Drink Up, Me Hearties } Chapter 10 - Four of Pentacles
Word Count: 4577
Genre: Action, Romance, Angst
Ships?: Nearly all four - Luxord/Tifa, Xigbar/Mirage, sorta Vivi/Eiko
→Friendships?: lots, let's just say. xD
Characters: Roxas, Vivi, Luxord, Tifa, Xigbar, Eiko, Freya, Mirage, Vexen
→Cameos: Naminé, the Ladies
→Mentions: Lilo, Io, Xaldin
Rating: PG-13/R for language? I don't know how sensitive people are to this. xD
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Disney, Square-Enix or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.
Music: "Argument on the Cliff"
Notes: There was another song I used in the first scene, but I can't remember what it was. :/ Ah, well.
In which some old wounds are reopened.
Drink Up, Me Hearties
Chapter 10: Four of Pentacles
The sky was a navy blue up above the lagoon. The stars shone down silver, and the moon was a warm yellow crescent in the sky. Beside him, Eiko twisted her purple hair on top of her head, a hair tie hanging from her mouth. Roxas watched moonlight gleam off her steel gray horn as she finished and tied her hair back.
“So we’re going to this luau just to steal stuff?” he asked as Vivi joined them from down the docks, twirling one of the flowers from the lobby hut between his gloved fingers. As far as Roxas could tell, the only change in the older swabbie’s clothing was that his coat tails looked a bit longer and less torn. It was the same weather-worn pale blue, and his pants were still patched all over like a haphazard quilt. Eiko’s change to a still black, still lacy, but shorter dress was at least a little more noticeable.
“We’re pirates, Roxas, and unless we’re laying siege to a city, we’re stealing stuff during their festivals,” Eiko replied, smoothing her dress out. She turned towards the door of the hut they were waiting outside, made of thick bamboo reeds tied together. “And someone’s going to be in a load of trouble if her dad finds out she made us late!”
“We’re pirates, Eiko, and we don’t have rules about being late.” The door swung open and Naminé hopped out, wearing a mint green muumuu with a print of white leaves falling down it. She was wearing one of the flower leis that they had seen around the island while exploring with Lilo and Io. “Besides, you know we can make up for it quick as a whip if we find the right shops quickly enough. There was a silverware place just north of Mr. Vexen’s mansion, if I remember correctly.”
“Of course you remember correctly,” Eiko replied, giggling as the two of them walked off ahead, towards the lobby hut. “You remember everything, Naminé.”
The two swabbies followed after, Roxas’s hands stuck in the pockets of his blue vest (his brown one was hanging up to dry somewhere around here). “So Vivi, remind me again. It was a compass in the carving?”
“The one that Vexen showed us?” Vivi twirled the flower again, as though he were nervous about something. “It looked just like one, yeah. But since there’s no way of us knowing what the message above it means, we can’t be sure.”
Roxas nodded, watching Naminé’s retreating back, frowning contemplatively.
“That’s right. You mentioned that you and Naminé met someone with a compass yesterday?” Vivi asks, tugging his tricorne over his shadowed face. His eyes blinked in the dark like big golden suns.
“Yeah, the two native girls who showed us around. They said their compass pointed you to whatever you wanted the most.” Roxas nodded again, ruffling his hair as he thought.
“It sorta seemed like it was true,” he continued as they walked up the wooden steps that took them into the lobby hut. It was empty at the moment, and they passed through to the front door, which still had a small hole in it from when Xigbar had first gotten their rooms. “When Naminé and I held it, the needle usually just spun around in circles. But when Io and Lilo held it, it pointed us towards the turtles.”
“Hmm.” Vivi went back to twirling his flower as they approached the end of the lagoon and the start of solid land again. “Maybe we should ask Vexen or Xigbar about it. Xigbar once taught me that compasses work ‘cause of something called ‘magnetism’ or something. But then again…” The swabbie looked up towards the night sky. “These islands have people come live on them from all over the ocean. A magic compass ending up here doesn’t seem that far-fetched.”
He laughed lightly beneath his hat. “We’ve heard all kinds of crazier stuff back on Beaumont.”
“Right, Beaumont,” Roxas said with a grin. “Speaking of which, what’s going to happen after this luau, anyway? Are we gonna go back there to find out where we should go or…?”
Vivi hesitated, looked towards the sandy path that wove through the Hawaiian jungle, back towards the larger roads of Nomanisan, which would take them to the valley the luau was in. “I’m… not really sure. We’ll have to ask Captain Luxord once we see him, but that might not be for a little bit. Tifa said that the two of them needed to talk about something.”
---
“You’re not gonna chicken out and play the ‘gentlemen of fortune’ card, are you?”
“My dear woman, you know fully well that I am not always a gentleman.”
“Show me.”
Sand flew up behind her as Tifa’s sword crashed against Luxord’s. He met her blow with perfect ease, one hand tucked behind his back. Pushing off his back leg to push their blades out of their lock, he only smirked before starting to attack her weak points.
She batted away his advances with a raw grace, but frustration was waking up her instincts. She had fought far too many armed men with her bare hands to lose a practice match because of the addition of a weapon. Clenching her jaw, Tifa’s sword clashed and clanged against the curve of Luxord’s; the moonlight flared against the blades.
Tifa stumbled back over her feet, her heart pounding painfully in her ears. It wasn’t the fact that Luxord was landing points on her - no actual slashes this time; this was a private duel and their healer had gone to the luau - it was the fact that Luxord was proving his point. So she was a pirate who didn’t care for sword fighting. It didn’t make her less of a scourge of the sea, in her opinion, and she was going to get it through Luxord’s thick skull-
With a rumble streaking up her throat, her sword caught Luxord’s white buccaneer shirt and tore a new opening across his chest.
He met her eyes, gave a quick and awed “Ah”, and leapt back into the fight. Their blades met again and again, up down up down up, lock, back, clash of metal and fire, lock.
Her face was so close her breath fanned over his lips and he nearly drowned in dark-flame irises. His shoulder moved before he could contemplate it, disengaging them from the lock-
There were three sounds that mixed in the next moment’s breath. A gasp from Tifa, a humming shin from Luxord’s sword and a rrip.
“Oh,” Luxord said half a second later. Tifa gazed up at him from the tear in her pants near her hip with the red line running through it, shocked. Her eyes singed him like fire but he refused to flinch. “Tifa, I apologize.”
She responded by kicking his sword hand with a bare foot, sending the weapon flying. Another half a second and there was a dull thud as his back hit the sand.
Tifa sat on his chest, continuing to glare through red eyes, her dark hair falling around her face. “Pirates break rules all the time, Captain, so I believe I win.”
“I didn’t cheat, if that’s what you are presupposing,” Luxord said, glaring back despite the wide smirk on his face. She nearly kneed him in the ribs when he reached up and touched the cut he had made gently with bare fingertips, taking her by surprise. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
There was a crashing in the undergrowth and Xigbar (remarkably inconvenient Xigbar, Luxord found himself thinking) appeared on the shoreline in the space between two palm trees.
With the scant moonlight glancing off the white streaks in his hair, the first mate pointedly looked away from the duellers laying in the sand despite the grin on his face. “See, I was a little concerned when I saw your coat and Tifa’s cool little curtain thing hanging in the jungle, but I guess I was just overreacting.”
Pushing off Luxord’s chest with her hands, Tifa stood up and looked out to sea before the uncomfortable heat that had crawled up from her stomach could turn her face red. She folded her arms across her heart defensively as Luxord sat up, brushing sand out of his pale blond hair. “Oh, no - by all means, continue with the shameless foreplay. I like watching,” Xigbar said, a laugh bubbling beneath his words.
“What are you doing infringing a private conference, Mister Xigbar?” Luxord asked, standing up and brushing more sand off his clothes.
“Didn’t look like…” Xigbar muttered beneath his breath before striding on to the sand. “Naminé’s orders, cap’n. In case you forgot, the luau started a coupla hours ago. She hoped you and Tifa weren’t arguing or had gotten eaten by mutant turtles or something. But,” he tossed a grin at him, then towards Tifa’s back, “I’ll have to tell her that’s the least of her worries.”
Tifa continued to let the sea wash over her feet, but turned her head slightly, letting her long hair brush over her bare shoulders. “Naminé told me that the jungle here makes her uneasy. You probably should go ahead, Captain. I’ll be right with you.”
Whatever frustration had been sitting in Luxord’s chest since Xigbar’s arrival melted as he looked back to her. There was a pregnant pause before he said, “I wish you would stop calling me that sometimes, Tifa.” That said, he turned and he trudged back to the palm trees.
Once the sound of cracking palm fronds faded away, Tifa unfolded her arms slowly, turned and followed after.
“Lovebird.”
“Yes, Xigbar.” Tifa turned again, pausing in the sand near the trees.
He smiled at her before breaking into a short laugh. “You really should stop calling him ‘Captain’, kid. He likes you, alright?”
A smile twitched around Tifa’s lips before she continued on into the undergrowth without a word.
Xigbar sighed, playing with his gun holsters as he followed after them. “Ah, love. You crazy little demon, you.”
---
Roxas sat in the chair next to Eiko as the dancers with the fans made of woven flowers and dried grasses bowed on stage. A few minutes later, Vivi sat beside him. After one of the waitresses in the grass skirts refilled Naminé’s drink, she seemed to ask no one in particular, “So what’d you get?”
“Two knives from that silverware place,” Roxas whispered immediately, scratching at his nose and rubbing his legs, obviously skittish. “They have gems on the handle but I don’t know if they’re real.”
Freya chuckled and smiled at him, sitting across the table beside Naminé. The one eye not hidden behind her hair held a quiet surprise as she sipped her drink. “That’s pretty good for your first time stealing anything. Sure you’re not a pirate, swabbie?”
Vivi tugged at his tricorne. “Yeah, I usually only take one thing at a time. I found a nice teapot-”
“Teapot?” Eiko hissed. “How in the world are you hiding a teapot?” She plucked at his coat, looking for odd bulges. “I told you I was just going to buy one back on Destiny Islands!”
“You needed a new one and it was nice, so I took it,” Vivi whispered back, batting at her hands. “Eiko, stop it, you’ll make us look suspicious!”
“We’re back, and do I have a talent for interrupting romantic scenes, or do I have a talent for interrupting romantic scenes?” Xigbar leaned down on Vivi’s back, resting his chin on top of the tricorne and pushing it over the mage’s luminous golden eyes. Tifa sat on one side of Naminé and Luxord the other, giving his daughter’s hair an affectionate ruffle as she did.
Eiko stuck her tongue out at him as he sat in beside Vivi. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you interrupted your own romantic scenes, Xigbar.”
“Tch, what’s that supposed to mean?” he replied, leaning around Vivi to look at her.
“Oh, please! Were you there during that whole fight that got us to stay at the Honokaa Inn?” Eiko asked.
“Wait, that-” Xigbar shifted in his seat; drew himself up straighter. “What, you think that was supposed to be some sort of romantic reunion? I never said anything about Mirage-”
“It’s not like you would.”
Icy silence slid over the smooth wood of the table, pirate by pirate, as they turned to look at Freya. Whatever warmth had been there for complimenting Roxas was gone. Her pointed grey ears lay flat against her hair, and her long clawed fingers were tight around her glass.
Before Xigbar had the chance to say or ask anything, she spoke again. “You probably just slept with her and left the next morning without a single word, right?”
Reflexively, the first mate opened his mouth, and then closed it again with a wince.
His silence thickened around their shoulders, drawing them all up, disappointed and disbelieving that Xigbar had no reply.
Finally, he managed, “It’s not something I’m going to talk about, alright?”
“You talked about Xaldin,” Eiko pointed out.
“Yeah, well, turns out Xaldin’s a megalomaniac bent on destroying the entire ocean now, so I’m feeling a lot less bad about that, thanks,” Xigbar snapped, glaring at a torch beside the luau stage. A man was taking the stage, armed with two double-ended torches, but none of them paid attention. “It’s not something you’d understand.”
“No, it’s not like we’d ever understand having our heart broken,” Freya continued, laying her cup down, eerily calm. “It’s not like we’d ever join up with strangers to search for people we loved. It’s not like we’d turn our backs on the law to find someone who’s already forgotten us.”
Xigbar closed his eye and smiled ironically, standing up gradually. He looked calmly into her glare, bright green into gold.
Eventually, he shrugged one shoulder casually, uttering a “heh”. “The torch dancer hasn’t even started yet and I’m getting too hot and itchy. Guess that means it’s time for air.” Saying nothing, he strode off, knocking his wooden chair over in the process.
“Xigbar!” Vivi called after him, standing up and nearly tripping on the older pirate’s chair as he did. People from the other tables turned and looked from them to the chess-board ponytail retreating farther and farther into the night.
“Let him go, Vivi,” Luxord said. “If Xigbar doesn’t feel like ceasing to talk once you get him going, then I surmise it would work much the same way in reverse.”
All the same, everyone looked to the place the first mate had left, trailing a turbulent atmosphere behind him.
Everyone but Freya.
---
Someone was singing in the bar.
Yellow light streamed from the glassless windows onto the seaside road and people moved about inside. Their chatting, amicable voices made a low murmur above the calming rhythm of the sea, just like on the nights when he had first found Nomanisan Island.
Good. That meant he was close.
Xigbar continued down the road, feeling his way down the hallway of memories in the dark. He had crashed through the undergrowth somewhere here. It hadn’t been too far from the bar; he remembers that much. Somewhere near these banana looking things-
Stepping closer to them, he realized the bright yellow bulbs weren’t bananas, but flowers. Aloe flowers. Looking beyond them, he noticed the grass was flattened in a path that led steeply up an incline, wrapped around the side of a rock outcropping. He had definitely found it, then.
It was a shorter climb to the top of the cliff than he remembered. Or perhaps it was just the disturbing quietness of his thoughts that made it seem that way. Pulling himself up using the trunks of some thinner trees that grew along the path, he found himself high above the ocean.
The waves roared far beneath him, tossing and churning as the sea collided against the stone of the island. The wind blew in off the water, lifting his hair and cutting through his shirt easily.
Heaving a sigh, Xigbar let his knees sink him down to the ground. He ripped up blades of grass mechanically, finding whatever peace he could in that and the breeze on his skin beneath the heat of the night.
His hands halted suddenly as he felt the prickles on the back of his neck that told him something was watching him. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to see that it was Mirage, but he did it anyway. He was rewarded with his heart kicking him square in the ribcage with the force of an iron-toed boot.
She was beautiful. (When are you ever not? His own voice echoed in his head, down in a half-forgotten memory.) The fabric of the coppery red dress she wore caught the light of the stars, shining in golden beads woven into the folds wrapped tightly against her body. White lacey gloves spiderwebbed their way up her arms past her elbows, showing the darkness of her sun-kissed skin beneath.
Some part of his brain at the back of his skull reasoned she must’ve been at the luau too, and saw him walk off, but he quickly ignores it to observe her posture. Her arms were folded across her chest, much the way lovebird had crossed her arms earlier. A defence mechanism.
“Well!” he began, standing up and tugging at his shirt absently. “This is awkward. You aren’t going to shiv me or anything, are you?”
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead before you felt the knife go in,” she replied easily, icily.
Waves crashed down below. Xigbar scratched his temple, watching the grass sway in the breeze. “Noooot the kind of answer I was hoping for…”
Her bare feet barely made a sound in the grass as she walked past him, right to the edge of the cliff. “I always come up here at night. It’s quiet. Let’s me think.”
“Uh, yeah. I was… just thinking the same thing.”
For a long while there was nothing but the stars, the wind and the waves. If he listened carefully he thought he could hear something moving in the trees below them, near the road.
“Uh, hey listen, Mirage? If, uh… If you’re still mad about what happened… I mean, I know it was years ago, but-”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, voice snapping harshly like a switchblade.
“Ah, okay then.”
Xigbar waited, and when Mirage made no further movements, he inched one foot towards the path back down to earth.
“You’re a goddamn bastard, you know that?” Her voice froze him to the spot before he could get very far.
Looking back to her, eye wide, he saw the way she glared from the corner of her eye. “I can’t believe how selfish you are,” she added.
“What?” Xigbar breathed, disbelief saturating his own voice. “What’d I do now? You just said you didn’t want to talk about it!” His voice teetered up in volume as he gestured out to sea. This past hour had just been working perfectly for him, hadn’t it?
“I don’t, but couldn’t you have least acted like you cared?” she said, rolling her shoulders back as she turned to him fully. Her eyes pricked him like green stars in the night. “I could’ve taken any excuse, you know. Anything you could’ve thought of. ‘I need to get back to my crew’. ‘Honestly, I just don’t like you that much’. ‘I left the kiln burning at home’.”
She unfolded her arms, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I could’ve taken anything, but what do I get? A note: ‘I had a good time. I’m sorry.’”
Xigbar blinked rapidly in his shock. Inhale, exhale, breathe. Go. “Is that really what I wrote?” His fingers hung limply at his sides, refusing to give up the precise memory of writing those words. “Wow.”
“Did you really think that leaving me with a note would be enough?” she demanded, starting towards him. Xigbar backed down the cliff, trying to make sure he didn’t topple right down the sheer incline of the hill. Where was rock wall he could aim for… Her voice raising, she continued, “After what you did?”
“What are y-” Suddenly stopping and standing his ground, he leaned back towards her, using his small bit of height over her to his advantage. “If you’re talking about the night I saved your life, that-”
“You didn’t save my life!” she shouted right back, opening her fingers and throwing her hands down. “You ruined my death!”
Xigbar gritted his teeth inside his mouth and exhaled through his nose, glaring at her. Again, it was green into gold, but he wasn’t going to back down this time. “Fine, if that’s how you feel about it. Just don’t expect me to be sorry I did it.”
“Oh yes, you ‘saved my life’ out of some strict moral responsibility. How strange it wasn’t there when you decided to up and leave,” she spat back.
Whatever he was going to say next was lost when something in her face cracked at the edges. Was it the way her eyes flicked to the ground, the tiniest quiver in the shape of her mouth-
“I gave up everything for you,” she was saying. “My livelihood, my people, my home, everything.” Her voice quaked just a little, and Leviathan, he was standing so close it would take him two seconds to raise his hand and touch her face again. “And what did it all amount to?” She glared at him again, any sign of tears absent in her eyes. “‘I had a good time. I’m sorry.’ I should have known you would turn out like all the others - weak and pathetic.”
That put the iron bands twisting his heart back in place. “Did I ask you to give everything up for me? I don’t remember that being part of the equation,” he accused, voice caustic.
“Maybe it wasn’t for you. I guess you wouldn’t understand that though, not knowing what it’s like to lose something important.”
Xaldin, his heart beating rapidly in his chest replied, but the pain swept up to his head so quickly he couldn’t get it out.
“But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done,” she said, turning away from him again, towards the path back down. “The only reason we’re talking right now is so that I can finally wash my hands of you, to prove to myself that despite the love I had for you - the love I still have for you - I don’t need you anymore.”
Painful starbursts of thoughts and emotion filled Xigbar up to the point that by the time he found his vocal chords again, she was nearly off the cliff top. “You… still love me?”
“As usual, you’re missing the point.” With a weary sigh, she turned back, her white hair draping over her dusky skin. “I never stopped loving you, even after you slunk away like the coward you are.” Her eyes scanned his face, even as he tried to grasp her words. “The point is I’m glad I saw you one last time, if only to see how much time I wasted waiting for someone who would never be there.” She turned away again and continued down her path.
“Did you?” he responded, before even thinking.
She stopped in the darkness.
“See that it wasn’t worth it, I mean?” he continued as his brain and heart sped back up again.
The waves crashed against the island. The wind blew against their backs and Xigbar remembered how to breathe again. Mirage wasn’t responding but she wasn’t walking away either.
CRRRRA-KOOOOOMMM went the night.
Xigbar swore loudly and Mirage shook in the darkness as an explosion rocked the air of the islands. Turning quickly to look back out to sea, Xigbar saw a fireball of curving red and sunflower yellow light curve up from the island of Maui across the channel.
“Vexen, goddamnit,” Xigbar muttered. His stupid friend had to go get himself in stupid trouble and how much more stupid bad stuff could cram itself into this stupid night?
---
“Vexen!”
Coughing, he threw another ice spell into the smoke. This was certainly not the way he had seen his night going.
“Vexen, are you alright?” Mélisande’s arm reached through the smoke nearby and he pulled her towards him. He brushed a hand quickly through her hair while they continued to look around the lab. “What happened? Where are my sisters?”
“Shut up, I can handle this,” Vexen replied, and though his words were angry, his voice carried an undercurrent no one but one of the Ladies would’ve heard. A second later, miniature snow clouds weighed down the smoke and put out the acrid fire the experiment had burst into. Margot and Michelle were across the room, standing by one of the lab windows, which they had obviously flung open.
Mélisande joined them quickly as the scientist sighed, checking his arms for any serious burns. The room was quiet beside some light coughing from Michelle, so when someone slammed the front door open, he was able to hear it, beside the fact that these labs were up a storey and near the back of the house. “Vex-en! You better as hell not be dead!”
Vexen groaned and rolled his eyes. Xigbar took the stairs up two at a time and spotted him instantly; no chance to make a getaway. Curse that thrice-damned sharp sight of his. Curse it to the ends of the seven seas and back.
Xigbar leaned briefly against the doorframe before walking in, still catching his breath. “What…” Resting his hands on his knees, he paused until he was completely capable of breathing slowly again. “What the ever-loving fuck is going on in here?!” the pirate asked, gesturing around the room.
Vexen only raised a disinterested eyebrow. “Eloquently put, Xigbar, but unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary? Dude, I heard that from the next island.” Xigbar straightened up, looking completely serious. “Exactly how much dynamite were you using?”
“I was not using dynamite, you simpleton. Margot was mixing a concoction of rather volatile components which - never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Vexen rolled his sleeves up his arms to better check for injuries. He hissed lightly as he spotted a bright red burn up his left forearm. Giving it a quick shake he turned back to his former crewmate. “As you can see, I handled the problem without your help, just as I have for many years.”
Letting out a heated sigh, Xigbar rolled his eye. “Oh, well. Excuse me for worrying that maybe a certain old mutual friend of ours had decided to pop in and make an attempt on your life.”
Vexen’s green eyes widened, his face frozen in fear.
Xigbar furrowed his eyebrows at him. “What, like you thought he’d never come after you? Grab a brain, man! Or did all the fumes wear away at your common sense?”
Nothing happened for a good few seconds, and then one of the Ladies hiccoughed. Just like that, a warning signal rocketed up Xigbar’s spine, sending his heartbeat pounding painfully against his sternum even though nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong, everything was fine…
Until he turned around and looked towards the figure he knew anywhere leaning against the doorframe.
Two violet eyes smiled at him from beneath a captain’s tricorne of blackest midnight.
Foot Notes/Glossery
• Yes, Xigbar managed to work a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reference in there. Why? Because he's Xigbar.
• For those of you who have played Final Fantasy IX, you may have caught Freya making vague reference to her own past. For those who haven't, she's searching for Sir Fratley, her lost love.
• And oh, look at that. I lied about Xaldin only being mentioned and it turns out he's actually in the chapter.
Whoopsie daisy. ;D
Chapter 9 ← Chapter 10 → Chapter 11
Chapter Listing
Genre: Action, Romance, Angst
Ships?: Nearly all four - Luxord/Tifa, Xigbar/Mirage, sorta Vivi/Eiko
→Friendships?: lots, let's just say. xD
Characters: Roxas, Vivi, Luxord, Tifa, Xigbar, Eiko, Freya, Mirage, Vexen
→Cameos: Naminé, the Ladies
→Mentions: Lilo, Io, Xaldin
Rating: PG-13/R for language? I don't know how sensitive people are to this. xD
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Disney, Square-Enix or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.
Music: "Argument on the Cliff"
Notes: There was another song I used in the first scene, but I can't remember what it was. :/ Ah, well.
In which some old wounds are reopened.
Drink Up, Me Hearties
Chapter 10: Four of Pentacles
The sky was a navy blue up above the lagoon. The stars shone down silver, and the moon was a warm yellow crescent in the sky. Beside him, Eiko twisted her purple hair on top of her head, a hair tie hanging from her mouth. Roxas watched moonlight gleam off her steel gray horn as she finished and tied her hair back.
“So we’re going to this luau just to steal stuff?” he asked as Vivi joined them from down the docks, twirling one of the flowers from the lobby hut between his gloved fingers. As far as Roxas could tell, the only change in the older swabbie’s clothing was that his coat tails looked a bit longer and less torn. It was the same weather-worn pale blue, and his pants were still patched all over like a haphazard quilt. Eiko’s change to a still black, still lacy, but shorter dress was at least a little more noticeable.
“We’re pirates, Roxas, and unless we’re laying siege to a city, we’re stealing stuff during their festivals,” Eiko replied, smoothing her dress out. She turned towards the door of the hut they were waiting outside, made of thick bamboo reeds tied together. “And someone’s going to be in a load of trouble if her dad finds out she made us late!”
“We’re pirates, Eiko, and we don’t have rules about being late.” The door swung open and Naminé hopped out, wearing a mint green muumuu with a print of white leaves falling down it. She was wearing one of the flower leis that they had seen around the island while exploring with Lilo and Io. “Besides, you know we can make up for it quick as a whip if we find the right shops quickly enough. There was a silverware place just north of Mr. Vexen’s mansion, if I remember correctly.”
“Of course you remember correctly,” Eiko replied, giggling as the two of them walked off ahead, towards the lobby hut. “You remember everything, Naminé.”
The two swabbies followed after, Roxas’s hands stuck in the pockets of his blue vest (his brown one was hanging up to dry somewhere around here). “So Vivi, remind me again. It was a compass in the carving?”
“The one that Vexen showed us?” Vivi twirled the flower again, as though he were nervous about something. “It looked just like one, yeah. But since there’s no way of us knowing what the message above it means, we can’t be sure.”
Roxas nodded, watching Naminé’s retreating back, frowning contemplatively.
“That’s right. You mentioned that you and Naminé met someone with a compass yesterday?” Vivi asks, tugging his tricorne over his shadowed face. His eyes blinked in the dark like big golden suns.
“Yeah, the two native girls who showed us around. They said their compass pointed you to whatever you wanted the most.” Roxas nodded again, ruffling his hair as he thought.
“It sorta seemed like it was true,” he continued as they walked up the wooden steps that took them into the lobby hut. It was empty at the moment, and they passed through to the front door, which still had a small hole in it from when Xigbar had first gotten their rooms. “When Naminé and I held it, the needle usually just spun around in circles. But when Io and Lilo held it, it pointed us towards the turtles.”
“Hmm.” Vivi went back to twirling his flower as they approached the end of the lagoon and the start of solid land again. “Maybe we should ask Vexen or Xigbar about it. Xigbar once taught me that compasses work ‘cause of something called ‘magnetism’ or something. But then again…” The swabbie looked up towards the night sky. “These islands have people come live on them from all over the ocean. A magic compass ending up here doesn’t seem that far-fetched.”
He laughed lightly beneath his hat. “We’ve heard all kinds of crazier stuff back on Beaumont.”
“Right, Beaumont,” Roxas said with a grin. “Speaking of which, what’s going to happen after this luau, anyway? Are we gonna go back there to find out where we should go or…?”
Vivi hesitated, looked towards the sandy path that wove through the Hawaiian jungle, back towards the larger roads of Nomanisan, which would take them to the valley the luau was in. “I’m… not really sure. We’ll have to ask Captain Luxord once we see him, but that might not be for a little bit. Tifa said that the two of them needed to talk about something.”
---
“You’re not gonna chicken out and play the ‘gentlemen of fortune’ card, are you?”
“My dear woman, you know fully well that I am not always a gentleman.”
“Show me.”
Sand flew up behind her as Tifa’s sword crashed against Luxord’s. He met her blow with perfect ease, one hand tucked behind his back. Pushing off his back leg to push their blades out of their lock, he only smirked before starting to attack her weak points.
She batted away his advances with a raw grace, but frustration was waking up her instincts. She had fought far too many armed men with her bare hands to lose a practice match because of the addition of a weapon. Clenching her jaw, Tifa’s sword clashed and clanged against the curve of Luxord’s; the moonlight flared against the blades.
Tifa stumbled back over her feet, her heart pounding painfully in her ears. It wasn’t the fact that Luxord was landing points on her - no actual slashes this time; this was a private duel and their healer had gone to the luau - it was the fact that Luxord was proving his point. So she was a pirate who didn’t care for sword fighting. It didn’t make her less of a scourge of the sea, in her opinion, and she was going to get it through Luxord’s thick skull-
With a rumble streaking up her throat, her sword caught Luxord’s white buccaneer shirt and tore a new opening across his chest.
He met her eyes, gave a quick and awed “Ah”, and leapt back into the fight. Their blades met again and again, up down up down up, lock, back, clash of metal and fire, lock.
Her face was so close her breath fanned over his lips and he nearly drowned in dark-flame irises. His shoulder moved before he could contemplate it, disengaging them from the lock-
There were three sounds that mixed in the next moment’s breath. A gasp from Tifa, a humming shin from Luxord’s sword and a rrip.
“Oh,” Luxord said half a second later. Tifa gazed up at him from the tear in her pants near her hip with the red line running through it, shocked. Her eyes singed him like fire but he refused to flinch. “Tifa, I apologize.”
She responded by kicking his sword hand with a bare foot, sending the weapon flying. Another half a second and there was a dull thud as his back hit the sand.
Tifa sat on his chest, continuing to glare through red eyes, her dark hair falling around her face. “Pirates break rules all the time, Captain, so I believe I win.”
“I didn’t cheat, if that’s what you are presupposing,” Luxord said, glaring back despite the wide smirk on his face. She nearly kneed him in the ribs when he reached up and touched the cut he had made gently with bare fingertips, taking her by surprise. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
There was a crashing in the undergrowth and Xigbar (remarkably inconvenient Xigbar, Luxord found himself thinking) appeared on the shoreline in the space between two palm trees.
With the scant moonlight glancing off the white streaks in his hair, the first mate pointedly looked away from the duellers laying in the sand despite the grin on his face. “See, I was a little concerned when I saw your coat and Tifa’s cool little curtain thing hanging in the jungle, but I guess I was just overreacting.”
Pushing off Luxord’s chest with her hands, Tifa stood up and looked out to sea before the uncomfortable heat that had crawled up from her stomach could turn her face red. She folded her arms across her heart defensively as Luxord sat up, brushing sand out of his pale blond hair. “Oh, no - by all means, continue with the shameless foreplay. I like watching,” Xigbar said, a laugh bubbling beneath his words.
“What are you doing infringing a private conference, Mister Xigbar?” Luxord asked, standing up and brushing more sand off his clothes.
“Didn’t look like…” Xigbar muttered beneath his breath before striding on to the sand. “Naminé’s orders, cap’n. In case you forgot, the luau started a coupla hours ago. She hoped you and Tifa weren’t arguing or had gotten eaten by mutant turtles or something. But,” he tossed a grin at him, then towards Tifa’s back, “I’ll have to tell her that’s the least of her worries.”
Tifa continued to let the sea wash over her feet, but turned her head slightly, letting her long hair brush over her bare shoulders. “Naminé told me that the jungle here makes her uneasy. You probably should go ahead, Captain. I’ll be right with you.”
Whatever frustration had been sitting in Luxord’s chest since Xigbar’s arrival melted as he looked back to her. There was a pregnant pause before he said, “I wish you would stop calling me that sometimes, Tifa.” That said, he turned and he trudged back to the palm trees.
Once the sound of cracking palm fronds faded away, Tifa unfolded her arms slowly, turned and followed after.
“Lovebird.”
“Yes, Xigbar.” Tifa turned again, pausing in the sand near the trees.
He smiled at her before breaking into a short laugh. “You really should stop calling him ‘Captain’, kid. He likes you, alright?”
A smile twitched around Tifa’s lips before she continued on into the undergrowth without a word.
Xigbar sighed, playing with his gun holsters as he followed after them. “Ah, love. You crazy little demon, you.”
---
Roxas sat in the chair next to Eiko as the dancers with the fans made of woven flowers and dried grasses bowed on stage. A few minutes later, Vivi sat beside him. After one of the waitresses in the grass skirts refilled Naminé’s drink, she seemed to ask no one in particular, “So what’d you get?”
“Two knives from that silverware place,” Roxas whispered immediately, scratching at his nose and rubbing his legs, obviously skittish. “They have gems on the handle but I don’t know if they’re real.”
Freya chuckled and smiled at him, sitting across the table beside Naminé. The one eye not hidden behind her hair held a quiet surprise as she sipped her drink. “That’s pretty good for your first time stealing anything. Sure you’re not a pirate, swabbie?”
Vivi tugged at his tricorne. “Yeah, I usually only take one thing at a time. I found a nice teapot-”
“Teapot?” Eiko hissed. “How in the world are you hiding a teapot?” She plucked at his coat, looking for odd bulges. “I told you I was just going to buy one back on Destiny Islands!”
“You needed a new one and it was nice, so I took it,” Vivi whispered back, batting at her hands. “Eiko, stop it, you’ll make us look suspicious!”
“We’re back, and do I have a talent for interrupting romantic scenes, or do I have a talent for interrupting romantic scenes?” Xigbar leaned down on Vivi’s back, resting his chin on top of the tricorne and pushing it over the mage’s luminous golden eyes. Tifa sat on one side of Naminé and Luxord the other, giving his daughter’s hair an affectionate ruffle as she did.
Eiko stuck her tongue out at him as he sat in beside Vivi. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you interrupted your own romantic scenes, Xigbar.”
“Tch, what’s that supposed to mean?” he replied, leaning around Vivi to look at her.
“Oh, please! Were you there during that whole fight that got us to stay at the Honokaa Inn?” Eiko asked.
“Wait, that-” Xigbar shifted in his seat; drew himself up straighter. “What, you think that was supposed to be some sort of romantic reunion? I never said anything about Mirage-”
“It’s not like you would.”
Icy silence slid over the smooth wood of the table, pirate by pirate, as they turned to look at Freya. Whatever warmth had been there for complimenting Roxas was gone. Her pointed grey ears lay flat against her hair, and her long clawed fingers were tight around her glass.
Before Xigbar had the chance to say or ask anything, she spoke again. “You probably just slept with her and left the next morning without a single word, right?”
Reflexively, the first mate opened his mouth, and then closed it again with a wince.
His silence thickened around their shoulders, drawing them all up, disappointed and disbelieving that Xigbar had no reply.
Finally, he managed, “It’s not something I’m going to talk about, alright?”
“You talked about Xaldin,” Eiko pointed out.
“Yeah, well, turns out Xaldin’s a megalomaniac bent on destroying the entire ocean now, so I’m feeling a lot less bad about that, thanks,” Xigbar snapped, glaring at a torch beside the luau stage. A man was taking the stage, armed with two double-ended torches, but none of them paid attention. “It’s not something you’d understand.”
“No, it’s not like we’d ever understand having our heart broken,” Freya continued, laying her cup down, eerily calm. “It’s not like we’d ever join up with strangers to search for people we loved. It’s not like we’d turn our backs on the law to find someone who’s already forgotten us.”
Xigbar closed his eye and smiled ironically, standing up gradually. He looked calmly into her glare, bright green into gold.
Eventually, he shrugged one shoulder casually, uttering a “heh”. “The torch dancer hasn’t even started yet and I’m getting too hot and itchy. Guess that means it’s time for air.” Saying nothing, he strode off, knocking his wooden chair over in the process.
“Xigbar!” Vivi called after him, standing up and nearly tripping on the older pirate’s chair as he did. People from the other tables turned and looked from them to the chess-board ponytail retreating farther and farther into the night.
“Let him go, Vivi,” Luxord said. “If Xigbar doesn’t feel like ceasing to talk once you get him going, then I surmise it would work much the same way in reverse.”
All the same, everyone looked to the place the first mate had left, trailing a turbulent atmosphere behind him.
Everyone but Freya.
---
Someone was singing in the bar.
Yellow light streamed from the glassless windows onto the seaside road and people moved about inside. Their chatting, amicable voices made a low murmur above the calming rhythm of the sea, just like on the nights when he had first found Nomanisan Island.
Good. That meant he was close.
Xigbar continued down the road, feeling his way down the hallway of memories in the dark. He had crashed through the undergrowth somewhere here. It hadn’t been too far from the bar; he remembers that much. Somewhere near these banana looking things-
Stepping closer to them, he realized the bright yellow bulbs weren’t bananas, but flowers. Aloe flowers. Looking beyond them, he noticed the grass was flattened in a path that led steeply up an incline, wrapped around the side of a rock outcropping. He had definitely found it, then.
It was a shorter climb to the top of the cliff than he remembered. Or perhaps it was just the disturbing quietness of his thoughts that made it seem that way. Pulling himself up using the trunks of some thinner trees that grew along the path, he found himself high above the ocean.
The waves roared far beneath him, tossing and churning as the sea collided against the stone of the island. The wind blew in off the water, lifting his hair and cutting through his shirt easily.
Heaving a sigh, Xigbar let his knees sink him down to the ground. He ripped up blades of grass mechanically, finding whatever peace he could in that and the breeze on his skin beneath the heat of the night.
His hands halted suddenly as he felt the prickles on the back of his neck that told him something was watching him. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to see that it was Mirage, but he did it anyway. He was rewarded with his heart kicking him square in the ribcage with the force of an iron-toed boot.
She was beautiful. (When are you ever not? His own voice echoed in his head, down in a half-forgotten memory.) The fabric of the coppery red dress she wore caught the light of the stars, shining in golden beads woven into the folds wrapped tightly against her body. White lacey gloves spiderwebbed their way up her arms past her elbows, showing the darkness of her sun-kissed skin beneath.
Some part of his brain at the back of his skull reasoned she must’ve been at the luau too, and saw him walk off, but he quickly ignores it to observe her posture. Her arms were folded across her chest, much the way lovebird had crossed her arms earlier. A defence mechanism.
“Well!” he began, standing up and tugging at his shirt absently. “This is awkward. You aren’t going to shiv me or anything, are you?”
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead before you felt the knife go in,” she replied easily, icily.
Waves crashed down below. Xigbar scratched his temple, watching the grass sway in the breeze. “Noooot the kind of answer I was hoping for…”
Her bare feet barely made a sound in the grass as she walked past him, right to the edge of the cliff. “I always come up here at night. It’s quiet. Let’s me think.”
“Uh, yeah. I was… just thinking the same thing.”
For a long while there was nothing but the stars, the wind and the waves. If he listened carefully he thought he could hear something moving in the trees below them, near the road.
“Uh, hey listen, Mirage? If, uh… If you’re still mad about what happened… I mean, I know it was years ago, but-”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, voice snapping harshly like a switchblade.
“Ah, okay then.”
Xigbar waited, and when Mirage made no further movements, he inched one foot towards the path back down to earth.
“You’re a goddamn bastard, you know that?” Her voice froze him to the spot before he could get very far.
Looking back to her, eye wide, he saw the way she glared from the corner of her eye. “I can’t believe how selfish you are,” she added.
“What?” Xigbar breathed, disbelief saturating his own voice. “What’d I do now? You just said you didn’t want to talk about it!” His voice teetered up in volume as he gestured out to sea. This past hour had just been working perfectly for him, hadn’t it?
“I don’t, but couldn’t you have least acted like you cared?” she said, rolling her shoulders back as she turned to him fully. Her eyes pricked him like green stars in the night. “I could’ve taken any excuse, you know. Anything you could’ve thought of. ‘I need to get back to my crew’. ‘Honestly, I just don’t like you that much’. ‘I left the kiln burning at home’.”
She unfolded her arms, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I could’ve taken anything, but what do I get? A note: ‘I had a good time. I’m sorry.’”
Xigbar blinked rapidly in his shock. Inhale, exhale, breathe. Go. “Is that really what I wrote?” His fingers hung limply at his sides, refusing to give up the precise memory of writing those words. “Wow.”
“Did you really think that leaving me with a note would be enough?” she demanded, starting towards him. Xigbar backed down the cliff, trying to make sure he didn’t topple right down the sheer incline of the hill. Where was rock wall he could aim for… Her voice raising, she continued, “After what you did?”
“What are y-” Suddenly stopping and standing his ground, he leaned back towards her, using his small bit of height over her to his advantage. “If you’re talking about the night I saved your life, that-”
“You didn’t save my life!” she shouted right back, opening her fingers and throwing her hands down. “You ruined my death!”
Xigbar gritted his teeth inside his mouth and exhaled through his nose, glaring at her. Again, it was green into gold, but he wasn’t going to back down this time. “Fine, if that’s how you feel about it. Just don’t expect me to be sorry I did it.”
“Oh yes, you ‘saved my life’ out of some strict moral responsibility. How strange it wasn’t there when you decided to up and leave,” she spat back.
Whatever he was going to say next was lost when something in her face cracked at the edges. Was it the way her eyes flicked to the ground, the tiniest quiver in the shape of her mouth-
“I gave up everything for you,” she was saying. “My livelihood, my people, my home, everything.” Her voice quaked just a little, and Leviathan, he was standing so close it would take him two seconds to raise his hand and touch her face again. “And what did it all amount to?” She glared at him again, any sign of tears absent in her eyes. “‘I had a good time. I’m sorry.’ I should have known you would turn out like all the others - weak and pathetic.”
That put the iron bands twisting his heart back in place. “Did I ask you to give everything up for me? I don’t remember that being part of the equation,” he accused, voice caustic.
“Maybe it wasn’t for you. I guess you wouldn’t understand that though, not knowing what it’s like to lose something important.”
Xaldin, his heart beating rapidly in his chest replied, but the pain swept up to his head so quickly he couldn’t get it out.
“But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done,” she said, turning away from him again, towards the path back down. “The only reason we’re talking right now is so that I can finally wash my hands of you, to prove to myself that despite the love I had for you - the love I still have for you - I don’t need you anymore.”
Painful starbursts of thoughts and emotion filled Xigbar up to the point that by the time he found his vocal chords again, she was nearly off the cliff top. “You… still love me?”
“As usual, you’re missing the point.” With a weary sigh, she turned back, her white hair draping over her dusky skin. “I never stopped loving you, even after you slunk away like the coward you are.” Her eyes scanned his face, even as he tried to grasp her words. “The point is I’m glad I saw you one last time, if only to see how much time I wasted waiting for someone who would never be there.” She turned away again and continued down her path.
“Did you?” he responded, before even thinking.
She stopped in the darkness.
“See that it wasn’t worth it, I mean?” he continued as his brain and heart sped back up again.
The waves crashed against the island. The wind blew against their backs and Xigbar remembered how to breathe again. Mirage wasn’t responding but she wasn’t walking away either.
CRRRRA-KOOOOOMMM went the night.
Xigbar swore loudly and Mirage shook in the darkness as an explosion rocked the air of the islands. Turning quickly to look back out to sea, Xigbar saw a fireball of curving red and sunflower yellow light curve up from the island of Maui across the channel.
“Vexen, goddamnit,” Xigbar muttered. His stupid friend had to go get himself in stupid trouble and how much more stupid bad stuff could cram itself into this stupid night?
---
“Vexen!”
Coughing, he threw another ice spell into the smoke. This was certainly not the way he had seen his night going.
“Vexen, are you alright?” Mélisande’s arm reached through the smoke nearby and he pulled her towards him. He brushed a hand quickly through her hair while they continued to look around the lab. “What happened? Where are my sisters?”
“Shut up, I can handle this,” Vexen replied, and though his words were angry, his voice carried an undercurrent no one but one of the Ladies would’ve heard. A second later, miniature snow clouds weighed down the smoke and put out the acrid fire the experiment had burst into. Margot and Michelle were across the room, standing by one of the lab windows, which they had obviously flung open.
Mélisande joined them quickly as the scientist sighed, checking his arms for any serious burns. The room was quiet beside some light coughing from Michelle, so when someone slammed the front door open, he was able to hear it, beside the fact that these labs were up a storey and near the back of the house. “Vex-en! You better as hell not be dead!”
Vexen groaned and rolled his eyes. Xigbar took the stairs up two at a time and spotted him instantly; no chance to make a getaway. Curse that thrice-damned sharp sight of his. Curse it to the ends of the seven seas and back.
Xigbar leaned briefly against the doorframe before walking in, still catching his breath. “What…” Resting his hands on his knees, he paused until he was completely capable of breathing slowly again. “What the ever-loving fuck is going on in here?!” the pirate asked, gesturing around the room.
Vexen only raised a disinterested eyebrow. “Eloquently put, Xigbar, but unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary? Dude, I heard that from the next island.” Xigbar straightened up, looking completely serious. “Exactly how much dynamite were you using?”
“I was not using dynamite, you simpleton. Margot was mixing a concoction of rather volatile components which - never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Vexen rolled his sleeves up his arms to better check for injuries. He hissed lightly as he spotted a bright red burn up his left forearm. Giving it a quick shake he turned back to his former crewmate. “As you can see, I handled the problem without your help, just as I have for many years.”
Letting out a heated sigh, Xigbar rolled his eye. “Oh, well. Excuse me for worrying that maybe a certain old mutual friend of ours had decided to pop in and make an attempt on your life.”
Vexen’s green eyes widened, his face frozen in fear.
Xigbar furrowed his eyebrows at him. “What, like you thought he’d never come after you? Grab a brain, man! Or did all the fumes wear away at your common sense?”
Nothing happened for a good few seconds, and then one of the Ladies hiccoughed. Just like that, a warning signal rocketed up Xigbar’s spine, sending his heartbeat pounding painfully against his sternum even though nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong, everything was fine…
Until he turned around and looked towards the figure he knew anywhere leaning against the doorframe.
Two violet eyes smiled at him from beneath a captain’s tricorne of blackest midnight.
Foot Notes/Glossery
• Yes, Xigbar managed to work a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reference in there. Why? Because he's Xigbar.
• For those of you who have played Final Fantasy IX, you may have caught Freya making vague reference to her own past. For those who haven't, she's searching for Sir Fratley, her lost love.
• And oh, look at that. I lied about Xaldin only being mentioned and it turns out he's actually in the chapter.
Whoopsie daisy. ;D
Chapter 9 ← Chapter 10 → Chapter 11
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