Drink Up, Me Hearties } Chapter 8 - The Page of Wands
Word Count: 4212
Genre: Humour, Angst
Ships?: Uhhhh none! In a way. *cough*
→Friendships?: Tifa&Roxas
Characters: Zexion, Quistis, Xigbar, Mirage, Tifa, Roxas
→Cameos: Luxord, Naminé, Freya, Vivi, Eiko, Nani
→Mentions: Xaldin, Vexen, Captain Hook
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.
Music: "Quistis's Theme" ♪ "Tifa's Story"
Notes: FINALLY. FINALLY. AAAAGHHHH. School has put a huge space between this and Chapter 7, but I sort of intended Chapter 7 to be the end of 'Act I' anyway. So here! Have the beginning of Act II!
And since I couldn't find a version of Tifa's Story on Imeem, I'll try and link the songs to YouTube videos now. :3
PFFF I'M PROBABLY SUPER RUSTY AT THIS
In which the sometimes unpleasant past is revisited many times.
Drink Up, Me Hearties
Chapter 8: The Page of Wands
“Hello, Zexion.”
“Your room has always been on the bare side, hasn’t it Quistis?”
The blind woman tilted her head just slightly towards the far corner to the right of her door. She could hear the illusionist’s fingers glide through the cloud of hanging skulls. “I don’t need much to look at, Zexion. Just my tools.”
“Hmm-mm,” the boy hummed. The deck below his feet creaked slightly as he approached. “I have another prize. Do you like it?”
There was a swoosh and Quistis could tell what his new toy was before he even placed it in her hands. The seer smiled up at him gently, stroking the red velvet and the giant white feather plume of James Hook’s hat. “It’s lovely. A wonderful addition to your collection.”
“I thought so,” Zexion said with a sigh, sinking to the floor like pouring water. He leaned forward slightly and whispered, as though telling the most secret of secrets. “Hats are very important, you know. They let you know who you are. When you have otherwise forgotten.”
Quistis pulled out a hat box from beneath her bed and placed Zexion’s trophy from Neverland delicately inside. “That’s what Captain James said. Or at least, I think that’s what he said.” The boy’s head flopped sideways to rest his cheek against his shoulder. “He was making terribly loud noises a majority of the time.” He pouted. “It was quite deplorable, in my honest opinion.”
“Come now, Zexion.” The seer found his cheek with her hand, hearing his clothes shift and his posture change. “Don’t lean your head like that. You’ll get a crick in your neck.”
Zexion tilted his head from side to side, grinning widely. “My neck is perfectly not-cracked, thank you.”
Quisits’s lips tightened, but the illusionist didn’t seem to notice. As quartermaster of the Boreas, it was her job to keep things relatively peaceful among the crew of cut-throats, and while Zexion was certainly not a physical danger, his powers evened the playing field quite nicely. She had to be very careful around him, and she sighed, putting on a motherly smile. Her kindness towards him was her best defence against him. “Yes, well. The captain wants me to cast the stones. Would you care to join me, Zexion?”
“Oh… I think so,” he said, watching as she retrieved her special lockbox, the lid inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It shimmered in the scant light given by her guttering candles. He tilted his head again, watching the ice-thick lenses of her glasses.
“Quistissssss. The prit-ee-est, the other Tiresias.” He closed his eyes, nodding to himself and smiling. He was always smiling. He opened his eyes and scooted closer to her, legs still folded beneath him.
At first, Quistis thought of leaning away from him. She could feel him move towards her out of the constant black of her eyesight, and it was not a comforting feeling. Immediately calming herself, she remembered that Zexion’s insanity made him very sensitive and might react sourly if her retreat upset him.
The boy removed the spectacles from her face, watching the glittering lights disappear from the glass. Her opaque eyes were the same blue as the magic that had faded from the lenses. She heard Zexion’s sleeves shifting and knew he was wearing them.
“She who sees so much more than allllll the rest,” Zexion sang.
“And yet I see nothing,” Quistis replied, smiling cryptically.
“And yet you see everything.” Zexion blinked through the glasses at the hanging crystals and cloths around the room. “You can see my future, yes?”
“Hm.” The seer frowned. “You’re future is…”
“Complicated? Chaotic? Cathartic? Coaxial? Comme il faut?” Zexion flowed down to floor, lying on his stomach. “Corazon?”
“What was that last one, Zexion?” Quistis asked, genuinely curious.
“Oh. That’s not right, is it?” The boy flipped on his back and traced half-formed constellations on the ceiling. “Not an adjective, that one.” He laughed quietly. “I’ve lost my own game.”
Quistis leaned over her box of stones and removed her glasses from Zexion’s face as gently as possible. “Your future is unpredictable,” she said.
“Aaah, I see,” Zexion hissed, craning his neck to watch her upside-down. Quistis replaced her glasses and the glow returned to the lenses. Then she picked several stones from the depths of her box, weighing them in her palm and running her fingers over smooth curves and rough edges. She put some back into the box and kept others. Then she clasped her hands together, cradling the stones within. “The future now?”
“Yes, Zexion. The future now.” She blew through a gap in her fingers onto the stones. And then she cast them onto the floor.
The illusionist flipped onto his stomach as the stones clattered onto the deck. The arrangement of where they had fallen was meaningless to him, but Quistis understood. “Second star to the right,” she said, picking up one.
“And straight on till morning,” Zexion answered absently, staring up into the corners of room, as though watching something.
“Zexion, tell me,” Quistis said, dropping the stone into his hand. “What is peculiar about this one?”
The boy snapped to attention. He turned the stone over and over in his hands and his eyes began to glow, throwing light on the sparkling flecks in the rock. Soon, he found the abnormality that Quistis had challenged him to find. “A fossil,” he answered, fingering the spiralling dip where a shell had turned to sand and rock from compression.
“Very good. Now who taught you such a clever thing?” the seer asked, smiling widely.
Zexion sat up straight, his eyes flaring sky blue in his excitement. “Vexen! We’re going to visit Vexen?”
“So the future seems to be.”
“Oh, how glorious,” the boy said, grinning as widely as he could to the ceiling. He tossed the stone up into the air. Whatever goes up…
---
The stone landed back in Luxord’s hand, and he skipped it across the green lagoon they floated on top of. “No man is an island,” he said, and chuckled once. “How… quaint.”
“What do you mean, Luxord?” Freya asked. She had both her sleeveless pink and his blue surcoat was draped over her arm. The wooden walkways creaked beneath her clawed feet, silent in-between the clomps of Tifa and her captain’s boots.
“Nomanisan,” Luxord said, grinning. “Whoever named this place was obviously well-read.”
“Well, Xigbar did say that these islands were full out of outcasts, not prisoners.” Tifa shrugged. “They’re probably a tonne of people who were shunned because they read too much.”
Her captain scoffed. “I cannot recall ever referring to the people as prisoners, Tifa. We haven’t landed in Australia.”
Tifa opened her mouth, glaring and shocked, when Freya interjected. “Both of you stop before you start bickering like an old married couple.”
The Burmecian smirked as whatever reply the boatswain had planned to say devolved into an “Uh”. Luxord was distracted by grinning victoriously yet again and nearly walked straight into Vivi’s back.
Catching himself and standing beside his older swabbie, the captain saw they had all come to a standstill in front of a large building in the middle of the lagoon, elevated above the green water by thick bamboo stilts. Xigbar stood nearest the door and stared at the knocker, transfixed.
Luxord crossed his arms over his chest, giving a triumphant sideways glance towards his first mate. “Well, well, well. Is somebody nervous about a reunion with their old friend?”
“What?” Xigbar asked, as though he was snapping out of a trance. “No. Not at all. …You do know this is our hotel, right?”
All eyes were on him in a second.
“So I guess I didn’t say that?”
“Xigbar,” Luxord said as the rest of the crew groaned. “Please tell me you know where this Vexen fellow of yours is.”
“Of course I do!” Xigbar replied, stomping his feet on the deck below them for emphasis. “He’s on the next island over. We couldn’t land there because there’s a reef and we have to take the ferry. Would it kill you to have a little faith in me?”
“It might,” Tifa said drily, arching an eyebrow.
Grumbling something incoherent, Xigbar threw the door open and strode in. The crew followed behind him and crowded into the front room of the huge bungalow.
Strong bamboo shoots held up the roof. The walls served more as separators, with plenty of empty air between the top of them and the rafters. There were sliding doors with white paper windows across the room and, judging by the silhouettes and sounds of people beyond them, there was some sort of dining room behind them. In the half of the room they were standing in, there were numerous couches, large colourful sacks scattered about, and a desk at the far end where some people were signing up for rooms.
Naminé approached one of the sacks, curious. She sat down and sank backwards into it, whatever filled them moulding to fit her shape. “A bag chair,” she laughed. “What a neat idea.”
Xigbar stood arms akimbo and whistled through his teeth as Eiko threw herself at one of cushion chairs and the swabbies followed suit. “This place sure has changed since I was here last.”
“And what, pray tell, was it like the last time you were here?” Luxord asked, caught between smiling at his daughter with her knees tucked to her chest and scowling at the blond boy she was chatting with.
“Well, it definitely didn’t have these neat bag chairs. Or any of the decorations,” Xigbar said, pointing to a vase where a bouquet of birds-of-paradise showed their plumes of petals. “It just wasn’t nearly as…” He drifted off, scanning the room.
The woman who was signing out a room for a couple of bounty hunters at the desk had long white hair down her back. She had a blue bandanna on her head and was wearing a purple dress lined with bright green. Silver hoop earrings hung from her ears and silver bracelets and rings and chains on top of mocha skin shone in the sunlight.
“Pretty,” Xigbar finished, and then hissed under his breath. “Shit.”
“Xigbar,” Freya raised an eyebrow, her voice taking on that no-nonsense tone. “What’s going on with you today?”
“Weshouldleave,” Xigbar mumbled, pulling Vivi out of one of the bag chairs just as the rest of the crew watched the couple of bounty hunters slide open the dining room doors.
“How may I help you?” the woman asked, raising her eyes and looking at them from across the room. Her soft voice had an accent to it, exotic and mysterious.
Her eyes landed on Xigbar, and her helpful expression dropped off her face.
Immediately, silence fell. How the diners in the next room knew something was going on was a complete conundrum, but the sound of eating halted like a bolt of lightning had struck the building.
Before anyone could react in any way, the woman recovered herself. And sent Xigbar a narrow green glare that made him - a man who had been shot several times over the course of his life - wince.
“Yes, maybe we should leave,” Luxord said, clapping his hands together.
There was a chorus of “I agree!”, “Good luck with that Xigbar,” and “Okay, we’ll miss you, bye!” before the front door slammed and the entire dining room full of silhouettes disappeared.
Xigbar was alone in a room with a gorgeous woman.
And he had never been more terrified for his life then he was in that moment.
“H-Hey, babe,” he said, attempting a grin and wave.
She glided out from behind her desk, her heeled boots stomping a death beat heading straight for him. “Get. Out,” she hissed.
“Listen, listen, I don’t want to-” He attempted to be placating, holding his hands away from the gun holsters on his hips, but she only grabbed him and threw him against the front door, which rattled in its frame. He should’ve gone right out the door… unless someone was leaning against it to eavesdrop.
Luxord, you bas- Xigbar cut off his own thought when a long silver dagger thunked into the wood beside his head, and he swore he heard the door splinter a little. “So, uh, I guess you don’t want to talk, huh?”
She glared at him and his heart thumped against his ribcage until it hammered its way into his throat.
And then his brain had to start talking to him.
God damn, she's sexy when she's mad. I wonder if she'd get angry if I just kissed her right now? Well, yeah. Of course she would, you idiot. We’re talking pre-Luxord era here, come on, pay attention. The last thing you want is for her to get any angrier.
“What do you want from me, Xigbar?” she asked, drawing out every word slowly and clearly, to make sure he heard the malice in her voice.
Gulping, he raised his hands again. “I was… sort of hoping we could sign out rooms?”
“Oh! Is that all?” The contempt on her face melted off like ice turning to water, but he knew that meant the water he was in had just been set to boil. She wrenched her dagger out of the wood and he definitely heard wood snap beside his left ear. “I suppose you want a discount after all our history together,” she said, gliding back to her desk serenely, just the way he remembered-
Shaking his head to dislodge the memory, Xigbar pushed himself away from the door. “No, Mirage, I would never-”
“Never what?!” She spat, wheeling on him. “Take advantage of me?”
And just like that, his lungs got tied together and filled to the brim with stones. She glared through those green eyes and the light hit her hair just right and-
Xigbar remembered. His heart was still pounding and he wished he knew what to say to make it stop hurting his chest.
“No,” she hissed through her teeth. “You wouldn’t dare to take advantage of me, you slug.”
“You’re right,” he agreed quietly. If Mirage was caught off guard by his change in tone, she didn’t show it. “Anyone trying to take advantage of you is a… an idiot.”
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t throw you out of here right now,” she said, turning away and continuing to her desk.
Much to the surprise of every soul eavesdropping - willingly or unwillingly - Xigbar had a nearly immediate response. “I saved your life,” he said, his tone soft and lukewarm, as though awakening to a bittersweet memory one morning.
Mirage froze halfway to her desk. Her back was turned to him, but he saw her grip the handle of her dagger tight enough that her tanned knuckles burned white.
“I mean, you were always saying how you felt bad because you had never really paid me back, but I guess you can always forget it-”
“Imbecile,” Mirage said, turning to throw another acidic glare in his direction. “I do not disregard life-debts the same way you pirates might.”
Xigbar thought to protest, but decided it would be best if he cut off his thoughts to lessen his risk of losing essential organs and stared at the tips of her boots.
“I cannot forget that you saved my life. So I’ll allow you to stay here for however long you need, but I can forget everything else about you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight from leg to the next. “I can forget your name and everything associated with it. I can forget what you look like, how you sound. You are a stranger to me.”
Finality. This is over and it’s your fault Xigbar, so don’t even think about it. Her words and her body language were loud and clear.
He nodded stiffly. “Right.”
“…Nani will show you to your rooms.”
The boots turned and disappeared from his vision. A sliding door slamming against its frame later, and Xigbar looked up. He was very alone.
He hobbled over to the door, which now had a narrow vertical slit through the thin wood, and opened it to the shocked faces of his crew.
“So!” he announced, the word coming out as an exhale of breath. He continued, his voice cracking awkwardly, an artificial grin stuck to his face. “We can stay.”
“Xigbar, are you… Well, what I mean to say is… Hm.” Luxord coughed into his fist.
“Yeah,” his first mate agreed, and turned to walk away.
“Papa?” Naminé asked as the crew filed delicately into the common room, as though the slightest creak would cause the place to collapse into the lagoon beneath. “What exactly was Xigbar doing before you found him?”
“I have no idea, pidge,” he answered, watching Xigbar trip over one of the bag chairs. “I honestly have no idea.”
---
Xigbar refused to give up any explanations, besides the fact that the inn was called ‘Honokaa’ and the woman with white hair was named Mirage (“Just Mirage. She doesn’t have any other names. And no, Tifa, it isn’t some weird coincidence that I call myself by only one- Just- It’s just Mirage.”).
After finding Nani, a beautiful island native with long wavy hair and a bold flower print dress, she showed them to their ‘rooms’. The entire inn reminded Roxas of the docks back on Destiny Island: it was spread out over the lagoon in a series of wooden walkways on stilts. The rooms were actually small huts built on top of the docks, made of mud bricks and palm frond roofs.
Roxas poked his head out of his hut, and the first thing he could see was Freya in a hammock. Her long clawed feet poked out of two of the holes in the netting so she could properly stretch out. Pale pink and gold overlapped in layers at the bottom of her shirt and he had to wonder how all the stitching worked together. Her ears swivelled towards him as he approached and he noticed that she was wearing gold hoop earrings.
Freya’s clawed hands were crossed peacefully over her stomach, her sharp green eyes closed. Her nose twitched when Roxas stood over her, his shadow falling over the sunset’s light. “Hello, Roxas,” she said casually, without opening her eyes. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” Roxas stuck his hands into the pockets of his pants. “You haven’t seen Tifa, have you?”
Freya smirked. The hammock creaked as she lifted her hands from her stomach to rest behind her head. “Finally going to solve the mystery of how she knows your last name, huh?”
Roxas grinned sheepishly, shrugging. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”
“She’s off wading somewhere in the shallow part of the lagoon. Just walk around the edge of the docks and you’ll find her eventually,” Freya said, rocking the hammock back and forth.
Roxas thanked her and walked off, his bare feet slapping against the wooden walkways. Mere moments later, he spotted the boatswain doing just as Freya had said, wading around in knee-deep water. He saw that Tifa had removed the cloth she usually had hanging from the back of her pants. Her boots were placed just beside him on the wooden planks as she sat down on the edge.
She turned, eyebrows raised before smiling at him. “Hey, Roxas. What’s going on?”
“Oh, uh, nothing,” he said, trying his best to be casual. He slipped down into the water and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was still warm from the day under the sun. “I was just sorta wondering where everyone is.”
“And you aren’t looking for Naminé?” Tifa asked innocently. She peeled the long gloves off her arms and put them on top of her shoes behind him on the dock.
Roxas made a point of clearing his throat for no particular reason. “No.”
“So you came to ask me about how I knew your last name, right?”
“Am I that obvious?” He couldn’t help giving that same sheepish grin as the two of them set off, wading through the darkening turquoise of the lagoon.
“Oh, just the tiniest bit.” Tifa smirked at him as he ran his hand through his spiky locks. “I guess I really should’ve told you sooner, but things have been busy. Giant island cities being torn to pieces, you know…”
“Well, if you don’t want to-” Roxas started saying, but Tifa raised her hand to stop him.
“Don’t worry about how I first reacted. It had just been a while since I heard your parents’ name.” Tifa’s mouth twitched, looking caught between the good and bad kind of nostalgia. “The three of us grew up together.”
Roxas blinked up at her. “You… and mom and dad?”
She nodded. “Radiant Isle. Right from the beginning.”
At the teen’s stunned silence, she nudged him in the shoulder. “I wasn’t a pirate back then, obviously.”
“I know, it’s just-” Roxas looked thoughtfully at their reflections on the water’s broken surface. “How come they never told me about you - at all?”
“I ran away,” Tifa said quietly, not looking at him, “when your dad proposed to your mom.”
Even though some tiny secret part of him already knew the answer in that moment, he had to ask. “Why?”
“I was in love with your dad,” she says. Her voice sounded far-away and Roxas wasn’t sure if she’d feel comfortable if he stared at her. “I’m not anymore, obviously, but at the time I was feeling so many things that I thought it would be better for all of us if I took myself out of the picture. Aeris was - is - my best friend and I didn’t want her feeling bad for me while she planned her wedding.”
“Where’d you go?” Roxas asked, looking up. “Did you tell them?”
“No, I didn’t tell anyone. I packed up and took my dad’s old dory out to this island called Tortuga. I was a maid at a bar called the Faithful Bride there for a while, until Luxord found me. I was, uh-” She laughed to herself and fiddled with her earrings. “I was kind of famous for kicking guys out of the bar if they tried to look up any of the waitresses’ skirts. Tortuga’s pirate territory, so all the guys expected us to just take it.”
“But not you,” Roxas said, grinning.
Tifa raised her knuckles to her cheek and winked at him, smiling. “Not me.”
“So you ran away and became a bar maid and then a pirate.” Roxas rested his hands on the back of his neck as they continued wading into deeper water. A school of guppies swam by them and disappeared beneath the docks. “Is that what Naminé meant when she said that being behind a bar reminds you of your old life?”
“Oh, no.” Tifa trailed her fingers over the surface of the water. “Before I was a bar maid, I owned a bar on Radiant Isle called Seventh Heaven. No idea what happened to it after that storm…”
“No way!” Roxas laughed. “You used to own Seventh Heaven?”
Curious, she quirked her eyebrows. “It’s still around?”
“Someone must’ve rebuilt it and taken it for themselves when everyone moved to Traverse Island.” Roxas laughed again, trying to imagine how the woman with the strength of a hundred men would react to seeing her bar smelling the way it did. “It’s a real dump nowadays.”
“Oh, thanks!” The woman said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Make me feel bad, why don’t you?”
“I was just joking,” he said, even as they both laughed. “But you have a new life now.”
“Yup. A pirate’s life is the life for me,” she said and inclined her head towards him thoughtfully. “You know, Roxas, I don’t think you seem as homesick nowadays as you did when we first landed on Arcana Minor.”
“Really?” They stopped to stare at the sun setting between the palm trees. “I still think about them a lot.”
“It must be hard on your mom, not knowing if you’re safe,” Tifa said, resting her chin on her knuckles. “I bet we could send her a letter with one of Eiko’s moogles to let her know you’re okay.”
“You think so?” Roxas looked sceptical. “What about Captain Luxord? Won’t he be upset? I’m sorta part of the crew now, right?”
“Oh, he’s a softie deep down,” Tifa said, waving dismissively. “And if he thinks you shouldn’t be writing a letter to your parents to explain you’re still alive, then I’ll take the time to explain our reasons.”
Roxas laughed through grinning teeth. “Thanks, Tifa.”
“No problem,” she said, stretching her arms above her head. “Well, we should head back. Big day tomorrow.”
“Right. So what exactly are we going to see this Vexen guy about, anyway?”
“Don’t know,” Tifa shrugged. “Let’s just hope we learn more from him then we have from some of Xigbar’s other old friends.”
“Why?” Roxas turned around. “What were his other friends like?”
Tifa laughed, sounding exasperated at the mere thought of remembering. As the sun sank below the dark blanket of the horizon, they sloshed back to the deck that still had her gear waiting for them. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a man named Jack Sparrow, have you?”
Foot Notes/Glossery
• Tiresias is a blind seer in Greek mythology/literature. He is featured in Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Antigone.
• Corazon is a reference to the extended universe fic Non Omnia Moriar.
• Nomanisan is the name of the island in The Incredibles. It is a further reference to No Man is an Island, written by Thomas Merton.
• Australia was originally a prison colony for Britain. History joke, not bashing Australians, I swear. xD
Chapter 7 ← Chapter 8 → Chapter 9
Chapter Listing
Genre: Humour, Angst
Ships?: Uhhhh none! In a way. *cough*
→Friendships?: Tifa&Roxas
Characters: Zexion, Quistis, Xigbar, Mirage, Tifa, Roxas
→Cameos: Luxord, Naminé, Freya, Vivi, Eiko, Nani
→Mentions: Xaldin, Vexen, Captain Hook
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.
Music: "Quistis's Theme" ♪ "Tifa's Story"
Notes: FINALLY. FINALLY. AAAAGHHHH. School has put a huge space between this and Chapter 7, but I sort of intended Chapter 7 to be the end of 'Act I' anyway. So here! Have the beginning of Act II!
And since I couldn't find a version of Tifa's Story on Imeem, I'll try and link the songs to YouTube videos now. :3
PFFF I'M PROBABLY SUPER RUSTY AT THIS
In which the sometimes unpleasant past is revisited many times.
Drink Up, Me Hearties
Chapter 8: The Page of Wands
“Hello, Zexion.”
“Your room has always been on the bare side, hasn’t it Quistis?”
The blind woman tilted her head just slightly towards the far corner to the right of her door. She could hear the illusionist’s fingers glide through the cloud of hanging skulls. “I don’t need much to look at, Zexion. Just my tools.”
“Hmm-mm,” the boy hummed. The deck below his feet creaked slightly as he approached. “I have another prize. Do you like it?”
There was a swoosh and Quistis could tell what his new toy was before he even placed it in her hands. The seer smiled up at him gently, stroking the red velvet and the giant white feather plume of James Hook’s hat. “It’s lovely. A wonderful addition to your collection.”
“I thought so,” Zexion said with a sigh, sinking to the floor like pouring water. He leaned forward slightly and whispered, as though telling the most secret of secrets. “Hats are very important, you know. They let you know who you are. When you have otherwise forgotten.”
Quistis pulled out a hat box from beneath her bed and placed Zexion’s trophy from Neverland delicately inside. “That’s what Captain James said. Or at least, I think that’s what he said.” The boy’s head flopped sideways to rest his cheek against his shoulder. “He was making terribly loud noises a majority of the time.” He pouted. “It was quite deplorable, in my honest opinion.”
“Come now, Zexion.” The seer found his cheek with her hand, hearing his clothes shift and his posture change. “Don’t lean your head like that. You’ll get a crick in your neck.”
Zexion tilted his head from side to side, grinning widely. “My neck is perfectly not-cracked, thank you.”
Quisits’s lips tightened, but the illusionist didn’t seem to notice. As quartermaster of the Boreas, it was her job to keep things relatively peaceful among the crew of cut-throats, and while Zexion was certainly not a physical danger, his powers evened the playing field quite nicely. She had to be very careful around him, and she sighed, putting on a motherly smile. Her kindness towards him was her best defence against him. “Yes, well. The captain wants me to cast the stones. Would you care to join me, Zexion?”
“Oh… I think so,” he said, watching as she retrieved her special lockbox, the lid inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It shimmered in the scant light given by her guttering candles. He tilted his head again, watching the ice-thick lenses of her glasses.
“Quistissssss. The prit-ee-est, the other Tiresias.” He closed his eyes, nodding to himself and smiling. He was always smiling. He opened his eyes and scooted closer to her, legs still folded beneath him.
At first, Quistis thought of leaning away from him. She could feel him move towards her out of the constant black of her eyesight, and it was not a comforting feeling. Immediately calming herself, she remembered that Zexion’s insanity made him very sensitive and might react sourly if her retreat upset him.
The boy removed the spectacles from her face, watching the glittering lights disappear from the glass. Her opaque eyes were the same blue as the magic that had faded from the lenses. She heard Zexion’s sleeves shifting and knew he was wearing them.
“She who sees so much more than allllll the rest,” Zexion sang.
“And yet I see nothing,” Quistis replied, smiling cryptically.
“And yet you see everything.” Zexion blinked through the glasses at the hanging crystals and cloths around the room. “You can see my future, yes?”
“Hm.” The seer frowned. “You’re future is…”
“Complicated? Chaotic? Cathartic? Coaxial? Comme il faut?” Zexion flowed down to floor, lying on his stomach. “Corazon?”
“What was that last one, Zexion?” Quistis asked, genuinely curious.
“Oh. That’s not right, is it?” The boy flipped on his back and traced half-formed constellations on the ceiling. “Not an adjective, that one.” He laughed quietly. “I’ve lost my own game.”
Quistis leaned over her box of stones and removed her glasses from Zexion’s face as gently as possible. “Your future is unpredictable,” she said.
“Aaah, I see,” Zexion hissed, craning his neck to watch her upside-down. Quistis replaced her glasses and the glow returned to the lenses. Then she picked several stones from the depths of her box, weighing them in her palm and running her fingers over smooth curves and rough edges. She put some back into the box and kept others. Then she clasped her hands together, cradling the stones within. “The future now?”
“Yes, Zexion. The future now.” She blew through a gap in her fingers onto the stones. And then she cast them onto the floor.
The illusionist flipped onto his stomach as the stones clattered onto the deck. The arrangement of where they had fallen was meaningless to him, but Quistis understood. “Second star to the right,” she said, picking up one.
“And straight on till morning,” Zexion answered absently, staring up into the corners of room, as though watching something.
“Zexion, tell me,” Quistis said, dropping the stone into his hand. “What is peculiar about this one?”
The boy snapped to attention. He turned the stone over and over in his hands and his eyes began to glow, throwing light on the sparkling flecks in the rock. Soon, he found the abnormality that Quistis had challenged him to find. “A fossil,” he answered, fingering the spiralling dip where a shell had turned to sand and rock from compression.
“Very good. Now who taught you such a clever thing?” the seer asked, smiling widely.
Zexion sat up straight, his eyes flaring sky blue in his excitement. “Vexen! We’re going to visit Vexen?”
“So the future seems to be.”
“Oh, how glorious,” the boy said, grinning as widely as he could to the ceiling. He tossed the stone up into the air. Whatever goes up…
---
The stone landed back in Luxord’s hand, and he skipped it across the green lagoon they floated on top of. “No man is an island,” he said, and chuckled once. “How… quaint.”
“What do you mean, Luxord?” Freya asked. She had both her sleeveless pink and his blue surcoat was draped over her arm. The wooden walkways creaked beneath her clawed feet, silent in-between the clomps of Tifa and her captain’s boots.
“Nomanisan,” Luxord said, grinning. “Whoever named this place was obviously well-read.”
“Well, Xigbar did say that these islands were full out of outcasts, not prisoners.” Tifa shrugged. “They’re probably a tonne of people who were shunned because they read too much.”
Her captain scoffed. “I cannot recall ever referring to the people as prisoners, Tifa. We haven’t landed in Australia.”
Tifa opened her mouth, glaring and shocked, when Freya interjected. “Both of you stop before you start bickering like an old married couple.”
The Burmecian smirked as whatever reply the boatswain had planned to say devolved into an “Uh”. Luxord was distracted by grinning victoriously yet again and nearly walked straight into Vivi’s back.
Catching himself and standing beside his older swabbie, the captain saw they had all come to a standstill in front of a large building in the middle of the lagoon, elevated above the green water by thick bamboo stilts. Xigbar stood nearest the door and stared at the knocker, transfixed.
Luxord crossed his arms over his chest, giving a triumphant sideways glance towards his first mate. “Well, well, well. Is somebody nervous about a reunion with their old friend?”
“What?” Xigbar asked, as though he was snapping out of a trance. “No. Not at all. …You do know this is our hotel, right?”
All eyes were on him in a second.
“So I guess I didn’t say that?”
“Xigbar,” Luxord said as the rest of the crew groaned. “Please tell me you know where this Vexen fellow of yours is.”
“Of course I do!” Xigbar replied, stomping his feet on the deck below them for emphasis. “He’s on the next island over. We couldn’t land there because there’s a reef and we have to take the ferry. Would it kill you to have a little faith in me?”
“It might,” Tifa said drily, arching an eyebrow.
Grumbling something incoherent, Xigbar threw the door open and strode in. The crew followed behind him and crowded into the front room of the huge bungalow.
Strong bamboo shoots held up the roof. The walls served more as separators, with plenty of empty air between the top of them and the rafters. There were sliding doors with white paper windows across the room and, judging by the silhouettes and sounds of people beyond them, there was some sort of dining room behind them. In the half of the room they were standing in, there were numerous couches, large colourful sacks scattered about, and a desk at the far end where some people were signing up for rooms.
Naminé approached one of the sacks, curious. She sat down and sank backwards into it, whatever filled them moulding to fit her shape. “A bag chair,” she laughed. “What a neat idea.”
Xigbar stood arms akimbo and whistled through his teeth as Eiko threw herself at one of cushion chairs and the swabbies followed suit. “This place sure has changed since I was here last.”
“And what, pray tell, was it like the last time you were here?” Luxord asked, caught between smiling at his daughter with her knees tucked to her chest and scowling at the blond boy she was chatting with.
“Well, it definitely didn’t have these neat bag chairs. Or any of the decorations,” Xigbar said, pointing to a vase where a bouquet of birds-of-paradise showed their plumes of petals. “It just wasn’t nearly as…” He drifted off, scanning the room.
The woman who was signing out a room for a couple of bounty hunters at the desk had long white hair down her back. She had a blue bandanna on her head and was wearing a purple dress lined with bright green. Silver hoop earrings hung from her ears and silver bracelets and rings and chains on top of mocha skin shone in the sunlight.
“Pretty,” Xigbar finished, and then hissed under his breath. “Shit.”
“Xigbar,” Freya raised an eyebrow, her voice taking on that no-nonsense tone. “What’s going on with you today?”
“Weshouldleave,” Xigbar mumbled, pulling Vivi out of one of the bag chairs just as the rest of the crew watched the couple of bounty hunters slide open the dining room doors.
“How may I help you?” the woman asked, raising her eyes and looking at them from across the room. Her soft voice had an accent to it, exotic and mysterious.
Her eyes landed on Xigbar, and her helpful expression dropped off her face.
Immediately, silence fell. How the diners in the next room knew something was going on was a complete conundrum, but the sound of eating halted like a bolt of lightning had struck the building.
Before anyone could react in any way, the woman recovered herself. And sent Xigbar a narrow green glare that made him - a man who had been shot several times over the course of his life - wince.
“Yes, maybe we should leave,” Luxord said, clapping his hands together.
There was a chorus of “I agree!”, “Good luck with that Xigbar,” and “Okay, we’ll miss you, bye!” before the front door slammed and the entire dining room full of silhouettes disappeared.
Xigbar was alone in a room with a gorgeous woman.
And he had never been more terrified for his life then he was in that moment.
“H-Hey, babe,” he said, attempting a grin and wave.
She glided out from behind her desk, her heeled boots stomping a death beat heading straight for him. “Get. Out,” she hissed.
“Listen, listen, I don’t want to-” He attempted to be placating, holding his hands away from the gun holsters on his hips, but she only grabbed him and threw him against the front door, which rattled in its frame. He should’ve gone right out the door… unless someone was leaning against it to eavesdrop.
Luxord, you bas- Xigbar cut off his own thought when a long silver dagger thunked into the wood beside his head, and he swore he heard the door splinter a little. “So, uh, I guess you don’t want to talk, huh?”
She glared at him and his heart thumped against his ribcage until it hammered its way into his throat.
And then his brain had to start talking to him.
God damn, she's sexy when she's mad. I wonder if she'd get angry if I just kissed her right now? Well, yeah. Of course she would, you idiot. We’re talking pre-Luxord era here, come on, pay attention. The last thing you want is for her to get any angrier.
“What do you want from me, Xigbar?” she asked, drawing out every word slowly and clearly, to make sure he heard the malice in her voice.
Gulping, he raised his hands again. “I was… sort of hoping we could sign out rooms?”
“Oh! Is that all?” The contempt on her face melted off like ice turning to water, but he knew that meant the water he was in had just been set to boil. She wrenched her dagger out of the wood and he definitely heard wood snap beside his left ear. “I suppose you want a discount after all our history together,” she said, gliding back to her desk serenely, just the way he remembered-
Shaking his head to dislodge the memory, Xigbar pushed himself away from the door. “No, Mirage, I would never-”
“Never what?!” She spat, wheeling on him. “Take advantage of me?”
And just like that, his lungs got tied together and filled to the brim with stones. She glared through those green eyes and the light hit her hair just right and-
Xigbar remembered. His heart was still pounding and he wished he knew what to say to make it stop hurting his chest.
“No,” she hissed through her teeth. “You wouldn’t dare to take advantage of me, you slug.”
“You’re right,” he agreed quietly. If Mirage was caught off guard by his change in tone, she didn’t show it. “Anyone trying to take advantage of you is a… an idiot.”
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t throw you out of here right now,” she said, turning away and continuing to her desk.
Much to the surprise of every soul eavesdropping - willingly or unwillingly - Xigbar had a nearly immediate response. “I saved your life,” he said, his tone soft and lukewarm, as though awakening to a bittersweet memory one morning.
Mirage froze halfway to her desk. Her back was turned to him, but he saw her grip the handle of her dagger tight enough that her tanned knuckles burned white.
“I mean, you were always saying how you felt bad because you had never really paid me back, but I guess you can always forget it-”
“Imbecile,” Mirage said, turning to throw another acidic glare in his direction. “I do not disregard life-debts the same way you pirates might.”
Xigbar thought to protest, but decided it would be best if he cut off his thoughts to lessen his risk of losing essential organs and stared at the tips of her boots.
“I cannot forget that you saved my life. So I’ll allow you to stay here for however long you need, but I can forget everything else about you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight from leg to the next. “I can forget your name and everything associated with it. I can forget what you look like, how you sound. You are a stranger to me.”
Finality. This is over and it’s your fault Xigbar, so don’t even think about it. Her words and her body language were loud and clear.
He nodded stiffly. “Right.”
“…Nani will show you to your rooms.”
The boots turned and disappeared from his vision. A sliding door slamming against its frame later, and Xigbar looked up. He was very alone.
He hobbled over to the door, which now had a narrow vertical slit through the thin wood, and opened it to the shocked faces of his crew.
“So!” he announced, the word coming out as an exhale of breath. He continued, his voice cracking awkwardly, an artificial grin stuck to his face. “We can stay.”
“Xigbar, are you… Well, what I mean to say is… Hm.” Luxord coughed into his fist.
“Yeah,” his first mate agreed, and turned to walk away.
“Papa?” Naminé asked as the crew filed delicately into the common room, as though the slightest creak would cause the place to collapse into the lagoon beneath. “What exactly was Xigbar doing before you found him?”
“I have no idea, pidge,” he answered, watching Xigbar trip over one of the bag chairs. “I honestly have no idea.”
---
Xigbar refused to give up any explanations, besides the fact that the inn was called ‘Honokaa’ and the woman with white hair was named Mirage (“Just Mirage. She doesn’t have any other names. And no, Tifa, it isn’t some weird coincidence that I call myself by only one- Just- It’s just Mirage.”).
After finding Nani, a beautiful island native with long wavy hair and a bold flower print dress, she showed them to their ‘rooms’. The entire inn reminded Roxas of the docks back on Destiny Island: it was spread out over the lagoon in a series of wooden walkways on stilts. The rooms were actually small huts built on top of the docks, made of mud bricks and palm frond roofs.
Roxas poked his head out of his hut, and the first thing he could see was Freya in a hammock. Her long clawed feet poked out of two of the holes in the netting so she could properly stretch out. Pale pink and gold overlapped in layers at the bottom of her shirt and he had to wonder how all the stitching worked together. Her ears swivelled towards him as he approached and he noticed that she was wearing gold hoop earrings.
Freya’s clawed hands were crossed peacefully over her stomach, her sharp green eyes closed. Her nose twitched when Roxas stood over her, his shadow falling over the sunset’s light. “Hello, Roxas,” she said casually, without opening her eyes. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” Roxas stuck his hands into the pockets of his pants. “You haven’t seen Tifa, have you?”
Freya smirked. The hammock creaked as she lifted her hands from her stomach to rest behind her head. “Finally going to solve the mystery of how she knows your last name, huh?”
Roxas grinned sheepishly, shrugging. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”
“She’s off wading somewhere in the shallow part of the lagoon. Just walk around the edge of the docks and you’ll find her eventually,” Freya said, rocking the hammock back and forth.
Roxas thanked her and walked off, his bare feet slapping against the wooden walkways. Mere moments later, he spotted the boatswain doing just as Freya had said, wading around in knee-deep water. He saw that Tifa had removed the cloth she usually had hanging from the back of her pants. Her boots were placed just beside him on the wooden planks as she sat down on the edge.
She turned, eyebrows raised before smiling at him. “Hey, Roxas. What’s going on?”
“Oh, uh, nothing,” he said, trying his best to be casual. He slipped down into the water and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was still warm from the day under the sun. “I was just sorta wondering where everyone is.”
“And you aren’t looking for Naminé?” Tifa asked innocently. She peeled the long gloves off her arms and put them on top of her shoes behind him on the dock.
Roxas made a point of clearing his throat for no particular reason. “No.”
“So you came to ask me about how I knew your last name, right?”
“Am I that obvious?” He couldn’t help giving that same sheepish grin as the two of them set off, wading through the darkening turquoise of the lagoon.
“Oh, just the tiniest bit.” Tifa smirked at him as he ran his hand through his spiky locks. “I guess I really should’ve told you sooner, but things have been busy. Giant island cities being torn to pieces, you know…”
“Well, if you don’t want to-” Roxas started saying, but Tifa raised her hand to stop him.
“Don’t worry about how I first reacted. It had just been a while since I heard your parents’ name.” Tifa’s mouth twitched, looking caught between the good and bad kind of nostalgia. “The three of us grew up together.”
Roxas blinked up at her. “You… and mom and dad?”
She nodded. “Radiant Isle. Right from the beginning.”
At the teen’s stunned silence, she nudged him in the shoulder. “I wasn’t a pirate back then, obviously.”
“I know, it’s just-” Roxas looked thoughtfully at their reflections on the water’s broken surface. “How come they never told me about you - at all?”
“I ran away,” Tifa said quietly, not looking at him, “when your dad proposed to your mom.”
Even though some tiny secret part of him already knew the answer in that moment, he had to ask. “Why?”
“I was in love with your dad,” she says. Her voice sounded far-away and Roxas wasn’t sure if she’d feel comfortable if he stared at her. “I’m not anymore, obviously, but at the time I was feeling so many things that I thought it would be better for all of us if I took myself out of the picture. Aeris was - is - my best friend and I didn’t want her feeling bad for me while she planned her wedding.”
“Where’d you go?” Roxas asked, looking up. “Did you tell them?”
“No, I didn’t tell anyone. I packed up and took my dad’s old dory out to this island called Tortuga. I was a maid at a bar called the Faithful Bride there for a while, until Luxord found me. I was, uh-” She laughed to herself and fiddled with her earrings. “I was kind of famous for kicking guys out of the bar if they tried to look up any of the waitresses’ skirts. Tortuga’s pirate territory, so all the guys expected us to just take it.”
“But not you,” Roxas said, grinning.
Tifa raised her knuckles to her cheek and winked at him, smiling. “Not me.”
“So you ran away and became a bar maid and then a pirate.” Roxas rested his hands on the back of his neck as they continued wading into deeper water. A school of guppies swam by them and disappeared beneath the docks. “Is that what Naminé meant when she said that being behind a bar reminds you of your old life?”
“Oh, no.” Tifa trailed her fingers over the surface of the water. “Before I was a bar maid, I owned a bar on Radiant Isle called Seventh Heaven. No idea what happened to it after that storm…”
“No way!” Roxas laughed. “You used to own Seventh Heaven?”
Curious, she quirked her eyebrows. “It’s still around?”
“Someone must’ve rebuilt it and taken it for themselves when everyone moved to Traverse Island.” Roxas laughed again, trying to imagine how the woman with the strength of a hundred men would react to seeing her bar smelling the way it did. “It’s a real dump nowadays.”
“Oh, thanks!” The woman said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Make me feel bad, why don’t you?”
“I was just joking,” he said, even as they both laughed. “But you have a new life now.”
“Yup. A pirate’s life is the life for me,” she said and inclined her head towards him thoughtfully. “You know, Roxas, I don’t think you seem as homesick nowadays as you did when we first landed on Arcana Minor.”
“Really?” They stopped to stare at the sun setting between the palm trees. “I still think about them a lot.”
“It must be hard on your mom, not knowing if you’re safe,” Tifa said, resting her chin on her knuckles. “I bet we could send her a letter with one of Eiko’s moogles to let her know you’re okay.”
“You think so?” Roxas looked sceptical. “What about Captain Luxord? Won’t he be upset? I’m sorta part of the crew now, right?”
“Oh, he’s a softie deep down,” Tifa said, waving dismissively. “And if he thinks you shouldn’t be writing a letter to your parents to explain you’re still alive, then I’ll take the time to explain our reasons.”
Roxas laughed through grinning teeth. “Thanks, Tifa.”
“No problem,” she said, stretching her arms above her head. “Well, we should head back. Big day tomorrow.”
“Right. So what exactly are we going to see this Vexen guy about, anyway?”
“Don’t know,” Tifa shrugged. “Let’s just hope we learn more from him then we have from some of Xigbar’s other old friends.”
“Why?” Roxas turned around. “What were his other friends like?”
Tifa laughed, sounding exasperated at the mere thought of remembering. As the sun sank below the dark blanket of the horizon, they sloshed back to the deck that still had her gear waiting for them. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a man named Jack Sparrow, have you?”
Foot Notes/Glossery
• Tiresias is a blind seer in Greek mythology/literature. He is featured in Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Antigone.
• Corazon is a reference to the extended universe fic Non Omnia Moriar.
• Nomanisan is the name of the island in The Incredibles. It is a further reference to No Man is an Island, written by Thomas Merton.
• Australia was originally a prison colony for Britain. History joke, not bashing Australians, I swear. xD
Chapter 7 ← Chapter 8 → Chapter 9
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