t dreaming. She only ever had nightmares now.
*
It was late in the afternoon when Kairi woke properly. Saïx’s bed was always pleasantly tight and cocoon-like (so long as he wasn’t in it) and Kairi stretched and curled in the sheets for a guilty moment.
It felt like the day after a fever. When she was small, and would go to bed sick with no intention of waking for school in the morning. But then come sunrise, the sickness passed, and all she had was a free day with a burning sun, a bed full of blankets, and no one to answer to at all. (Until after three when Sora would be tossing pebbles at her window to find out where she was. And Riku would be knocking at her door, having decided stairs and doors were better suited than shouting down from windows.)
For the past three nights she had snuck out and played some cards with the others. It made her feel guilty, because they never failed to make her smile if not laugh. And that was wrong, wasn’t it? In this place.
Yet laying in bed with Saïx who had taken to kissing her more often than not, not because he was like the captors in all the novels that liked their wenches and maidens and wanted their bodies. He did it for the way her toes curled and her teeth clenched and her heart beat stop stop stop.
And the others seemed to view her as Saïx’s. As off limits. They didn’t place their hands over her and place their ears at her chest to hear her.
But late night card games meant late mornings. She half wondered why Saïx hadn’t made it his business to find out just what made her sleep so late and often. Maybe he didn’t care. Whatever kept her safe and tucked in his room.
Safe and tucked in and hungry, argh.
Pushing out of bed and straightening her skirt and shirt-sleeves as best she could, Kairi stumbled towards the door. When she yawned it nearly broke her jaw, and her lungs ached with the sudden intake of air. Her stomach ached too, a persistent warning pain that said if she dared try not to eat again it was mutinying. It was going to crawl up her throat and throw itself to its death, thank you very much, so you best go eat something, young lady.
She tried the door. Locked.
Back to the bed, under the mattress, two cards and a key.
Tempting fate, tempting fate, her mind screamed. But she opened the door nonetheless and peered out into the empty hallway. The two large statues still lurked, but she had learned if she dashed quick enough they couldn’t follow her properly.
She broke away, quick enough that she was out of the hallway before the sound of pounding stone could follow her. She ran past the room where cards were played and skidded to a stop.
Kairi. You’re free. Run.
The hallways were familiar, to a point. She had run through them in hopes of escape before. (To little success, she reminded herself.) That in mind, Kairi turned sharply when she saw a passage that looked unfamiliar.
Sounded unfamiliar too. A soft hum of strings that echoed over artificial walls and ceiling.
She knew who it was even before she turned the last corner into twilight but she still made herself peek and be sure. Demyx didn’t even notice her until she was feet away from him.
“What are you doing here?”
Kairi shrugged.
“Go away. I’m busy.”
“It plays music too? I mean... not just water?”
And Demyx laughed, head thrown back and mouth wide so she could almost see down his throat. She thought of the chords of his song and how they had once bent and twisted the bars of her prison. Thought that if it had been Demyx that had captured her she would be worrying how those same chords could bend and twist her bones. But he hadn’t captured her. Maybe if he had she would be more afraid to stay.
As it was she knelt down, looking up at him. Eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Can I hear?”
“Tch, what do you know about music?”
“I used to be in the school choir?” she hazarded, shrugging. He stopped half-glaring for a moment and glanced down to hide his quick grin.
“I don’t do ‘choir’.”
But he did do strings. And melodies. And insistent rhythms that slid under her skin and pretended to be blood. Long and quick and the notes were making her toes curl in comfort before it was broken quite suddenly:
“Kairi.”
She started, jumped a little, looked over her shoulder at Saïx. Had he ever said her name before? Demyx seemed to mirror her reaction, fingers nervously shifting over his instrument and mouth opening and closing. Kairi sprang to her feet.
“Did you know some cultures use music as an aphrodisiac?” she blurted, two steps away from Saïx. “Yeah,” she continued, taking a step forward. “See?” And she grabbed his hand, pressed it to her chest, and let him feel it beating through her clothes and skin. If it were beating frantically in nerves instead of the thrill of a well-played song, well, Saïx never need know.
“Indeed?” was all he said.
“Well... see ya!” And she waved to Demyx a little before marching purposely back towards Saïx’s room. Don’t get in trouble because of me, she thought desperately. Not because of me.
In the morning, in her shoe (how on earth...?), the jack of hearts.
*
Three days of staring at Saïx’s ceiling and two evenings of Hearts, and Demyx’s song was still stuck in her mind.
Her heart was dancing in rhythm, her blood thrumming like well plucked sitar strings, and her breathing sang an evening ballad. She fell asleep and dreamed of moonlight dancing.
*
Tangled and everywhere, Kairi woke to a long, startled shout. She sat up in bed and looked at Saïx blearily. Then looked at herself. She was in the centre of the bed, spread wide and swallowing the blankets whole around her.
She had been dancing in her sleep as well.
She looked at Saïx again, wide eyed and lower lip curling inward to be bitten nervously, and when she actually looked at him she sprang from the bed with a yelp. Thump, went her body connecting with the floor below. Thump, thump, thump, went her feet running across the floor to the door.
“Perhaps,” went Saïx’s snarl, loud and angry, “you can explain” (creak, went the door opening. Gasp, went Kairi nearly running into Xigbar) “why I woke up with this shoved-”
“Fuck, Saïx,” Xigbar called over, glancing at Kairi dishevelled in the doorway, at Saïx livid and seething, at the candlestick Saïx waved in his left hand. “What you do with your home décor is your own business. No need to advertise.”
“Eeep,” went Kairi, dodging under Xigbar and letting him deal with the crash and boom of a falling claymore.
Swoosh, went the eight of hearts passed to her that evening by Xigbar who, though bruised and ruffled, grinned so much wolf Kairi couldn’t help but grin back.
*
“I was told something interesting today,” Saïx said, watching Kairi kick off her shoes and curl to the far side of the bed. “I was told that the others know you. That you know them. That you laugh with them. Which is strange, surely, since I did not know you were capable of laughing, really.”
Kairi paused in rearranging the covers and looked at him over the edge of the blankets, her eyes hooded and hopefully shadowed from showing emotion.
“I was told that they make you smile. And that is not something I get to hear, is it? I do not get to hear your heart beating in happiness. In enjoyment. But I do not think I could make you smile, let alone laugh. So...”
He was beside her, almost on her, his greater height and weight pushing her to the bed with nowhere to roll or run.
“You said- you said you wouldn't st-”
“I can hardly steal what you are giving away. I have had your fear and your disgust and your anger, Kairi. I want to hear you happy. And I believe this is perhaps the only way.”
“I am not happy-” Kairi spat, but then his mouth was on hers and not just kissing. She had kissed a boy before. She had kissed Sora. This was not lips pressed to lips, it was Saïx’s mouth open and persistent and forcing her own lips apart. It was him biting at the corner of her mouth and him licking across her teeth. It was wet and gross and sending an undeniable warmth straight down her chest to pool elsewhere.
“I am not happy,” Kairi repeated. Saïx tilted his head, eyes narrowed and lips curved.
“You will be,” he said, and began to kiss lower.
*
She was sitting on a balcony that dropped many, many floors below. Arms folded across her chest (don’t think about there, gods, he had his mouth all over there and you liked it you sick little girl) and eyes distant and if she leaned only slightly forward she could fall all the way down. Break like the china doll she had once dropped accidentally down the stairs. Face cracked open and glass eye rolling away.
There was someone behind her. Kairi could feel him. But her spine didn’t try to curve inwards and claw its way out through the front, and her skin didn’t crawl along her bones, so she knew it wasn’t Saïx.
Because, she swore, if she had to see him right now, all her eternal organs were going to jump ship. She swallowed and turned her head.
Xaldin watched her closely, carefully, the way Saïx did but without the full force of the moon behind his eyes. He walked towards her and sat down, facing towards the castle, so though they sat side by side, their feet dangled on opposite ends of railing.
She almost smiled at the card he dropped on her lap.
“Why do you all keep giving me these?” she asked, waving the seven of hearts.
He shrugged, looking to the sky. Looking to Kingdom Hearts that loomed ever over them.
“We are all just waiting here. Waiting for things to end. To be complete. It is a long wait that does not have a known end. But I feel... somehow it seems right.”
“What does?”
“When all the hearts are gone, we may reclaim ours.” His gaze turned back to Kingdom Hearts for a moment before returning it to her. “But mostly I give it to you because you might not accept the other thing I brought.”
Kairi raised her eyebrows, lowering her arms for the first time since waking, and waited. Xaldin nodded towards the cloth bag at his feet. Leaning backwards, Kairi peered inside. Eyebrows further raised, she reached over and lifted at the bag. She pulled out a long-sleeved wool sweater. Underneath it were more clothes still.
“They’re your size. Surely you are getting cold.”
“I. I. Why would you think I wouldn’t accept this?” Kairi asked, not even hesitating to pull the sweater over her head and relishing the feel of layer between herself and the world. Relishing in the warmth of it.
“Because they come form a world I just burned to the ground.”
Oh, Kairi thought, turning to look back to the sky. That’s why they’re so warm.
*
Sora carded his fingers through her hair and she shook her head frantically. He recoiled and made a face at her.
“Why’d’jya cut it anyway?” he asked, unconsciously pouting, eyes glancing over the way her hair now fell only to just below her ears, tracing the edge of her neck.
“To catch wind,” she replied, tossing her head wildly, letting the short strands fly in the hot summer breeze. When Sora buried his fingers in it again, she didn’t shake them away, instead laughed and said: “my hair is shorter than yours now.”
“It’s always been shorter,” came the reply, not Sora’s young voice but something more darkly familiar. And Sora disappeared as Kairi sprang awake, confused and tangled in warm blankets. Her breath was frantic and sharp, and her eyes were still blinking away an old dream.
Saïx was stroking his gloved fingers through her hair. When she tried to pull away, he tightened. “Just a few shades off of Axel’s. But his was never this soft.”
This was the point where his fingers would shift further down and under her shirt. Where his lips would follow and his touch would make her warm as much as it made her cold, and damn her body for liking it.
But that point didn’t arrive before she opened her mouth and murmured,
“Axel, Axel, Axel,” ignoring the uh, Kairi, wait, stop warning that was trying to nudge her still-asleep brain. “S’all you ever talk about. Why don’t you just marry him?”
She heard a sudden intake of breath, a low grunt of a reaction. Saïx heard it too. They both turned to look at Xigbar in the doorway. Always in the doorway. And Saïx was off her, marching to the door, and the sound of it slamming shut and locked was all the permission she needed to sleep again.
*
It was five days before she saw Xigbar again. That was why he used the five, he said, giving her the card.
“Don’t know what we did around here before you,” he added, thumping her on the back and tugging her towards the card table.
*
She got the king of hearts from Demyx, mostly so she would leave him alone after this:
“How do you keep getting out, anyway?”
Kairi smiled secret and small. Tapped the edge of her nose twice. “Never you mind.”
“Humph. Well, I don’t think Saïx likes it much, ya know? And I don’t need him on me again cause of you, so scram.”
She folded her arms around her Xaldin sweater, stared at Demyx, wanting to fake pout but, gods, her lips wouldn’t turn down. If she tried to pout it might stay that way. And fake pouts meant fake teary eyes, and Kairi would not cry. She could feel a whole wall of tears pressing against the back of her eyes and if she let one fall the whole lot would follow.
“Seriously,” Demyx said, watching her strangely, and she wondered what emotions her face was making. He made a shooing motion with his hands, and the way his fingers dropped as he flicked his hand made her smile a little. Smile enough to plant her feet firmly. Demyx sighed.
“Sc-ram,” he repeated, playing a full strong chord on his instrument. No sound came out except for the whoosh of icy, cold water that fell from nowhere and landed square over Kairi. Over her head, down her shoulders, sinking through all her clothes and damping her skin.
“Whhuuuulah!” she screeched, back arching, shoulders shaking.
Demyx laughed then, and she only blinked at him, water dripping from her bangs over her eyes and down the length of her nose where it pooled in an annoying droplet. Blugh. She was soaked. Soaked like she hadn’t been in...
Kairi paused in her indignant shaking and traced back her days since being taken on the beach. No... nope... huh, no. Peeling off the sweater Kairi looked at Demyx with the first smirk she had allowed herself in weeks.
“... Can you make it warm?”
*
Little Kairi, sprawled across his bed, tangled in the covers. Hair damp, skin moist, and smelling of something other than sweat and tired. Almost smiling in her sleep, so contently wrapped up in dreams she was drooling a little. His bed sheets would never be the same.
Eyes narrowed, Saïx turned from his pause in the doorway, and squinted down the hall outside. His glare sought and deftly caught Demyx, casually walking towards his own quarters.
The boy paused, held up his hands in swift defence, and shook his head.
“She said to tell you that her hair was getting awfully gross, and if she didn’t wash it soon, there’d be creepy bugs in it, and she already had one creepy insect following her about (I think she might have meant you, by the by) and if you were angry that you had better yell at her for daring to want hygiene but to leave me the fuck alone,” Demyx finished in one long breath and growl.
“She said all that?”
“... the ‘fuck’ was from me.”
“It usually is,” Saïx murmured, and stepped back into his room, closing the door on Demyx’s startled and perplexed face.
*
“Stop, stop, stop,” was the only mantra keeping her mind grounded, her mind sane. His tongue slid along her inner thigh, from the back of her knee up, up, up and along the curve of her leg meeting hip.
“I may owe Demyx,” she thought he said, but she couldn’t be sure because she was grinding her whole body into the bed in an attempt to keep away. Her head pushed back and turned to the side, eyes squinted close.
And then his face was back close to hers. She could feel his breath at her ear, at her temple, before he shifted downwards so his head rested at her chest.
Ear to heart, always.
Saïx rested there, lightly, a strange weight between her breasts, and she made a noise as his hand slid purposefully between legs she couldn’t squeeze shut no matter how she pushed. His fingers stroked and pressed and scratched softly, but didn’t push. Didn’t go inside her, because that hurt a little and felt somehow forbidden, and he didn’t want to hear that in her heart.
He only wanted to hear it beating happy, beating pleasure, beating ‘don’t stop’.
Just two fingers, rubbing against bits of her she hadn’t learned to touch herself, and she was biting her lip, almost (but not, no, don’t) crying, and choking back any words except an answer when he asked, “should I stop?”
“Don’t stop.”
*
Sora, running and tripping along the sand, racing Riku as he did every day. Kairi watched them charge towards her, waiting to judge the winner. Riku won in a skid of wet sand and eight-year-old laughter.
“Why can’t I race?” Kairi asked, hands on hips.
“You’re not as fast as us. You’re a girl.”
“Girls are strong too!”
Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
Kairi pressed her palms to her closed eyes, hard. She wasn’t strong at all. Wasn’t smart either. She uncovered her eyes and peered down. She was sitting curled at the top of a building outcrop. Below Saïx’s large statues waited, pounding about the hallway. There were other creatures too, the white ones that curved and swam along the floor.
They’d eat her alive if she dropped down.
Kairi took a deep breath and pushed her head back against the wall. Not crying, she told herself firmly. Not crying.
Just waiting.
This was what she got, clearly. She let Saïx touch her, do things to her, and when it was all said and done, only then did she run. And get caught here of all places. Kairi dangled her legs over the edge in hopes of keeping them from falling asleep.
Something squeezed her ankle.
Yelping, Kairi kicked out, her foot hitting something solid, the force making her slide from the wall and land on the ground. She was on her feet in an instant, wary and ready to run and dash from the nobodies that would swarm. But there were no creatures waiting.
Just Xaldin, rubbing his jaw and glaring at her a little.
“Oh. Um. Sorry?” Was that her voice? Kairi shook her head and cleared her throat. She sounded like she’d been screaming, but that wasn’t possible. All her recent screaming had been silent.
Xaldin motioned with a nod left. “I’ll walk you back.”
Kairi folded her arms and nodded. Kairi had layered herself in almost every piece of clothing Xaldin had brought her a few days ago. Pants and skirts and shirts and sweaters. She was suffocating in cotton but refused to let her skin out to breathe. Because when it could breathe it tended to say things. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop. And if Xaldin thought anything of Kairi gagging her body, he said nothing, merely guided her forward with a hand occasionally pressing to her back to steer her a certain direction.
“Saïx told me you were telling stories.”
“He called me a liar? About what?”
Xaldin smiled, briefly. “You misunderstand. He said you were telling him... tales. Memories. Anecdotes?”
“Oh,” Kairi shrugged. “... we don’t... we don’t do that much anymore.”
“There is one story it would be good for you to hear. Saïx didn’t know it to tell.”
They paused at the corner of a hallway.
“You see. We were human once, with hearts, and-”
“I know,” Kairi interrupted. “You’re trying to get your hearts back. Saïx told me.”
“Yes,” Xaldin smiled, briefly. “The thirteen of us. Saïx is seventh. But my story is from the first six of us. We knew one another. Before, I mean. We remember it, distantly, and remember some things more than others. I know we did this to ourselves in a search for knowledge. We were scientists, the six of us. We wanted to be, in any case.
“Always studying, always learning, always reading. We were focusing on the heart. On the heartless. We spent hours in the library there. We were favourites of the old woman who owned it. ‘Ansem’s boys’ she called us. She had a small granddaughter... I still remember her name.”
Xaldin held out his hand, and Kairi only took the six of hearts from him tentatively, like somehow he still wanted to hold onto it but was giving it to her anyway.
“The six of us,” he said, staring at the six hearts on the card, “would never. Not to you. But Saïx is seven. ... Do you understand?”
“Are you... are you apologising for him?” Kairi asked, clenching her fists. Xaldin watched her crumple the playing card but said nothing regarding it.
“No. What he does with his own is no concern of ours. ...I have no heart. But I will regain it some day soon. And I believe that I’d... feel regret if I did not say this to you now.”
“Say what?” Kairi asked, eyebrows furrowed, and fists only slightly loosening. “I don’t follow your story.”
“Hn. Perhaps, in the end, that’s for the better.”
*
It was to be the day in which Kairi tasted liquor.
“Hah hah, cursed booty. Well, no. No, not much booty on that girl,” and Luxord made a gesture towards his own backside. “Lots and lots of this though.” He waved his glass in the air.
“How come I never get to go to the worlds with the rum?” Xigbar complained mildly, gently pulling the bottle away from Luxord.
“Hey, hey. Ladies too!” Luxord grabbed the bottle back and slid it towards Kairi. She stared at it for a moment.
“I don’t think I should.”
“I hear tell you deserve it,” Luxord went on. “Creepy nobodies swarming you all day. And I’m not talking about Saïx. Here, I’ll give ya this if ya do.” Xigbar reached over and stole what Luxord was waving. He tossed the card to Kairi.
“I’ll give it to you if you don’t,” Xigbar said. He was watching her still like a wolf, but not the kind that huffs houses down, but the kind that stalks and circles to protect kin against predators. Kairi knew that Xigbar was numbered as two.
The six of us would never. Not to you.
Kairi looked away.
“Come on, don’t you want to see little Kairi pissed out of her mind?” Luxord laughed. “Think about it.”
“I... I don’t think Saïx would appreciate you offering rum to his little captive. And since I respect Saïx’s wishes, I feel it is my duty to take this temptation away from her sight,” Xigbar said, dead-faced to Luxord, but when he glanced at Kairi for moment the expression was back to being regular wolfish.
Luxord blinked drowsily at them both. Said: “Saïx is behind me, isn’t he?”
It was the day Kairi tasted liquor. Not from a glass, but from some spare droplets that sprayed her way when Saïx upended the bottle over Luxord’s head.
*
“You don’t need that filth, you know. Rum,” Saïx scoffed. “You are intoxicating as it is.”
*
“He didn’t find friendship among us, you know. But I think he did like you. Silly child that you are.”
She had only met him once before, weeks ago. The man Saïx called ‘superior’.
“Demyx was our ninth member,” he continued, passing her a playing card face down, though she knew at once what number it must be.
“Your Sora just killed him.”
*
“He did not,” Kairi yelled, hands fisted and waiting. As soon as Saïx entered the room she was ready, spine tight and every nerve twisted and strung taut.
“Your pardon?”
“Sora. Sora would not... he wouldn't kill someone,” Kairi shouted, and her shoulders felt like they were going to split her skin and collapse in on themselves they were so curved and tense.
Saïx stared at her, as golden and calm and cruel as ever.
“Perhaps Sora did not think Demyx was ‘someone’. Perhaps without a heart he was just another heartless thing to be destroyed.”
Kairi shook her head so fast her stray hair nearly blinded her as it whipped across her face.
“It wasn’t Sora.”
“I assure you it was. I saw him today.”
“You- what?”
“He’s the one feeding Kingdom Hearts. Didn’t you realise? Every heartless he destroys in one more heart for our kingdom. Today, he gave us a feast. One thousand hearts, splayed and bloody over a battlefield.”
Kairi was shaking her head again.
“Not Sora.”
“Yes Sora. Sora who slaughtered and killed relentlessly. Sora who made a pact with a dark queen just to escape us. Sora... Sora who fell to his knees today to beg me. To beg me to see you.”
“No,” Kairi whispered. “No, no, no,” she repeated, her fists against Saïx now, beating against his chest over and over and her head was splitting with the need to cry. He let her hit, merely resting his hands on her upper arms so he was embracing her while she flailed.
When she looked up at him he was almost smiling. She drew in a breath and released a sob.
“I hate you,” she said, and every wall and ward she had built to keep back her tears didn’t just crumble but fell completely apart as if built of dry sand.
“Ah. It seems I owe you an apology. You were right and I was mistaken. I cannot break you.” He brushed his gloved finger along her face, curving it along her cheekbone to catch a sliding tear. “Sora beat me to it.”
.VI.
“But I don’t understand, wasn’t that one of his three rules? That he couldn’t make a person unwillingly love another?”
“Mm, yes, but I needed to buy time for Aladdin to get the lamp again. So...” Jasmine shrugs. “No matter how evil he was, Jafar was still a man. And men... there are ways to keep them distracted.”
Jasmine makes an explicit hand gesture which sends the girls alternately into embarrassed giggles or dark red blushes. Poor Alice drops her tea into her lap and the moment is broken in a scramble to clean the spill and calm the flustered child.
But Jasmine’s added “He was a crap kisser too” only starts them up again.
*
Kairi began to do something she hadn’t done since the beginning of her captivity: count the days passing. Every rise and set of the sun was another day of Sora still out there. Of Sora not being with her so she could look him in the eye, so she could hold him tight, and know that Saïx lied when he said he killed things.
Saïx marked the days as well. But while Kairi used crosses on paper, Saïx knew the days by what he stole.
This day he stole Kairi’s gasps, torn from her lips when he twisted his finger just then, just there, and her whole lower body bucked upwards.
That day he stole her whimpers, caught in her throat until he licked his way across her pulse beating and swallowed them whole. They tasted both bitter and sweet, like stale honey.
He collected her voice and her sobs and her sweat that fell at her temples when he kept at her body too long. Her groans and stutters and some of the strangest slews of near profanities when he put tongue where only fingers had gone before.
And when there was nothing left to steal from her, he’d start again.
Because the only thing he had not taken was her passion. Her willingness. Her fire. And he was not so shameless as to forcibly take that.
Her fire she would give him. And in the darkest part of her mind, Kairi knew it. And Saïx knew she knew, because he had stolen that thought from her the night before.
Another day has passed. Kairi made another scratch on her paper. Saïx made another scratch on her skin, biting his way along her collarbone while the sun set and the moon took its place.
*
After Demyx’s death there was no more laughter at card games. After Xaldin’s, Kairi stopped attending all together. No one came to collect her. She hadn’t seen the others in nine days (as her calendar said), making it a surprise to find Xigbar suddenly in Saïx’s room.
He regarded her a moment, looking her up and down, not smiling, and Kairi was surprised to find she missed that wolfish grin. He pressed a playing card into her hands and waited until she had flipped it (the queen) and was looking at his face again before speaking.
“Sora entered this world. It won’t be long before he comes to the castle. One of us needs to go mess with him a bit. But Saïx will do more than mess about, you know that, right? Just... if you want Sora to... you might wish to...”
“Distract Saïx?” Kairi asked, the playing card feeling cold and sharp edged in her sweaty palms. She wondered if the card could cut skin it felt so piercing in her hands. Wondered if her blood everywhere would be enough of a distraction, but knew that there was only one thing to keep Saïx occupied and away from Sora.
“Thank you,” she said to Xigbar, who watched her closely before waving his hand in a ‘bah, t’was nothing’ gesture and left Saïx’s room with a soft click of the door.
The queen in her palm glared up at her until Kairi ripped the card into four halves and scattered the pieces across the bed. There was no such thing as a queen of hearts. Only slaves of them.
*
Saïx found her lying on a bed of torn playing cards, each a ripped portion of the heart suit, scattered across her flung body.
“They said if I got all of them, you would have your heart back. But it’s not true, is it? Where is your heart?”
“I do not know. That’s why your Sora is so valuable to us. He will free our hearts.”
“You can’t have Sora,” Kairi said, sitting up. “Making him... kill for you. It will destroy his heart, I know it will. And you can’t have Sora’s heart.”
“So demanding,” he murmured, fingers touching the very ends of her hair, watching them fall from his hand. “But it’s not up to you. Sora is here. I will make him give me my heart.”
Kairi reached out, her own hand pale and thin - translucent in a way she couldn’t remember it ever being. She stared at her own veins for a moment, mesmerised, before following Saïx’s arm up to his shoulder, to his face.
“You will not. You will not touch Sora,” she said. There was no tremble in her voice, no whimper caught somewhere deep and hollow. The queen of hearts was torn beneath her. Kairi was the new queen of hearts.
Saïx gave her his half smile. “How do you propose to stop me?” he asked.
Kairi let go of his hand for just long enough to latch unto his upper arm, pulling herself up on the bed, pulling him down, smashing their mouths together. Hard and bitter and hurting and there was the taste of blood and Kairi knew it wasn’t her own.
“You will not touch Sora,” she repeated, her fingers in his hair, on his cheek, edging the line of his coat. “But you can touch me... any way you want,” she finished, breathing hard and heavy near his jaw, waiting for him to do something.
She did not expect him to chuckle.
“Is this you breaking?”
“... yes. Yes, this is me breaking,” she replied, not knowing whether it was true or not. Saïx shook his head.
“Hm. I do not think it is. I know what a broken heart sounds like,” he said, picking up a piece of torn playing card, “and that is not your heart. However, you said perhaps Sora’s heart is being destroyed, so I think-”
“You will not. You told me before that one day I would ask you for this. That I would give you what you didn’t dare steal.”
“It’s hardly a gift if you use it as a bargaining tool, is it?”
He turned to leave but there was no leaving. She wouldn’t let him. She was standing on the bed, making her taller, so she wrapped her leg around his waist and fell backwards. He toppled over on top of her with a startled noise, and while he was still disoriented she pushed him to his back and got to her knees. Hovering over him, she kneeled over his hips and let her face fall inches from his own.
“I am asking you for this, do you understand? You will stay here, with me. Only with me,” she slipped forward and down, moving her hips so their groins brushed together through clothing and Saïx made a strangled noise. He looked up at her, and for once, for once, his expression was not calm. Anything but. She couldn’t place it but there was something unhinged and wild and sorely tempted in his gaze.
“Isn’t this what you want?” Kairi asked, moving her hips once more, rolling them, beginning a strange rhythm of bump and grind. “Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for?” her voice was steady even though her pulse was going to tear her skin with it’s rapid rhythm, and her limbs were going to shatter with shaking.
“You have yet to actually ask,” he answered, and his voice wavered.
Kairi tightened her jaw, touched her lips to his own, buying time. Because it was one thing to kiss him and touch him and willingly let him have every part of her. But it was something else entirely to ask it of him. She had to mentally strangle and drown every protest and whimper to stop stop stop. She was doing this because it wouldn’t destroy her, she knew that. Wouldn’t kill her or damage her or break her.
And she was doing this for Sora.
“Please,” she asked. “Please. Saïx.”
It was probably the ‘Saïx’ that did it. She had never said his name before.
On her tongue... it tasted like nothing. She was expecting rot and bitterness, but it was just a word. Just a word she could make her lips form again and again if it saved Sora, even if just for a moment.
“Saïx,” she said again, and touched her lips to him. She had learned to kiss from him, learned how to give a kiss if not return it, and she mimicked everything she had felt his mouth do to hers in the weeks prior. Perhaps she wasn't as experienced and perhaps she wasn't as sure, but she was persistent and desperate, and maybe that was enough.
Saïx had always had to kiss her and touch her gently for what felt like forever before her body would respond. Usually his fingers had to actually be stroking right there for her to get damp and ready. Because of that, she had mentally prepared herself for needing to touch and lick and do whatever along his chest and face to get him to the same place as her. The place Saïx always seemed to deem as ‘ready’ for moving from touching to actual touching. But Kairi didn’t have to wait.
She could feel him (oh gods oh gods) pressing up with every grind of her hips. Pressed against the thin layer of her underwear because her skirts had long since ridden up her thighs to her hips.
And she knew her own body now enough to recognise the beginning warmth down there, the beginnings of a burn that would hurt and twist and pull at her insides but always made her gasp for more (even if only in her head, god, don’t give him the satisfaction of aloud). He wouldn’t need to touch her today. It was like touching herself.
Forward and back, she rocked, and for one wild moment she wondered if that would be enough. If she could just grind against him here, with both her clothes and his separating them, with his own hips pushing forward and up and his eyes drifting close. He had never made her touch him. Had never touched himself with her present. She didn’t know. Maybe this would be enough.
Oh you silly, silly child.
Saïx grabbed her waist suddenly, fingers pinching and digging deep.
“You best finish what you start, little girl,” he hissed, leaning up and not so much kissing her as biting her lower lip and almost dragging it down with him. He was pulling her up and away from his hips, and she stared at him confused for a single moment before she felt him reach beneath the bunched fabric of her skirt and tug at her underwear. Down it slipped to her knees where it caught against the side of his own chest.
But he made no move to shift her off or shift himself so she could undress fully. Instead, using only one hand to keep her kneeling and lifted, he used the other to reach down his body. The zipper on his coat seemed to be deafening and it set an off-rhythm to the frantic sound of her blood pounding in her ears. Coat pulled apart she could see his bare chest, and then there was a belt buckle, a further zipper, and he was pulling down there. She watched his face, the strange contortions that washed over his every feature, and it was so so strange after so many weeks of impenetrable calm.
And oh god oh god she could feel wet skin brushing against her inner thigh and she knew it wasn’t her own so she knew what it was and oh god oh god.
“Ask me for this, Kairi,” he said, “Tell me you want this.” And his thumb was by her own entrance, pushing where he had only stroked or touched before. And below his thumb what she was meant to be asking for, brushing and waiting and Kairi couldn’t see his face for a moment because of tears shielding her vision. They were thin enough to blink away though, and she ignored the headache that came from not-crying. She looked Saïx in the eye and lied.
“I want this.”
The hand holding her waist suddenly pulled down and she was flat down on Saïx, her thighs hugging along his chest, her underwear stretched across his navel, and she was stretched, god, cause he was in her.
There was no swallowing down her soft sob.
It wasn’t like before and maybe she thought it would be. Because, surely, if only his fingers had made her toes curl and her spine stretch, surely this should feel that much better. But it burned and pulled and it was a pain she just wanted to put pressure on until it stopped throbbing, which was clearly out of the question.
Her chin was touching her collarbone and her hair fell across her eyes and around her cheeks so he couldn’t see her. But he could hear her well enough. The hitch of her breath, the whine in her throat, the hateful beating of her heart.
His fingers reached up, touched beneath her eyes, brushing away tears that hadn’t fallen.
“If I wanted you like this,” he said, “I would have taken you long ago. I can find blushing, unwilling girls in any world, Kairi. And if I can find them anywhere, I might as well go there... once I’ve dealt with Sora. So you see, perhaps you-” he stopped mid word as she squeezed around him down there, purposefully, and inched forward. She pushed with her knees, up, then let herself fall slowly back down.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she panted, breath short, everything below her waist just aching and surely sex wasn’t supposed to be so... uncomfortable. The elastic of her underwear tugged painfully at the inside of her knees, and she really just wanted to lie down because it felt like her back was curving into an S somehow.
And even as the burn dulled the more she moved her hips in small circles, lifting up at the start of each new one, it didn’t mean she particularly liked it. She felt awkwardly full and her stomach was rolling and empty.
She kept thinking that this wouldn't last forever, that there would be an end at some point. And then felt so horribly guilty because when it ended it meant Sora wasn't safe. So she slowed her hips, leaned forward, and kissed him with a tenderness not born of kindness but manipulation.
And the groan that vibrated from his mouth to hers certainly didn’t send a jolt of pleasure along her veins. Certainly not.
But as much as she tried to slow it Saïx seemed to hasten it. His own hips were setting a pace just one half thrust quicker than her own, and he was so much stronger that she had to obey his rhythm. And then there were fingers too, still gloved (and didn’t that feel weird?) touching just above where his other body parts were busy moving up up up.
Fingers that touched and twisted and oh, that was familiar.
“Did you think I’d let you be a martyr?” he asked, flicking and pressing. “Yes, know that you did this for your Sora. But know that you liked doing it.” He hissed the words in her ear, almost sitting up, moving his hips towards her with a faster tempo and all she could hear was his breath through her hair and spilling down her spine like spiders.
Yet he made her shudder and cry and tense all body-over like he always did when he touched her long enough, and then he was tensing too, pushing forward with awkward jerks and his gasps were all that soothed her body to silence again.
“You are fire. You truly are. If I am the moon then you are the sun. And your heart,” he said as he pulled out and away from her, lying her down in a tangled sprawl of sore and lazy limbs, strewn clothing, and ripped playing cards sticking to her sweaty skin. “It is beating a new rhythm.”
His ear was to her chest and then he was looking straight into her eyes.
“It sounds like defeat.”
.VII.
“Well, Maleficent had me for a bit, I suppose,” Kairi says, nodding to Aurora. “But I don’t remember any of that. My heart was with Sora.” Kairi laughs, looking at the six other girls. “I’m sorry. You all did so much to escape your prisons, didn’t you? But mine doesn’t really count.
“Nothing happened.”
*
Alone on a bed of broken cards. Kairi wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. She was afraid she had forgotten how.
There was a whisper and a swoosh and that horrible smell of ozone announcing a dark portal opening in the small room. Kairi turned her head with only a small amount of curiousity because, after all, most people used he door.
Out of the portal stepped a girl her age, pale and beautiful and dressed in moonlight. She straightened her dress, glanced to her side and smiled as she patted the head of a dog that sat there.
Oh, Kairi thought, I know that dog. Sitting up a little, Kairi leaned forward to get a better look. It was the dog that had been with her through the portals. She had been with him when Axel had taken her. Saïx had left him behind.
Moaning, the dog walked over and pressed its wet nose to her knee and made a small whimper. Kairi’s hand dropped to its head and petted softly. But he attention was mostly on the girl now who was watching her with the saddest frown on her face.
“I’m so sorry it took me this long,” the girl said, resting her long fingers at Kairi’s temple. She was looking at Kairi, eye to eye, and whatever she saw there made her lower lip tremble and sent her body forward into a tight embrace.
“Look what he did to you,” she said, squeezing her arms, and Kairi swallowed a sob. She moved forward more still, pressing her body to the other girl, and breathed shakily and deeply.
“Who are you?” Kairi managed after a wet in-take of breath.
“They call me a witch. Because I can manipulate memories...”
“But. But who are you?” Kairi asked again. The girl smiled, softly.
“Someone who has been waiting an awfully long time to meet you...” Staring at Kairi’s eyes again, the witch scrunched her own and made a decision. “I can unlock memories. Or lock them shut. I will lock yours, Kairi. You shouldn’t have to remember this place. You shouldn’t have to remember him. Just...” The girl moved her hands from the hug to cup either side of her face.
“It won’t hurt. And when you wake up, none of this will have been real. Pluto will look after you, right?” she asked the dog, glancing down. The dog, Pluto, barked once.
“Go to sleep, Kairi,” the girl said. Kairi fell forward and when her head hit the girl’s chest, Kairi realised she could hear no heartbeat.
*
Argh, Kairi thought, looking around her small cell. She was kidnapped. From one creep to another. The dog by her feet made a sharp bark as it watched Kairi pace her prison.
After a moment, a man in a dark cloak passed by.
“Hey!” she called after him, holding the bars and glaring at the strange blue haired, scarred man. He watched her with an annoyingly calm expression, his eyebrows slowly drawing down in confusion at the way she was looking at him.
Fine, she thought. Let him freak. She wasn’t afraid of him.
“What do you want us with us?” she demanded. The man merely blinked, still frowning deeply and said, “You are the fire that fuels Sora’s anger.”
Kairi broke away from the bars and glared at the man’s retreating back.
What to do, what to do? Kairi had no idea.
She had never been held prisoner before.
---
.V.
“No. No, the Beast tried to woo me the first night he stole me away.” Belle laughs, eyes distant, looking back on an image in her mind’s eye. “Demanded I come to dinner.”
“Such a gentleman,” Jasmine drawls, almond eyes rolling, because she’s had more than her fair share of suitors. Belle smiles a secret smile.
“I declined of course.”
“Naturally,” Aurora agrees.
“Duh,” Kairi supplies.
“The poor dear,” Snow White murmurs, because no one is ever ugly to her. Alice makes a small aside about tea time and going hungry.
“Oh, I ventured out that night. I missed no dinner. In fact... it was much easier, really. Making friends with him, the beast, I mean. Once you are already friends with those around him. Get them on your side,” she says, and winks.
Kairi’s laugh is clear and bright and echoing.
*
Kairi wasn’t laughing. Wasn’t breathing. Was staying completely quiet as she edged out of Saïx’s room.
She hadn’t even gotten the door closed before she stopped in her tracks. Her breath caught suddenly in her throat and she willed her heart to stop beating. Standing to either side of the door were two huge stone statues, a tall anchor-shaped weapon clutched in each of their grip’s - the same stone shape Saïx had slammed down near her.
Swallowing slowly, Kairi took a tentative step forward. Then another. It wasn’t until the fourth step that they seemed to stir, began to hum quietly and light softly. All or nothing, she decided and broke into a run. The things were moving now, the anchors pounding into the ground and chasing after her with an echoing thump thump thump and oh god she was going to die.
Tearing around a corner, she held back the scream that was waiting impatiently to be freed from her throat, and instead concentrated on finding enough turns and twists in the hallway to hopefully confuse the things following her.
“-sounds like Saïx, but I don’t know why-” and a door opened where she could have sworn blank wall had been before. Could have sworn because she was running straight along it, and if she had thought there was a door, not only would she have used it for escape, but she would have been able to avoid its sudden swinging motion.
Instead, of course, she ran right into the person walking out. Her momentum wouldn’t let her stop. In fact, her momentum was so hell bent on making her move, that if she couldn’t move forward, she’d have to move backward. She teetered a few steps and then fell down, already feeling the formation of new bruise over old.
She looked up at the man leaning in the doorway, looking down at her with detached curiousity and something else, and his eyes weren’t really on her as much as they were lower where -
“Pervert,” Kairi called him, closing her legs and tugging at her skirt that had ridden up her thighs in her stumble. They stared at one another for a few moments before the thumping noise of her earlier pursuers got louder and louder and-
“Well?” the man said, stepping back and sweeping his hands into the room behind him in offering. Kairi paused to consider for the amount of time it took the next THUMP to shake the floor she sat on, then decided, pervert or not, she’d take her chances.
The room she was pulled into was housed mostly by a round table and three men sitting at it. She felt a hand along her back from a fourth man as he pushed her gently further into the room.
At the table the young man who had bent and twisted her bars with water stared back at her, maybe afraid and maybe shocked, and she wondered what Saïx had done to him for his impromptu music session. Beside him, one-eyed and grinning like a wolf was the man that had threatened her should she fall asleep.
“Look what Xaldin found us, boys,” he said, and Kairi had to remind herself that she was not little red riding hood. He wouldn’t gobble her up.
Then a third man, one she hadn’t met, was flipping cards so fast in his hands she couldn’t see them actually shuffle.
“You know cards?” he called.
“Are you crazy?” The young guitar boy spat, turning to stare at the man still shuffling a deck of cards. “Do you know who she is? You can’t just pull her in here. Saïx is going to-”
He was interrupted by the sudden scraping of a chair across flooring as the empty chair flew out a foot from the table.
“You know cards?” completed the invitation. Dry mouthed, heart still beating a frantic staccato rhythm against her rib cage, and her mind shouting to run run run, Kairi hesitantly took a seat.
*
“I’m just... I’m not very good at Poker.”
“Clearly.”
“No. Shit.”
“Didn’t you have cards in your world?”
“Of course. We just... didn’t play Poker.”
“What did you play?”
“Um. Go Fish? Kings? ... Hearts?”
She sat back in surprise at their reactions, glancing at each of them. Water-boy was still scowling the way Sora did sometimes when they were doing something they were of course going to get in trouble for, no matter what Riku said. But he also began to nervously glance at the others in the room, waiting for one of them to react. The patched man was grinning, less tooth, less wolf, and more genuine amusement. Xaldin, eyes narrowed and thoughtful, said nothing, and Kairi got the impression he was staring at her rather than at what she said.
The man with the cards passed her the deck.
“Deal.”
*
After one round she picked up their names by the casual insults they threw at one another.
After two she categorised their style of playing. Xaldin with his poker face and careful placing of cards. Xigbar who smugly tossed down a card without particular strategy other than Avoid the Hearts. And Luxord, who scrutinized and calculated and who was now holding twelve hearts and the queen of spades.
“You’re going to be doing heartless duty for a week,” Luxord chanted, shuffling his pile of discarded hearts, smirking at his opponents.
“Actually, you’re losing, princess,” Xigbar sneered at Luxord, who scowled.
“Actually, I doubt there’s anything we can do to stop his winning,” Xaldin frowned, glancing at all his low suited cards. “It was well played,” he grudgingly said, tossing a lonely diamond down, the only one left of the suit. Demyx said nothing, sitting this round out, as Hearts was a four-player game.
“Actually, your face was well played.” And while Xaldin commented that that didn’t even make sense, Kairi cleared her throat quietly.
“Actually...” she said, placing the ace of hearts down and allowing herself a tiny grin. Xigbar stared at it, Luxord’s jaw slowly crept down, and Xaldin laughed while taking the card as his own.
“We’re keeping her,” he said.
After three rounds, Kairi remembered how to laugh. Clear and bright and echoing.
*
Kairi snuck back into Saïx’s room, and the man was still sleeping, eyes closed and scar not quite so jagged. She tiptoed to the bed and collapsed on it, staring at the dark ceiling and smiling.
They had told her it was best to go back to Saïx. Told her they’d bring her there if she didn’t go herself, and then Saïx would know she had escaped. She took their offer for what it was, imprisonment with the chance of temporary freedom once again.
She clenched her fingers in the sheets and rolled over, back to Saïx. In the pale moonlight she squinted at the ace of hearts she had been given. “For the look on Luxord’s face,” Xigbar had said, snatching it from Xaldin’s pile.
Carefully and quietly she reached over the edge of the bed and nudged the playing card between the two mattresses. He wouldn’t find it there. Why would he? Wouldn’t be able to feel it certainly, like a pea and a princess.
But Kairi knew it was there. She felt it burning into her back in the morning when Saïx ran ungloved fingers up her arm and scrapped them back down with nails digging. And that burning was all that warmed her when his more deeper touches managed to chill her skin deep.
*
“And where were you last night, hmm? Demyx is a complete hmm-hmm at Hearts,” Luxord said, leaning in Saïx’s doorway. Kairi grinned a little at his self censoring. He stared at her across the room, arms folded, as she sat bored at Saïx’s desk munching on leftover breakfast.
“He locked the door,” she shrugged.
Luxord rolled his eyes, made a strange gesture and pointed at her.
“Locked doors are no excuse to keep one away from their game. No excuse at all.”
They had a quick stare-off as he drummed his fingers against his folded arms and she twitched hers against the table.
Then he was turning on his heel and walking away. Kairi stared at the empty door for a moment before looking down at her food. How had she come to this? If she played with them would it really help her escape?
Maybe not from the castle, came the obvious answer. But it did help her escape from Saïx’s eyes and sleeping body and his touch in the morning because, ooh, her heart beat just so when he did.
Kairi closed her eyes. Dropped her forehead to the table.
She wanted to go home. To the beaches and the sea-salt air and the bitter taste of missing her boys. She wanted Sora’s laugh ringing in her ear. She wanted Riku’s smirk making her own lips smile. She wanted wanted wanted.
What a selfish girl you are, her mind hissed at her. You were sad to find the door locked, weren’t you? Not because it meant you were stuck with him for a night, but because it meant you couldn’t go off and play card games. Such a selfish, tragic girl. What would Sora say if he saw you now? Sora, who is looking for you. Sora, who is going to rescue you one day soon.
But Kairi couldn’t hear Sora in her mind anymore. Her imagination was as dry as her insides felt. Dry and crumbling with each breath. Each breath that caught in her throat and threatened to bring tears as revenge.
Because how dare she laugh and actually enjoy herself in this place when Sora was out there. How dare she, horrid horrid child.
Something brushed her arm and Kairi glanced down. A playing card. The two of hearts.
Don’t be late was scrawled across the back. A key taped to the front.
And then she did cry.
*
“Sleeping, sleeping child. Did you not sleep during the night?”
She could feel his fingers through her hair but didn’t care. Fingers that tugged and twisted and slipped from her scalp to her jaw line to her neck and down down down. Two fingers paused to rest at the bone between her breasts.
“Your heart is sleeping. You will tell me your dreams when you wake.”
Kairi wasn’t dreaming. She only ever had nightmares now.
*
It was late in the afternoon when Kairi woke properly. Saïx’s bed was always pleasantly tight and cocoon-like (so long as he wasn’t in it) and Kairi stretched and curled in the sheets for a guilty moment.
It felt like the day after a fever. When she was small, and would go to bed sick with no intention of waking for school in the morning. But then come sunrise, the sickness passed, and all she had was a free day with a burning sun, a bed full of blankets, and no one to answer to at all. (Until after three when Sora would be tossing pebbles at her window to find out where she was. And Riku would be knocking at her door, having decided stairs and doors were better suited than shouting down from windows.)
For the past three nights she had snuck out and played some cards with the others. It made her feel guilty, because they never failed to make her smile if not laugh. And that was wrong, wasn’t it? In this place.
Yet laying in bed with Saïx who had taken to kissing her more often than not, not because he was like the captors in all the novels that liked their wenches and maidens and wanted their bodies. He did it for the way her toes curled and her teeth clenched and her heart beat stop stop stop.
And the others seemed to view her as Saïx’s. As off limits. They didn’t place their hands over her and place their ears at her chest to hear her.
But late night card games meant late mornings. She half wondered why Saïx hadn’t made it his business to find out just what made her sleep so late and often. Maybe he didn’t care. Whatever kept her safe and tucked in his room.
Safe and tucked in and hungry, argh.
Pushing out of bed and straightening her skirt and shirt-sleeves as best she could, Kairi stumbled towards the door. When she yawned it nearly broke her jaw, and her lungs ached with the sudden intake of air. Her stomach ached too, a persistent warning pain that said if she dared try not to eat again it was mutinying. It was going to crawl up her throat and throw itself to its death, thank you very much, so you best go eat something, young lady.
She tried the door. Locked.
Back to the bed, under the mattress, two cards and a key.
Tempting fate, tempting fate, her mind screamed. But she opened the door nonetheless and peered out into the empty hallway. The two large statues still lurked, but she had learned if she dashed quick enough they couldn’t follow her properly.
She broke away, quick enough that she was out of the hallway before the sound of pounding stone could follow her. She ran past the room where cards were played and skidded to a stop.
Kairi. You’re free. Run.
The hallways were familiar, to a point. She had run through them in hopes of escape before. (To little success, she reminded herself.) That in mind, Kairi turned sharply when she saw a passage that looked unfamiliar.
Sounded unfamiliar too. A soft hum of strings that echoed over artificial walls and ceiling.
She knew who it was even before she turned the last corner into twilight but she still made herself peek and be sure. Demyx didn’t even notice her until she was feet away from him.
“What are you doing here?”
Kairi shrugged.
“Go away. I’m busy.”
“It plays music too? I mean... not just water?”
And Demyx laughed, head thrown back and mouth wide so she could almost see down his throat. She thought of the chords of his song and how they had once bent and twisted the bars of her prison. Thought that if it had been Demyx that had captured her she would be worrying how those same chords could bend and twist her bones. But he hadn’t captured her. Maybe if he had she would be more afraid to stay.
As it was she knelt down, looking up at him. Eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Can I hear?”
“Tch, what do you know about music?”
“I used to be in the school choir?” she hazarded, shrugging. He stopped half-glaring for a moment and glanced down to hide his quick grin.
“I don’t do ‘choir’.”
But he did do strings. And melodies. And insistent rhythms that slid under her skin and pretended to be blood. Long and quick and the notes were making her toes curl in comfort before it was broken quite suddenly:
“Kairi.”
She started, jumped a little, looked over her shoulder at Saïx. Had he ever said her name before? Demyx seemed to mirror her reaction, fingers nervously shifting over his instrument and mouth opening and closing. Kairi sprang to her feet.
“Did you know some cultures use music as an aphrodisiac?” she blurted, two steps away from Saïx. “Yeah,” she continued, taking a step forward. “See?” And she grabbed his hand, pressed it to her chest, and let him feel it beating through her clothes and skin. If it were beating frantically in nerves instead of the thrill of a well-played song, well, Saïx never need know.
“Indeed?” was all he said.
“Well... see ya!” And she waved to Demyx a little before marching purposely back towards Saïx’s room. Don’t get in trouble because of me, she thought desperately. Not because of me.
In the morning, in her shoe (how on earth...?), the jack of hearts.
*
Three days of staring at Saïx’s ceiling and two evenings of Hearts, and Demyx’s song was still stuck in her mind.
Her heart was dancing in rhythm, her blood thrumming like well plucked sitar strings, and her breathing sang an evening ballad. She fell asleep and dreamed of moonlight dancing.
*
Tangled and everywhere, Kairi woke to a long, startled shout. She sat up in bed and looked at Saïx blearily. Then looked at herself. She was in the centre of the bed, spread wide and swallowing the blankets whole around her.
She had been dancing in her sleep as well.
She looked at Saïx again, wide eyed and lower lip curling inward to be bitten nervously, and when she actually looked at him she sprang from the bed with a yelp. Thump, went her body connecting with the floor below. Thump, thump, thump, went her feet running across the floor to the door.
“Perhaps,” went Saïx’s snarl, loud and angry, “you can explain” (creak, went the door opening. Gasp, went Kairi nearly running into Xigbar) “why I woke up with this shoved-”
“Fuck, Saïx,” Xigbar called over, glancing at Kairi dishevelled in the doorway, at Saïx livid and seething, at the candlestick Saïx waved in his left hand. “What you do with your home décor is your own business. No need to advertise.”
“Eeep,” went Kairi, dodging under Xigbar and letting him deal with the crash and boom of a falling claymore.
Swoosh, went the eight of hearts passed to her that evening by Xigbar who, though bruised and ruffled, grinned so much wolf Kairi couldn’t help but grin back.
*
“I was told something interesting today,” Saïx said, watching Kairi kick off her shoes and curl to the far side of the bed. “I was told that the others know you. That you know them. That you laugh with them. Which is strange, surely, since I did not know you were capable of laughing, really.”
Kairi paused in rearranging the covers and looked at him over the edge of the blankets, her eyes hooded and hopefully shadowed from showing emotion.
“I was told that they make you smile. And that is not something I get to hear, is it? I do not get to hear your heart beating in happiness. In enjoyment. But I do not think I could make you smile, let alone laugh. So...”
He was beside her, almost on her, his greater height and weight pushing her to the bed with nowhere to roll or run.
“You said- you said you wouldn't st-”
“I can hardly steal what you are giving away. I have had your fear and your disgust and your anger, Kairi. I want to hear you happy. And I believe this is perhaps the only way.”
“I am not happy-” Kairi spat, but then his mouth was on hers and not just kissing. She had kissed a boy before. She had kissed Sora. This was not lips pressed to lips, it was Saïx’s mouth open and persistent and forcing her own lips apart. It was him biting at the corner of her mouth and him licking across her teeth. It was wet and gross and sending an undeniable warmth straight down her chest to pool elsewhere.
“I am not happy,” Kairi repeated. Saïx tilted his head, eyes narrowed and lips curved.
“You will be,” he said, and began to kiss lower.
*
She was sitting on a balcony that dropped many, many floors below. Arms folded across her chest (don’t think about there, gods, he had his mouth all over there and you liked it you sick little girl) and eyes distant and if she leaned only slightly forward she could fall all the way down. Break like the china doll she had once dropped accidentally down the stairs. Face cracked open and glass eye rolling away.
There was someone behind her. Kairi could feel him. But her spine didn’t try to curve inwards and claw its way out through the front, and her skin didn’t crawl along her bones, so she knew it wasn’t Saïx.
Because, she swore, if she had to see him right now, all her eternal organs were going to jump ship. She swallowed and turned her head.
Xaldin watched her closely, carefully, the way Saïx did but without the full force of the moon behind his eyes. He walked towards her and sat down, facing towards the castle, so though they sat side by side, their feet dangled on opposite ends of railing.
She almost smiled at the card he dropped on her lap.
“Why do you all keep giving me these?” she asked, waving the seven of hearts.
He shrugged, looking to the sky. Looking to Kingdom Hearts that loomed ever over them.
“We are all just waiting here. Waiting for things to end. To be complete. It is a long wait that does not have a known end. But I feel... somehow it seems right.”
“What does?”
“When all the hearts are gone, we may reclaim ours.” His gaze turned back to Kingdom Hearts for a moment before returning it to her. “But mostly I give it to you because you might not accept the other thing I brought.”
Kairi raised her eyebrows, lowering her arms for the first time since waking, and waited. Xaldin nodded towards the cloth bag at his feet. Leaning backwards, Kairi peered inside. Eyebrows further raised, she reached over and lifted at the bag. She pulled out a long-sleeved wool sweater. Underneath it were more clothes still.
“They’re your size. Surely you are getting cold.”
“I. I. Why would you think I wouldn’t accept this?” Kairi asked, not even hesitating to pull the sweater over her head and relishing the feel of layer between herself and the world. Relishing in the warmth of it.
“Because they come form a world I just burned to the ground.”
Oh, Kairi thought, turning to look back to the sky. That’s why they’re so warm.
*
Sora carded his fingers through her hair and she shook her head frantically. He recoiled and made a face at her.
“Why’d’jya cut it anyway?” he asked, unconsciously pouting, eyes glancing over the way her hair now fell only to just below her ears, tracing the edge of her neck.
“To catch wind,” she replied, tossing her head wildly, letting the short strands fly in the hot summer breeze. When Sora buried his fingers in it again, she didn’t shake them away, instead laughed and said: “my hair is shorter than yours now.”
“It’s always been shorter,” came the reply, not Sora’s young voice but something more darkly familiar. And Sora disappeared as Kairi sprang awake, confused and tangled in warm blankets. Her breath was frantic and sharp, and her eyes were still blinking away an old dream.
Saïx was stroking his gloved fingers through her hair. When she tried to pull away, he tightened. “Just a few shades off of Axel’s. But his was never this soft.”
This was the point where his fingers would shift further down and under her shirt. Where his lips would follow and his touch would make her warm as much as it made her cold, and damn her body for liking it.
But that point didn’t arrive before she opened her mouth and murmured,
“Axel, Axel, Axel,” ignoring the uh, Kairi, wait, stop warning that was trying to nudge her still-asleep brain. “S’all you ever talk about. Why don’t you just marry him?”
She heard a sudden intake of breath, a low grunt of a reaction. Saïx heard it too. They both turned to look at Xigbar in the doorway. Always in the doorway. And Saïx was off her, marching to the door, and the sound of it slamming shut and locked was all the permission she needed to sleep again.
*
It was five days before she saw Xigbar again. That was why he used the five, he said, giving her the card.
“Don’t know what we did around here before you,” he added, thumping her on the back and tugging her towards the card table.
*
She got the king of hearts from Demyx, mostly so she would leave him alone after this:
“How do you keep getting out, anyway?”
Kairi smiled secret and small. Tapped the edge of her nose twice. “Never you mind.”
“Humph. Well, I don’t think Saïx likes it much, ya know? And I don’t need him on me again cause of you, so scram.”
She folded her arms around her Xaldin sweater, stared at Demyx, wanting to fake pout but, gods, her lips wouldn’t turn down. If she tried to pout it might stay that way. And fake pouts meant fake teary eyes, and Kairi would not cry. She could feel a whole wall of tears pressing against the back of her eyes and if she let one fall the whole lot would follow.
“Seriously,” Demyx said, watching her strangely, and she wondered what emotions her face was making. He made a shooing motion with his hands, and the way his fingers dropped as he flicked his hand made her smile a little. Smile enough to plant her feet firmly. Demyx sighed.
“Sc-ram,” he repeated, playing a full strong chord on his instrument. No sound came out except for the whoosh of icy, cold water that fell from nowhere and landed square over Kairi. Over her head, down her shoulders, sinking through all her clothes and damping her skin.
“Whhuuuulah!” she screeched, back arching, shoulders shaking.
Demyx laughed then, and she only blinked at him, water dripping from her bangs over her eyes and down the length of her nose where it pooled in an annoying droplet. Blugh. She was soaked. Soaked like she hadn’t been in...
Kairi paused in her indignant shaking and traced back her days since being taken on the beach. No... nope... huh, no. Peeling off the sweater Kairi looked at Demyx with the first smirk she had allowed herself in weeks.
“... Can you make it warm?”
*
Little Kairi, sprawled across his bed, tangled in the covers. Hair damp, skin moist, and smelling of something other than sweat and tired. Almost smiling in her sleep, so contently wrapped up in dreams she was drooling a little. His bed sheets would never be the same.
Eyes narrowed, Saïx turned from his pause in the doorway, and squinted down the hall outside. His glare sought and deftly caught Demyx, casually walking towards his own quarters.
The boy paused, held up his hands in swift defence, and shook his head.
“She said to tell you that her hair was getting awfully gross, and if she didn’t wash it soon, there’d be creepy bugs in it, and she already had one creepy insect following her about (I think she might have meant you, by the by) and if you were angry that you had better yell at her for daring to want hygiene but to leave me the fuck alone,” Demyx finished in one long breath and growl.
“She said all that?”
“... the ‘fuck’ was from me.”
“It usually is,” Saïx murmured, and stepped back into his room, closing the door on Demyx’s startled and perplexed face.
*
“Stop, stop, stop,” was the only mantra keeping her mind grounded, her mind sane. His tongue slid along her inner thigh, from the back of her knee up, up, up and along the curve of her leg meeting hip.
“I may owe Demyx,” she thought he said, but she couldn’t be sure because she was grinding her whole body into the bed in an attempt to keep away. Her head pushed back and turned to the side, eyes squinted close.
And then his face was back close to hers. She could feel his breath at her ear, at her temple, before he shifted downwards so his head rested at her chest.
Ear to heart, always.
Saïx rested there, lightly, a strange weight between her breasts, and she made a noise as his hand slid purposefully between legs she couldn’t squeeze shut no matter how she pushed. His fingers stroked and pressed and scratched softly, but didn’t push. Didn’t go inside her, because that hurt a little and felt somehow forbidden, and he didn’t want to hear that in her heart.
He only wanted to hear it beating happy, beating pleasure, beating ‘don’t stop’.
Just two fingers, rubbing against bits of her she hadn’t learned to touch herself, and she was biting her lip, almost (but not, no, don’t) crying, and choking back any words except an answer when he asked, “should I stop?”
“Don’t stop.”
*
Sora, running and tripping along the sand, racing Riku as he did every day. Kairi watched them charge towards her, waiting to judge the winner. Riku won in a skid of wet sand and eight-year-old laughter.
“Why can’t I race?” Kairi asked, hands on hips.
“You’re not as fast as us. You’re a girl.”
“Girls are strong too!”
Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
Kairi pressed her palms to her closed eyes, hard. She wasn’t strong at all. Wasn’t smart either. She uncovered her eyes and peered down. She was sitting curled at the top of a building outcrop. Below Saïx’s large statues waited, pounding about the hallway. There were other creatures too, the white ones that curved and swam along the floor.
They’d eat her alive if she dropped down.
Kairi took a deep breath and pushed her head back against the wall. Not crying, she told herself firmly. Not crying.
Just waiting.
This was what she got, clearly. She let Saïx touch her, do things to her, and when it was all said and done, only then did she run. And get caught here of all places. Kairi dangled her legs over the edge in hopes of keeping them from falling asleep.
Something squeezed her ankle.
Yelping, Kairi kicked out, her foot hitting something solid, the force making her slide from the wall and land on the ground. She was on her feet in an instant, wary and ready to run and dash from the nobodies that would swarm. But there were no creatures waiting.
Just Xaldin, rubbing his jaw and glaring at her a little.
“Oh. Um. Sorry?” Was that her voice? Kairi shook her head and cleared her throat. She sounded like she’d been screaming, but that wasn’t possible. All her recent screaming had been silent.
Xaldin motioned with a nod left. “I’ll walk you back.”
Kairi folded her arms and nodded. Kairi had layered herself in almost every piece of clothing Xaldin had brought her a few days ago. Pants and skirts and shirts and sweaters. She was suffocating in cotton but refused to let her skin out to breathe. Because when it could breathe it tended to say things. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop. And if Xaldin thought anything of Kairi gagging her body, he said nothing, merely guided her forward with a hand occasionally pressing to her back to steer her a certain direction.
“Saïx told me you were telling stories.”
“He called me a liar? About what?”
Xaldin smiled, briefly. “You misunderstand. He said you were telling him... tales. Memories. Anecdotes?”
“Oh,” Kairi shrugged. “... we don’t... we don’t do that much anymore.”
“There is one story it would be good for you to hear. Saïx didn’t know it to tell.”
They paused at the corner of a hallway.
“You see. We were human once, with hearts, and-”
“I know,” Kairi interrupted. “You’re trying to get your hearts back. Saïx told me.”
“Yes,” Xaldin smiled, briefly. “The thirteen of us. Saïx is seventh. But my story is from the first six of us. We knew one another. Before, I mean. We remember it, distantly, and remember some things more than others. I know we did this to ourselves in a search for knowledge. We were scientists, the six of us. We wanted to be, in any case.
“Always studying, always learning, always reading. We were focusing on the heart. On the heartless. We spent hours in the library there. We were favourites of the old woman who owned it. ‘Ansem’s boys’ she called us. She had a small granddaughter... I still remember her name.”
Xaldin held out his hand, and Kairi only took the six of hearts from him tentatively, like somehow he still wanted to hold onto it but was giving it to her anyway.
“The six of us,” he said, staring at the six hearts on the card, “would never. Not to you. But Saïx is seven. ... Do you understand?”
“Are you... are you apologising for him?” Kairi asked, clenching her fists. Xaldin watched her crumple the playing card but said nothing regarding it.
“No. What he does with his own is no concern of ours. ...I have no heart. But I will regain it some day soon. And I believe that I’d... feel regret if I did not say this to you now.”
“Say what?” Kairi asked, eyebrows furrowed, and fists only slightly loosening. “I don’t follow your story.”
“Hn. Perhaps, in the end, that’s for the better.”
*
It was to be the day in which Kairi tasted liquor.
“Hah hah, cursed booty. Well, no. No, not much booty on that girl,” and Luxord made a gesture towards his own backside. “Lots and lots of this though.” He waved his glass in the air.
“How come I never get to go to the worlds with the rum?” Xigbar complained mildly, gently pulling the bottle away from Luxord.
“Hey, hey. Ladies too!” Luxord grabbed the bottle back and slid it towards Kairi. She stared at it for a moment.
“I don’t think I should.”
“I hear tell you deserve it,” Luxord went on. “Creepy nobodies swarming you all day. And I’m not talking about Saïx. Here, I’ll give ya this if ya do.” Xigbar reached over and stole what Luxord was waving. He tossed the card to Kairi.
“I’ll give it to you if you don’t,” Xigbar said. He was watching her still like a wolf, but not the kind that huffs houses down, but the kind that stalks and circles to protect kin against predators. Kairi knew that Xigbar was numbered as two.
The six of us would never. Not to you.
Kairi looked away.
“Come on, don’t you want to see little Kairi pissed out of her mind?” Luxord laughed. “Think about it.”
“I... I don’t think Saïx would appreciate you offering rum to his little captive. And since I respect Saïx’s wishes, I feel it is my duty to take this temptation away from her sight,” Xigbar said, dead-faced to Luxord, but when he glanced at Kairi for moment the expression was back to being regular wolfish.
Luxord blinked drowsily at them both. Said: “Saïx is behind me, isn’t he?”
It was the day Kairi tasted liquor. Not from a glass, but from some spare droplets that sprayed her way when Saïx upended the bottle over Luxord’s head.
*
“You don’t need that filth, you know. Rum,” Saïx scoffed. “You are intoxicating as it is.”
*
“He didn’t find friendship among us, you know. But I think he did like you. Silly child that you are.”
She had only met him once before, weeks ago. The man Saïx called ‘superior’.
“Demyx was our ninth member,” he continued, passing her a playing card face down, though she knew at once what number it must be.
“Your Sora just killed him.”
*
“He did not,” Kairi yelled, hands fisted and waiting. As soon as Saïx entered the room she was ready, spine tight and every nerve twisted and strung taut.
“Your pardon?”
“Sora. Sora would not... he wouldn't kill someone,” Kairi shouted, and her shoulders felt like they were going to split her skin and collapse in on themselves they were so curved and tense.
Saïx stared at her, as golden and calm and cruel as ever.
“Perhaps Sora did not think Demyx was ‘someone’. Perhaps without a heart he was just another heartless thing to be destroyed.”
Kairi shook her head so fast her stray hair nearly blinded her as it whipped across her face.
“It wasn’t Sora.”
“I assure you it was. I saw him today.”
“You- what?”
“He’s the one feeding Kingdom Hearts. Didn’t you realise? Every heartless he destroys in one more heart for our kingdom. Today, he gave us a feast. One thousand hearts, splayed and bloody over a battlefield.”
Kairi was shaking her head again.
“Not Sora.”
“Yes Sora. Sora who slaughtered and killed relentlessly. Sora who made a pact with a dark queen just to escape us. Sora... Sora who fell to his knees today to beg me. To beg me to see you.”
“No,” Kairi whispered. “No, no, no,” she repeated, her fists against Saïx now, beating against his chest over and over and her head was splitting with the need to cry. He let her hit, merely resting his hands on her upper arms so he was embracing her while she flailed.
When she looked up at him he was almost smiling. She drew in a breath and released a sob.
“I hate you,” she said, and every wall and ward she had built to keep back her tears didn’t just crumble but fell completely apart as if built of dry sand.
“Ah. It seems I owe you an apology. You were right and I was mistaken. I cannot break you.” He brushed his gloved finger along her face, curving it along her cheekbone to catch a sliding tear. “Sora beat me to it.”
.VI.
“But I don’t understand, wasn’t that one of his three rules? That he couldn’t make a person unwillingly love another?”
“Mm, yes, but I needed to buy time for Aladdin to get the lamp again. So...” Jasmine shrugs. “No matter how evil he was, Jafar was still a man. And men... there are ways to keep them distracted.”
Jasmine makes an explicit hand gesture which sends the girls alternately into embarrassed giggles or dark red blushes. Poor Alice drops her tea into her lap and the moment is broken in a scramble to clean the spill and calm the flustered child.
But Jasmine’s added “He was a crap kisser too” only starts them up again.
*
Kairi began to do something she hadn’t done since the beginning of her captivity: count the days passing. Every rise and set of the sun was another day of Sora still out there. Of Sora not being with her so she could look him in the eye, so she could hold him tight, and know that Saïx lied when he said he killed things.
Saïx marked the days as well. But while Kairi used crosses on paper, Saïx knew the days by what he stole.
This day he stole Kairi’s gasps, torn from her lips when he twisted his finger just then, just there, and her whole lower body bucked upwards.
That day he stole her whimpers, caught in her throat until he licked his way across her pulse beating and swallowed them whole. They tasted both bitter and sweet, like stale honey.
He collected her voice and her sobs and her sweat that fell at her temples when he kept at her body too long. Her groans and stutters and some of the strangest slews of near profanities when he put tongue where only fingers had gone before.
And when there was nothing left to steal from her, he’d start again.
Because the only thing he had not taken was her passion. Her willingness. Her fire. And he was not so shameless as to forcibly take that.
Her fire she would give him. And in the darkest part of her mind, Kairi knew it. And Saïx knew she knew, because he had stolen that thought from her the night before.
Another day has passed. Kairi made another scratch on her paper. Saïx made another scratch on her skin, biting his way along her collarbone while the sun set and the moon took its place.
*
After Demyx’s death there was no more laughter at card games. After Xaldin’s, Kairi stopped attending all together. No one came to collect her. She hadn’t seen the others in nine days (as her calendar said), making it a surprise to find Xigbar suddenly in Saïx’s room.
He regarded her a moment, looking her up and down, not smiling, and Kairi was surprised to find she missed that wolfish grin. He pressed a playing card into her hands and waited until she had flipped it (the queen) and was looking at his face again before speaking.
“Sora entered this world. It won’t be long before he comes to the castle. One of us needs to go mess with him a bit. But Saïx will do more than mess about, you know that, right? Just... if you want Sora to... you might wish to...”
“Distract Saïx?” Kairi asked, the playing card feeling cold and sharp edged in her sweaty palms. She wondered if the card could cut skin it felt so piercing in her hands. Wondered if her blood everywhere would be enough of a distraction, but knew that there was only one thing to keep Saïx occupied and away from Sora.
“Thank you,” she said to Xigbar, who watched her closely before waving his hand in a ‘bah, t’was nothing’ gesture and left Saïx’s room with a soft click of the door.
The queen in her palm glared up at her until Kairi ripped the card into four halves and scattered the pieces across the bed. There was no such thing as a queen of hearts. Only slaves of them.
*
Saïx found her lying on a bed of torn playing cards, each a ripped portion of the heart suit, scattered across her flung body.
“They said if I got all of them, you would have your heart back. But it’s not true, is it? Where is your heart?”
“I do not know. That’s why your Sora is so valuable to us. He will free our hearts.”
“You can’t have Sora,” Kairi said, sitting up. “Making him... kill for you. It will destroy his heart, I know it will. And you can’t have Sora’s heart.”
“So demanding,” he murmured, fingers touching the very ends of her hair, watching them fall from his hand. “But it’s not up to you. Sora is here. I will make him give me my heart.”
Kairi reached out, her own hand pale and thin - translucent in a way she couldn’t remember it ever being. She stared at her own veins for a moment, mesmerised, before following Saïx’s arm up to his shoulder, to his face.
“You will not. You will not touch Sora,” she said. There was no tremble in her voice, no whimper caught somewhere deep and hollow. The queen of hearts was torn beneath her. Kairi was the new queen of hearts.
Saïx gave her his half smile. “How do you propose to stop me?” he asked.
Kairi let go of his hand for just long enough to latch unto his upper arm, pulling herself up on the bed, pulling him down, smashing their mouths together. Hard and bitter and hurting and there was the taste of blood and Kairi knew it wasn’t her own.
“You will not touch Sora,” she repeated, her fingers in his hair, on his cheek, edging the line of his coat. “But you can touch me... any way you want,” she finished, breathing hard and heavy near his jaw, waiting for him to do something.
She did not expect him to chuckle.
“Is this you breaking?”
“... yes. Yes, this is me breaking,” she replied, not knowing whether it was true or not. Saïx shook his head.
“Hm. I do not think it is. I know what a broken heart sounds like,” he said, picking up a piece of torn playing card, “and that is not your heart. However, you said perhaps Sora’s heart is being destroyed, so I think-”
“You will not. You told me before that one day I would ask you for this. That I would give you what you didn’t dare steal.”
“It’s hardly a gift if you use it as a bargaining tool, is it?”
He turned to leave but there was no leaving. She wouldn’t let him. She was standing on the bed, making her taller, so she wrapped her leg around his waist and fell backwards. He toppled over on top of her with a startled noise, and while he was still disoriented she pushed him to his back and got to her knees. Hovering over him, she kneeled over his hips and let her face fall inches from his own.
“I am asking you for this, do you understand? You will stay here, with me. Only with me,” she slipped forward and down, moving her hips so their groins brushed together through clothing and Saïx made a strangled noise. He looked up at her, and for once, for once, his expression was not calm. Anything but. She couldn’t place it but there was something unhinged and wild and sorely tempted in his gaze.
“Isn’t this what you want?” Kairi asked, moving her hips once more, rolling them, beginning a strange rhythm of bump and grind. “Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for?” her voice was steady even though her pulse was going to tear her skin with it’s rapid rhythm, and her limbs were going to shatter with shaking.
“You have yet to actually ask,” he answered, and his voice wavered.
Kairi tightened her jaw, touched her lips to his own, buying time. Because it was one thing to kiss him and touch him and willingly let him have every part of her. But it was something else entirely to ask it of him. She had to mentally strangle and drown every protest and whimper to stop stop stop. She was doing this because it wouldn’t destroy her, she knew that. Wouldn’t kill her or damage her or break her.
And she was doing this for Sora.
“Please,” she asked. “Please. Saïx.”
It was probably the ‘Saïx’ that did it. She had never said his name before.
On her tongue... it tasted like nothing. She was expecting rot and bitterness, but it was just a word. Just a word she could make her lips form again and again if it saved Sora, even if just for a moment.
“Saïx,” she said again, and touched her lips to him. She had learned to kiss from him, learned how to give a kiss if not return it, and she mimicked everything she had felt his mouth do to hers in the weeks prior. Perhaps she wasn't as experienced and perhaps she wasn't as sure, but she was persistent and desperate, and maybe that was enough.
Saïx had always had to kiss her and touch her gently for what felt like forever before her body would respond. Usually his fingers had to actually be stroking right there for her to get damp and ready. Because of that, she had mentally prepared herself for needing to touch and lick and do whatever along his chest and face to get him to the same place as her. The place Saïx always seemed to deem as ‘ready’ for moving from touching to actual touching. But Kairi didn’t have to wait.
She could feel him (oh gods oh gods) pressing up with every grind of her hips. Pressed against the thin layer of her underwear because her skirts had long since ridden up her thighs to her hips.
And she knew her own body now enough to recognise the beginning warmth down there, the beginnings of a burn that would hurt and twist and pull at her insides but always made her gasp for more (even if only in her head, god, don’t give him the satisfaction of aloud). He wouldn’t need to touch her today. It was like touching herself.
Forward and back, she rocked, and for one wild moment she wondered if that would be enough. If she could just grind against him here, with both her clothes and his separating them, with his own hips pushing forward and up and his eyes drifting close. He had never made her touch him. Had never touched himself with her present. She didn’t know. Maybe this would be enough.
Oh you silly, silly child.
Saïx grabbed her waist suddenly, fingers pinching and digging deep.
“You best finish what you start, little girl,” he hissed, leaning up and not so much kissing her as biting her lower lip and almost dragging it down with him. He was pulling her up and away from his hips, and she stared at him confused for a single moment before she felt him reach beneath the bunched fabric of her skirt and tug at her underwear. Down it slipped to her knees where it caught against the side of his own chest.
But he made no move to shift her off or shift himself so she could undress fully. Instead, using only one hand to keep her kneeling and lifted, he used the other to reach down his body. The zipper on his coat seemed to be deafening and it set an off-rhythm to the frantic sound of her blood pounding in her ears. Coat pulled apart she could see his bare chest, and then there was a belt buckle, a further zipper, and he was pulling down there. She watched his face, the strange contortions that washed over his every feature, and it was so so strange after so many weeks of impenetrable calm.
And oh god oh god she could feel wet skin brushing against her inner thigh and she knew it wasn’t her own so she knew what it was and oh god oh god.
“Ask me for this, Kairi,” he said, “Tell me you want this.” And his thumb was by her own entrance, pushing where he had only stroked or touched before. And below his thumb what she was meant to be asking for, brushing and waiting and Kairi couldn’t see his face for a moment because of tears shielding her vision. They were thin enough to blink away though, and she ignored the headache that came from not-crying. She looked Saïx in the eye and lied.
“I want this.”
The hand holding her waist suddenly pulled down and she was flat down on Saïx, her thighs hugging along his chest, her underwear stretched across his navel, and she was stretched, god, cause he was in her.
There was no swallowing down her soft sob.
It wasn’t like before and maybe she thought it would be. Because, surely, if only his fingers had made her toes curl and her spine stretch, surely this should feel that much better. But it burned and pulled and it was a pain she just wanted to put pressure on until it stopped throbbing, which was clearly out of the question.
Her chin was touching her collarbone and her hair fell across her eyes and around her cheeks so he couldn’t see her. But he could hear her well enough. The hitch of her breath, the whine in her throat, the hateful beating of her heart.
His fingers reached up, touched beneath her eyes, brushing away tears that hadn’t fallen.
“If I wanted you like this,” he said, “I would have taken you long ago. I can find blushing, unwilling girls in any world, Kairi. And if I can find them anywhere, I might as well go there... once I’ve dealt with Sora. So you see, perhaps you-” he stopped mid word as she squeezed around him down there, purposefully, and inched forward. She pushed with her knees, up, then let herself fall slowly back down.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she panted, breath short, everything below her waist just aching and surely sex wasn’t supposed to be so... uncomfortable. The elastic of her underwear tugged painfully at the inside of her knees, and she really just wanted to lie down because it felt like her back was curving into an S somehow.
And even as the burn dulled the more she moved her hips in small circles, lifting up at the start of each new one, it didn’t mean she particularly liked it. She felt awkwardly full and her stomach was rolling and empty.
She kept thinking that this wouldn't last forever, that there would be an end at some point. And then felt so horribly guilty because when it ended it meant Sora wasn't safe. So she slowed her hips, leaned forward, and kissed him with a tenderness not born of kindness but manipulation.
And the groan that vibrated from his mouth to hers certainly didn’t send a jolt of pleasure along her veins. Certainly not.
But as much as she tried to slow it Saïx seemed to hasten it. His own hips were setting a pace just one half thrust quicker than her own, and he was so much stronger that she had to obey his rhythm. And then there were fingers too, still gloved (and didn’t that feel weird?) touching just above where his other body parts were busy moving up up up.
Fingers that touched and twisted and oh, that was familiar.
“Did you think I’d let you be a martyr?” he asked, flicking and pressing. “Yes, know that you did this for your Sora. But know that you liked doing it.” He hissed the words in her ear, almost sitting up, moving his hips towards her with a faster tempo and all she could hear was his breath through her hair and spilling down her spine like spiders.
Yet he made her shudder and cry and tense all body-over like he always did when he touched her long enough, and then he was tensing too, pushing forward with awkward jerks and his gasps were all that soothed her body to silence again.
“You are fire. You truly are. If I am the moon then you are the sun. And your heart,” he said as he pulled out and away from her, lying her down in a tangled sprawl of sore and lazy limbs, strewn clothing, and ripped playing cards sticking to her sweaty skin. “It is beating a new rhythm.”
His ear was to her chest and then he was looking straight into her eyes.
“It sounds like defeat.”
.VII.
“Well, Maleficent had me for a bit, I suppose,” Kairi says, nodding to Aurora. “But I don’t remember any of that. My heart was with Sora.” Kairi laughs, looking at the six other girls. “I’m sorry. You all did so much to escape your prisons, didn’t you? But mine doesn’t really count.
“Nothing happened.”
*
Alone on a bed of broken cards. Kairi wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. She was afraid she had forgotten how.
There was a whisper and a swoosh and that horrible smell of ozone announcing a dark portal opening in the small room. Kairi turned her head with only a small amount of curiousity because, after all, most people used he door.
Out of the portal stepped a girl her age, pale and beautiful and dressed in moonlight. She straightened her dress, glanced to her side and smiled as she patted the head of a dog that sat there.
Oh, Kairi thought, I know that dog. Sitting up a little, Kairi leaned forward to get a better look. It was the dog that had been with her through the portals. She had been with him when Axel had taken her. Saïx had left him behind.
Moaning, the dog walked over and pressed its wet nose to her knee and made a small whimper. Kairi’s hand dropped to its head and petted softly. But he attention was mostly on the girl now who was watching her with the saddest frown on her face.
“I’m so sorry it took me this long,” the girl said, resting her long fingers at Kairi’s temple. She was looking at Kairi, eye to eye, and whatever she saw there made her lower lip tremble and sent her body forward into a tight embrace.
“Look what he did to you,” she said, squeezing her arms, and Kairi swallowed a sob. She moved forward more still, pressing her body to the other girl, and breathed shakily and deeply.
“Who are you?” Kairi managed after a wet in-take of breath.
“They call me a witch. Because I can manipulate memories...”
“But. But who are you?” Kairi asked again. The girl smiled, softly.
“Someone who has been waiting an awfully long time to meet you...” Staring at Kairi’s eyes again, the witch scrunched her own and made a decision. “I can unlock memories. Or lock them shut. I will lock yours, Kairi. You shouldn’t have to remember this place. You shouldn’t have to remember him. Just...” The girl moved her hands from the hug to cup either side of her face.
“It won’t hurt. And when you wake up, none of this will have been real. Pluto will look after you, right?” she asked the dog, glancing down. The dog, Pluto, barked once.
“Go to sleep, Kairi,” the girl said. Kairi fell forward and when her head hit the girl’s chest, Kairi realised she could hear no heartbeat.
*
Argh, Kairi thought, looking around her small cell. She was kidnapped. From one creep to another. The dog by her feet made a sharp bark as it watched Kairi pace her prison.
After a moment, a man in a dark cloak passed by.
“Hey!” she called after him, holding the bars and glaring at the strange blue haired, scarred man. He watched her with an annoyingly calm expression, his eyebrows slowly drawing down in confusion at the way she was looking at him.
Fine, she thought. Let him freak. She wasn’t afraid of him.
“What do you want us with us?” she demanded. The man merely blinked, still frowning deeply and said, “You are the fire that fuels Sora’s anger.”
Kairi broke away from the bars and glared at the man’s retreating back.
What to do, what to do? Kairi had no idea.
She had never been held prisoner before.
---