Drink Up, Me Hearties } Chapter 11 - The Moon
Word Count: 7861
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.
Notes: Cut out all the pairings and characters and such, 'cause if you guys have read 11 CHAPTERS OF THIS STUFF you probably know the deal by now, and if you really want to, you can check the tags. xD Also, I did use a tonne of music for inspiration this time, but I'll keep it to myself, because the fake titles could end up becoming spoilery.
I swear Xigbar isn't secretly the main character of this fic. xD With that said, events occur in this chapter that move the plot forward! SHOCK.
(And just in case, though I don't think anyone does this, don't read the foot notes at the bottom of the chapter until you've actually read the chapter. xD Spoilers and such.)
In which negotiations are made.
Drink Up, Me Hearties
Chapter 11: The Moon
Nobody moved.
Xaldin only smiled from his place in the doorway, a smile which peeled into a smooth grin when the silence stretched onward.
Finally, Xigbar spoke. “Xaldin.”
“There we are. And here I was worried you’d forgotten,” the captain said smoothly, standing up straight and striding into the room. The floorboards creaked beneath his heavy boots. Small chains disappeared into the numerous pockets on his coat, reminding both men of the types used on some islands to keep a pocket watch from being lost.
“What are you doing here?” Vexen asked, posture and voice the epitome of icy calm.
“Come now, Vexen,” Xaldin chided casually, shrugging his great shoulders and opening his arms. “Is it a crime to visit old friends? Especially ones I haven’t seen in years?”
“No, but it is a crime to enter a man’s house without permission,” Vexen replied.
Xaldin cast a casual glance over his shoulder, a piqued frown on his face. “Someone left the front door open.”
Xigbar winced when Vexen shot him a glare. “I thought you were in danger!” he whispered defensively.
“Yes, you really can’t blame him, Vexen,” Xaldin said, turning back to them, obviously having heard. “He never would leave a friend in danger.”
Quiet settled in the lab again as something twisted in Xigbar’s gut. He had left them all those years ago, hadn’t he? How old would Zexion have been, again? He was so young when they found him in the first place; Lexaeus was practically his father. How old was Vivi now, in comparison? Oh, stars…
“Uh,” he managed, glancing at the floor.
“You’re looking good, Xigbar,” Xaldin said, in the exact tone he would’ve used years ago, when they talked in the crow’s nest of a different ship. “I’m sorry to hear that things aren’t going too smoothly with that innkeeper friend of yours.”
Xigbar reeled, nearly stepping back into one of the lab counters. “Wh- how-?”
“You know, Zexion asks about you two from time to time,” the man in black continued, strolling to a stool at a nearby counter and sitting. He took off his tricorne, inky black and undecorated and set it on the counter in front of him. “Still speaks in riddles, but keen as a knife. And Lexaeus, well… He was never one for talking but I can tell he still-”
“What do you want, Xaldin,” Vexen made the question a statement, biting while still composed.
“Hm.” Xaldin dropped his eyes and smiled softly. “It appears there is something on this island that I need.”
He glanced up at Xigbar, who sighed. “The compass.”
“I’ve heard from two painfully reliable birds that at least two of the younger members of your crew know where it is.” The captain held up a placating hand at Xigbar’s glare. “This conversation is between us men, Xigbar. The children will not be harmed.”
The cordial smile disappeared. “Unless they try anything.”
There was a beat of silence as Xaldin waited for either of his former crewmates to respond. When neither did, he said, “Hand over the compass tonight and we’ll go peacefully.”
“You dare to demand we hand you anything when you barge in here unannounced and proceed to make boorish threats against my home? You are lower than a paramecium to think so, old friend,” Vexen said, his words snapping out despite the way the hand holding his cane shook. “If I had more strength in me-”
“But you don’t, Vexen,” Xaldin said calmingly, “and it’d be wise not to speak to me in that way. I’d advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head lest I forget my own manners. The Door was kind enough to leave you with one leg.” His eyes grew a hint darker, more dangerous. “Don’t squander that gift.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Xigbar’s voice cut through the tension. “We can get through this without ripping each other’s throats out. You want the compass, Xaldin?” he asked, sending a glare over. “Fine. But we have some demands of our own, and you’ll listen to them if you ever want to leave, compass or no compass.”
Xaldin sighed deeply, and it seemed as if the wind outside the mansion sighed with him. “And now you’re threatening me as well, Xigbar. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little wounded.” The gold glare remained steady when Xaldin raised his eyes to him. “I’d thought we had gone through enough together to avoid that, but very well. In honour of our friendship, I’ll listen to your demands.”
“Not here,” Xigbar replied without a hint of hesitation. “It needs to be on neutral ground, somewhere where we can’t get a drop on each other. Vexen’ll pick the spot - he knows the lay of the land pretty well, don’t you buddy?”
Vexen started to splutter a protest when Xigbar put a hand on his shoulder, but quieted at the long smirk the shorter man gave him. He made a muttered sound that sounded vaguely in agreement.
“We’ll meet there in three hours, and negotiations will start.” Xigbar turned back to Xaldin. “Is that a deal?”
Xaldin smiled again. “I’m glad to see your confidence hasn’t changed a bit, Xigbar. I believe it is not an unreasonable deal. We shall meet in three hours at a place of Vexen’s choosing. Yes, I think that’s fair.”
“Well, I don’t,” Vexen scoffed harshly. “I’m insulted you think so little of me after all this time. Don’t you think I know that you have the mansion surrounded? What’s to stop you from torching this place - the whole island even - once you have what you need?”
Xigbar choked beside him and gave him a glance that nearly shouted for him to shut his trap, but Vexen continued. “Do you expect us to trust your word? I’m not stupid. Don’t expect me to think you are.”
Xaldin chuckled, as though discussing the fate of the island was just good humour. “As cynical as always, Vexen. I should’ve expected nothing less.”
He stood again, the small chains on his coat twinkling in the light of the lab, picking up his hat in one hand. “Yes, why should you trust me?” he asked quietly, as though speaking to himself, then smiled decidedly up at the two of them. “In exchange, I will have Quistis, my seer, seal our powers until the truce is over and we are several leagues away from these islands.”
“Impossible,” Vexen accused. “No one can seal up magic powers unless you have-”
“A siren stone, I know,” Xaldin replied, making a polite gesture with his tricorne. “Quistis has one, of course. I wouldn’t offer something I couldn’t provide. That would leave me in debt, Vexen.”
“One last thing, Xaldin,” Xigbar said, taking a half-step forward. “What exactly were you planning coming to Hawaii if you weren’t going to negotiate?”
“You mean besides tearing these islands asunder until I find the compass? I would-” He paused suddenly, something catching the corner of his eye. He turned to the far side of the lab, where the Ladies flinched by the window. “Good evening, my ladies. How are you? I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“If you so much as look at them the wrong way, I will end you,” Vexen hissed acridly, suddenly surging forward despite his limp and Xigbar had to restrain him.
Xaldin only chuckled menacingly, from deep in his chest. “I see we’re in agreement then. I hope to see some of your crew in a couple of hours, Xigbar. I’m intrigued to meet the people you’ve spent all your years with,” he said, replacing his hat. “The meeting place then, Vexen?”
“Malu Lani,” Vexen bit between his teeth, like he was chewing on cold metal. “A spit of land off the northeast shore.”
Xaldin nodded and smiled as though a very friendly business deal had just come to a close, turned and left, his chains and boots clinking and rumbling after him.
The Ladies rushed from the window as soon as he was gone, full of “Oh darling, don’t you dare…” and “Vexen, what will we do”’s. Before anyone could do much of anything, however there was another sound from downstairs, too brief to determine the origin.
The group of five followed the sound out to the top of the stairs. Xaldin had stopped half-way down them, as Luxord and the rest of crew stood in the front hall; everyone who had a weapon held it at ready and blocked the door. Xigbar was willing to guess that the sound they had heard was a sound Vivi had made in surprise, as he could seeing that the mage’s gloves were not surrounded with black magic ready to fire
“Xigbar, what is he doing here?” Luxord asked, without taking his stormy-eyed glare off of the captain swathed in black.
“Put down your weapons, Cap,” Xigbar replied. “We’ve uh, both taken a moment to wave the white-flag.”
“Waving the white-flag - him?” Tifa demanded, her fists still clenched. No one else lowered their weapons.
“If he hadn’t, he would’ve torched this place by now,” Xigbar replied.
“He speaks the truth, Captain Luxord, or would you doubt your own crewmate?” Xaldin asked, folding his hands neatly behind his back as he descended the stairs.
Luxord’s eyes never left Xaldin’s face as he sheathed his sword at his side. Slowly, Naminé and Roxas did the same at the back of the group, and Freya let her spear rest against her shoulder only when Tifa let her hands rest by her sides.
Xaldin’s cool smile never seemed to leave as he looked the other captain over. “The famous Luxord Marrus.”
A clock ticked somewhere in the depths of Vexen’s house, filling the silence distantly. Finally, Luxord said, “If an armistice has indeed been consented, then I trust that we will not be spied upon.”
“Of course not, my good man. I’m sure Xigbar will explain everything to you. We’ll be waiting.” The crew parted as Xaldin moved to walk out the front door. Just as he moved over the threshold, he said, “I hope you are as brave as your mother.”
He was gone in the heartbeat he lacked, swallowed by the night. Even so, Luxord lunged for the place he had stood, before Freya clapped a hand on his shoulder and caught him with her green eyes. He nodded silently and the Burmecian woman patted his shoulder in a way that might have been consoling.
When Roxas cast Naminé a confused glance, she only shook her head slowly. “He doesn’t talk about it,” she said in a barely audible whisper.
“What a night, huh?” Xigbar asked as he descended the stairs, his loose white shirt and the familiar clack of his hip-holsters a stark contrast to Xaldin’s descent seconds before. Freya stared into the cool breeze that blew through the front door before closing the double doors with a quiet click. The crew moved to make themselves comfortable around the front hall.
“Exactly what are the conditions of this cease-fire, Xigbar?” Luxord asked as Xigbar sat on the bottom steps. Vexen descended the stairs behind him, Mélisande’s arm as an extra support.
“We bring him the compass in three hours, and he gets his spooky-psychic girl to silence their powers. They sail away with the compass, powerless until they’re far away from here. We don’t die immediately, but hand over something Xaldin obviously needs to destroy the world as we know it,” he reported.
“But we don’t even know if the compass Io and Lilo showed us is the real deal,” Roxas butted in. “What if we give him the wrong one and-”
“You really are an idiot,” Vexen said when he touched the ground floor. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“Give him a fake compass,” Freya supplied. Her inflection revealed nothing of what she thought of the idea.
“Keep the real one and use it to find something we can use to really stop him, if that’s how it works,” Vexen continued.
“Lilo and Io believed it did. It leads you to what you want most. I think that’s what they said,” Roxas nodded.
Naminé, who had been leaning against the doorframe that led into the parlour, fetched something from the pocket of her blue overcoat. She walked across the room to her father and pressed it into his hand.
The compass’s golden needle bounced behind the glass, before swinging in long swoops and changing directions. “Points to the heart’s deepest desire,” she recited.
“You stole their compass?” Roxas asked, coming to stand next her.
It was the first time Naminé had ever felt sheepish at the mention of a theft she had committed. “I was going to put one back for them,” she said, flushing pink.
“Right, then.” Luxord squeezed the compass in his hand and released, gestured to the blonde triplets standing beside Vexen obediently. “Ladies, if it’s not any trouble, can you fetch us a spare compass?”
“I know just the thing,” Margot chirped, grinning. She made quick work of walking off into the house and out of sight.
“Now, I don’t take much stock in superstitions-” Luxord began in the voice that he used to address the crew when on deck.
“Since when, Papa?” Naminé asked, giving him a sceptical smile.
Luxord cleared his throat, ignoring her. “-but the fact remains that we’re dealing a risky, not to mention a potentially hazardous, hand here. I don’t want to give Xaldin any advantage over us, no matter the presence of a silencing spell.”
“Listen, boss,” Xigbar spoke up, rubbing his legs before leaning his elbows on his thighs. “I’ve been your first mate for a hella long time. We’ve pulled some ridiculous batshit crazy stunts in our days, and hell, I helped you with them, yeah. But believe me when I say that this is different. You don’t know Xaldin like I do. He knows things. If he finds out we’re playing him for a sucker-”
“Which is why you will be the one tasked in finalizing these negotiations,” Luxord said, cutting off his sentence.
“…What.”
“Think about it, Xigbar.” Everyone watched as Luxord went and sat beside his first mate. “If what you told us was true, the two of you were once the closest of friends. The two of you have probably been through hell and back in your time together.”
“Don’t try to deny it, Xigbar,” Vexen said with a stiff sigh beside them. He waved off Michelle and Mélisande, and they nodded, hastily disappearing in a different direction than their sister in red. “You and I both know it’s true.”
“What reason would he have to believe that his best friend is selling him a falsehood?” Luxord continued.
“Because I left!” Xigbar said as he stood up suddenly, pacing. “Because he thinks I abandoned them by saving Vexen, I don’t know.”
“Then you’ll just have to convince him that your friendship is still there,” Luxord said calmly. Michelle reappeared with two wooden chairs from the kitchen and glided past the pacing Xigbar to give them to Vivi and Eiko. Mélisande followed behind and did the same with Roxas and Naminé. “You’re a very talented actor when you need to be, Xigbar, more talented than you realize. And even if you weren’t, I have little doubt that Xaldin would still believe you.”
“Why?” Xigbar asked, as he rounded, having reached the front door.
“Because I believe the friendship the two of you had is still there.” Luxord hardly noticed the curious stare everyone directed towards him.
“That’s… stupid,” Xigbar said, pausing in his path, wrinkling his brow. “We’ve both changed, not to mention the fact that he’s literally a heartless killer now. There’s nothing there.”
“I don’t believe that for a second, Xigbar, just the same as I believe that you haven’t given up hope on bringing him back to the way he was before he lost his heart,” Luxord said.
“Th-that’s-!”
“True, isn’t it?” Luxord shrugged a single shoulder and rubbed at one of the piercings in his ear idly. “It’s why you brought us all the way here to Vexen. Of course you want to find out why he’s destroying worlds, but more than that, you want to see if there’s a way to restore his heart.”
“I…” Xigbar sighed, hands on his hips and shoulders slumping. “You’re one smooth talker, you know that, boss? I bet you sold the eggs back to the hens when you were a kid to make a pretty penny.”
“I’m sorry it took so long,” Margot said as she reappeared. She showed the rest of the room the glint of the broken compass she held. It was obviously older than Lilo’s, the gold of the metal having faded to a dirty yellow. “I couldn’t remember where in the navigation room I had put this. It’s been in there for years; never could bring myself to throw it away…”
“Give it here,” Xigbar said, stretching his hand out to her. “I’m the one who’ll be needing it.”
“If Xigbar’s the man for the job, then who are we sending as his backup?” Freya asked from where she leaned against one of the front hall’s decorative tables.
Tifa smiled at her from across the room. “I say Freya and I go as back-up. Because if thing’s don’t go as planned, Xigbar’s gonna need some muscle.” Xigbar rolled his eye at her wink as she flexed an arm. “And if nothing else, I can help with that.”
“No,” Luxord said from the stairs.
This time he did notice the curious glance everyone sent him, though Tifa and Freya’s looks were punctuated with frowns. “Not three of you,” he said, correcting himself while stroking his beard thoughtfully. “I portend it would be more fastidious for Xigbar to beguile Xaldin if there are three of you.”
Freya gave a heated sigh that whistled softly through her rat-like teeth. “Alright. I may not trust Xaldin as far as I can throw him, but at least Tifa can throw him.”
Luxord nodded slowly. “Very good then. It’s settled.” He rose. “Let’s get you two ready.”
~~~
“Captain, certain that we are not to spy, you are?”
“How rude can you possibly be, Zorn?” Xaldin asked, eyes narrowed as he turned to look at the thief in red. As he did, the wind picked up, gusting into Zorn’s chest so quickly it pushed him back from the edge of the cliff the crew stood upon. Thorn only cackled at his twin, watching as he struggled to straighten his cap.
The wind slowed and blew his hair around and into his face as Xaldin turned back to the mansion below them. “I never go back on my word, and I told Captain Marrus that they would not be spied upon during their discussions.
“There is one thing that I am a bit curious about, however. Zexion?” The young man in question blinked his glowing eyes from where he stood beside Lexaeus, watching a salamander made of secrets crawl up his friend’s massive arms.
“Yes, Captain?” he hummed as he came forward to stand next to him.
Xaldin laid a heavy arm over his shoulders and Zexion smiled, looking lethargic and pleased at the gesture. “Can you tell me if there is indeed a magical object in that house?” his captain asked, pointing to the house with the watchtower and thatched roof.
Zexion focused on it intently, as though he were having a staring contest with the place. Finally, he said, “Oh, of course, Captain. A small one, but still ma-hhahahaaa!”
He suddenly bent over, clutching his sides with mad laughter. Xaldin let go of his shoulders to let the boy sink to his knees with it. Lexaeus stepped forward from the shadows, but Xaldin only shook his head gently. It didn’t stop the axman from glaring. In the shadows, Saïx and Quistis said nothing, and neither did Marluxia, who only smirked and shifted more comfortably against the rock wall.
After a moment or two, Zexion wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “Oh, how deplorable of me, laughing at such things. Yes, yes,” there were a few more choked laughs as he stood again, using Xaldin’s coat as a ladder. “There is a magic object in the house. The moon and the sea and the earth say it is so.” He dropped his voice to a secret-trader’s whisper: “I think the dragonflies say so as well.”
“Very good,” Xaldin said. “Let’s get moving out to this Malu Lani. All hands back to the ship.”
~~~
The bottom of the rowboat shifted through the dark gold sand as Tifa and Xigbar dragged it up the beach. “The tide’ll probably be in by the time we get out of this,” Tifa said conversationally.
“Yeah…” Xigbar brought the fake compass out of his pocket, and tapped the glass so the wobbly arrow spun about before tucking it away again. They walked toward a line of palm trees and fern fronds that looked as though someone had miniaturized some trees from the main islands and moved them, the colours and thickness of the trunks nearly the same. “You know, this is probably a trap.”
Tifa shrugged, some of her hair falling over her bare shoulders. “Maybe. I think it’s safe to say neither of us trust Xaldin, but he didn’t attack us in the mansion when he had the chance. And from what Vexen’s assistants told me, he seems obnoxiously polite, or something. Was he always like that?”
Xigbar gave her a pointed grimace from the corner of his eye.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Tifa winced. Rubbing salt in old wounds and all that.
The sudden snap of a twig breaking in the quiet of the underbrush was as loud as Vexen’s explosion to the two pirates. Immediately, the two stood back-to-back to look into the lush vegetation, Tifa raising her fists while Xigbar’s fingers hovered at the ready by his holsters.
A man with long blue hair tied back from his face appeared on Tifa’s side, and Xigbar turned to face him. “You must be Saïx,” Tifa said.
He nodded stiffly, flat gold eyes watching them like a cat would a mouse. A string of beads was woven into the strands of hair that fell in front of his ears, and he wore buckskin leggings despite the tropical heat of the night. A thick leather strap across his white shirt held a claymore to his back.
At his continued silence, Tifa raised an eyebrow. “Did Xaldin send you?”
“Captain Xaldin,” Saïx corrected, almost as a reflex. “And no. I scouted ahead to find you and follow you to the meeting place.”
“Why?” Xigbar asked.
“Xaldin trusts you, Xigbar. I do not,” he said, utterly calm. “And should this meeting turn out to be a ploy of your design, I will not have the same qualms about tearing you or your pretty companion apart.”
“Wooow,” Xigbar drawled, draping a casual arm over Tifa’s shoulders. “This has gotta be the best welcoming party I’ve ever had. It’s almost like he cares about us or something.”
Tifa gave him a tiny smile and turned inside his grip, back to the path they were on. “If that’s the way it’s going to be, then let’s go.”
A few minutes later, the path opened up onto a long stretch of sand in the middle of the tiny island. A group of dark figures emerged from the trees on the opposite side just as Tifa, Xigbar and Saïx did. Before anyone could do much of anything, there was a loud delighted laugh.
“Xigbar!” Zexion proclaimed, darting out of the group and grabbing the man’s hands. “It is too good to see you!”
“It’s… good to see you too, kid,” Xigbar said, hesitating a second before forcing the grin across his face. Tifa frowned as she watched Zexion tug him about in a dance that stumbled through the sand. Saïx silently rejoined his crew, making a wide circle around the awkward greeting in the centre of their meeting place.
Zexion stopped suddenly and turned, grinning at Lexaeus. Xigbar’s throat went dry when he caught a look of the scars across his old friend’s lips and dangerously close to his left eye. They were eyes just as sombre and blue as he remembered them.
“Lexaeus says hello as well, Xigbar.” Zexion said politely, grinning as he let go of Xigbar’s hands. “He sings a song of doves for you as well,” he remarked absently as he returned to the axman’s side.
Xaldin stepped forward, hands folded politely behind his back again. “Xigbar.”
“Xaldin,” he responded, the numbness is his chest at seeing Lexaeus and Zexion, utterly mad, melting within seconds.
“And this must be Tifa Lockhart.” There was an appreciative sound from the crew behind him as Xaldin nodded at her. “The woman with the strength of a hundred men.”
“A thousand,” she corrected, arms folded across her chest. A whistle this time, from who could only be the man named Marluxia; a man with a dangerous smile and russet hair.
“Of course,” Xaldin said, looking and sounding truly apologetic, bowing slightly at the waist for his grievance.
“I apologize for my mistake and my first mate’s behaviour,” he said, giving Saïx a narrow glare. “When it comes to the people whom he thinks has wronged his captain, he is notoriously… unforgiving.”
“Fitting,” Tifa replied, coming forward to stand next to Xigbar without a trace of fear in her steps. “I guess that’s something he and I have in common.”
Xaldin smiled kindly at her. “I find that admirable, Miss Lockhart. Captain Marrus is surely proud to have someone like you on his crew.”
Her red-eyed glare didn’t faze him in the least as he turned to Xigbar. “Anyway, shall we begin? I’m sure you’re just as eager to begin negotiations as I am.”
“Hold it, ‘old buddy’,” Xigbar said, casting a significant glance to the blonde woman in the black and red dress standing beside Marluxia. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”
“Of course,” Xaldin clucked his tongue at himself. “Where are my manners? Quistis, you may start the spell, please.”
Quistis’s long hair swept back over her bare shoulders as she strode forward, her black boots silent in the sand and the uneven tips of her red skirt leaving ghosts of trails behind her, like a sidewinder’s tracks. She plucked a stone out of the right sleeve of her black shirt and held it out for Tifa and Xigbar to see as she stopped an arm’s length away from them. Her thick glasses sparkled pale blue and hid her eyes, but her smile was plain and devious on her lips.
The stone in her hand, small enough to rest in the centre of her palm, would’ve looked like glass if it wasn’t flecked with spots of silvery-white. Tifa looked to Xigbar for confirmation, having never seen a siren stone for herself. “It’s good,” Xigbar said, nodding.
Quistis nodded, then clasped the stone firmly in both hands. She lifted it to her lips, whispering incantations as she walked backwards, closer to her crew. As though she were holding a match, white light sparked in her clasped hands then flared brighter.
Everyone watched as Quistis drew the stone away from her lips and lifted her cupped hands to the heavens. The stone, glowing like a glass coal lifted slowly upwards until it was above the highest of the small palm trees of Malu Lani.
Several thin beams of light, looking like shooting starts burst from the stone and travelled over the crew of the Boreas, the trees, and continued on to the horizon, supposedly marking the line they would need to cross to regain their powers. As they past over the other pirates, some of them slumped a little or ran a weary hand through their hair. Zexion’s blue eyes stopped glowing. The siren stone suddenly dropped back into Quistis’s hand when she herself sagged a little under the force of the spell.
“That was a pretty flashy display,” Xigbar called as the light faded from the stone. “How do we know you’re not just bullshitting us?”
Xaldin was still standing perfectly upright where even Lexaeus was leaning a little on one leg over the other. “I’m insulted you don’t trust me a little more, Xigbar, but I suppose it is understandable,” he said, placing a hand on his empty chest to show his honesty. “I can assure you that our powers are quite useless, now. I’ll attempt a simple fire spell for you.”
He brought a hand out from behind his back, and opened a glove as black as tar. A brief flicker of flame appeared, but fizzled out as quick as it had come, like a child’s firecracker.
Xigbar inhaled and exhaled deeply, nodding. “Alright then.” He dug in his left pocket and the compass gleamed dimly under the stars. Squeezing the rim, he watched the needle rattle and swing. “I know that nothing good’s going to come from me handing this to you.” He cast his gaze to Xaldin. “But if I do, I want your word - that you won’t destroy any islands ever again.”
Xaldin laughed and looked into the trees, grinning and shaking his head as though talking to an amusing child. “Once I have the compass, there’ll be no need to destroy the islands,” he said, turning his sharp violet eyes back to Xigbar.
“That’s not good enough,” Xigbar's voice was as hard as a bullet. “I want your word.”
“Then you have my word,” Xaldin said, immediately serious as he offered a hand to shake. Xigbar came forward and took it with his right, and they shook hands.
Xaldin wasn’t satisfied, as Xigbar saw his eyes darken slightly. “Come now, Xigbar, you know a simple handshake won’t be enough on a deal of this gravity. Let’s do this properly, the way we used to.”
Xigbar pressed his lips tightly together, as though the handshake had suddenly turned into an interrogation. “No. You know that was only… before. It… it doesn’t have… It doesn’t mean the same thing anymore.”
“It does to me, Xigbar,” Xaldin said, squeezing Xigbar’s hand the tiniest bit tighter. “It always has.”
Xigbar sighed and Tifa watched his shoulders slump from behind.
It was hard for either parties to see the process of the actual handshake, but it went as follows: Xaldin and Xigbar laid their palms flat against each other, as though going to high-five. Xigbar’s fingers pushed off Xaldin’s like a springboard, and Xigbar rocked back on his heels in the sand. As he leaned back, Xigbar’s hand balled into a fist, and as he leaned back in, he brought his fist down in a punch, which Xaldin easily caught.
Zexion laughed. For the first time in years, a smile played on the edges of Lexaeus’s lips.
Xaldin grinned a grin that was too sharp and killed the uneasy smiling twitches Xigbar was feeling himself. “Thank you, old friend,” the captain said.
Xigbar nodded, and pressed the compass into the black glove, warm from his sweaty hands by now. “Here it is. Deal’s a deal.”
He backed away to stand next to Tifa as Xaldin studied it, turning it over and over again in his hand. “Xigbar,” Tifa whispered, pulling him closer by his shirt-sleeve so they could talk. “I know he was your best friend, but I… can’t trust him. Radiant Isle was my home.”
“I know, trust me, I know. I don’t expect you to forgive him for that. But… I don’t know. Something inside tells me that we can count on him to keep his promise.” Xigbar gave her a confident grin, though she still frowned at him anxiously. “Come on, babe. I haven’t steered you wrong before, have I?”
They both flinched at the sound of shattering glass and splaying metal.
The compass, the glass pan cracked open and the needle utterly broken, lay in Xaldin’s hand. His smile was tight and unpleasant now.
“What… what…” Xigbar grasped for words and didn’t find any.
“I appreciate your willingness to negotiate peacefully, Xigbar, but to be frank…” With a flick of his wrist, the pieces of the compass clinked as they landed in the sand between them. “This was never what I really wanted.”
“H-How did you know?” Xigbar scrambled for words, anything as a distraction as Xaldin started to walk towards them, the rest of his crew trailing behind.
“Know what?” Xaldin asked, eyebrows perking.
“That… that the compass was fake?” Xigbar took a step back for every slow step Xaldin took forward, trying to pull Tifa behind his back. She refused, staying by his side.
Xaldin eyes darkened. “You just told me, Xigbar. I’m disappointed in you, trying to trick me like this. If the compass had been what I really wanted, I’d seriously be doubting our friendship at the moment.”
The words clicked and Xigbar spoke with sudden horrid understanding. “The circle on the etching beneath the key. It isn’t a compass rose at all. It’s something else.”
“Yes, yes,” Xaldin rolled his eyes. “But you see, Xigbar, the problem is that because you played false with me,” Marluxia chuckled behind them as Xaldin came to a stop, “I have no reason to uphold my end of the bargain. I can rip the archipelago from seam to seam if I wished.
“But,” Xigbar flinched as a hand came down on his shoulder, “I won’t.”
“You won’t,” he repeated resolutely, looking up into Xaldin’s unreadable face. His heart was beating a mile a minute and he felt Tifa’s grip on his sleeve tighten protectively. “Right.”
“Because that’s what friends do, Xigbar,” Xaldin smiled, a storm inside a bottle as he turned back to rejoin his crew and lead them away. “They forgive each other.”
Tifa narrowed her eyes at Saïx, having seen the way his hand was preparing to reach up behind him and unsheathe his monstrous sword. But his captain put an end to that as well. Marluxia gave her a lasting smirk as he draped a casual arm over Quistis’s shoulders and Zexion waved to them both slowly but not sadly.
Xaldin stopped with his back towards them, just before disappearing into the trees. “Oh, and Xigbar? Would you be so kind as to give your captain this message?”
He turned back to look over his shoulder. Zorn and Thorn grinned dangerously and cart wheeled in perfect symmetry, to stand to the left and right of their group. “Regardless of whatever history we have, I find your captain’s choice not to arrive at our negotiation ill-flattering to the Dread Pirate name.”
The sand exploded into the air and Tifa gave a small yelp as both she and Xigbar ducked close to the ground.
The Black Waltzes had careened out of the night sky and now stood before them, summoned by Zorn and Thorn’s raised arms as a signal. One in muted brown and red tones hunched close to the ground while the one opposite ghosted above the ground, its green-blue robes dragging in the sand as its midnight blue wings beat the air. The third stood completely upright between them, its yellow eyes glaring out onto the blue feathers in its coat.
All three had hands an unnatural purple colour with nails as sharp as knives.
“The next time he wishes to pursue a discourse with me, it would be more… flattering to his reputation if he didn’t hide behind his first mate,” Xaldin’s voice came from behind the impenetrable wall of monster muscle.
And the creatures lunged, eyes intent on their fellow: a single gold eye.
~~~
“Vivi, how long have we known each other?”
Back on the main islands, the crew of the Wheel of Fortune had gone back to their inn on Nomanisan Island. Luxord had said that if anything happened, it was better to have some sleep in them than to stay up all night worrying.
Of course being told not to stay up all night worrying never stopped Vivi Orunitia from worrying. A quick moonlit walk to Eiko’s small hut above the water and a series of quiet knocks revealed what he already knew: she was the same way.
Since then, they’d gone back to where the Wheel of Fortune itself was docked to call the moogles out of their roost in the crow’s nest, and then wandered the beaches of Nomanisan, skipping stones out over the waves. The tiny winged creatures chased each other through the palm fronds high above, always generally following along behind the two young mages.
“I don’t know, fifteen, sixteen years?” Vivi skipped a stone. “Two,” he mumbled, obviously displeased with his count of times the stone jumped on the water. “I got four last time.”
“Yeah, something like that. Our little Naminé is all grown up!” Eiko wiped a fake tear from her eye with an exaggerated pout that made Vivi laugh. “But in all that time, Vivi, have I ever seen you without a hat on?”
The taller mage ducked when she went to go grab it, spinning into the shallow water. “What’s wrong with my hat?” he asked, sounding nervous.
“Nothing!” Eiko laughed, her long purple ringlets blown back from her face. “I’m just curious! We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Well, of course we’re-” Eiko’s horn, curving up from top of her forehead, bumped against the rim of his tricorne as she stood on the tips of her toes and leaned in close. Vivi felt his face burn with sudden heat. “Of course we’re friends!” he repeated, his voice squeaking.
When Eiko took his hat off, a big mess of hair, black as pitch, flopped into his eyes and across his face. He blinked big gold eyes at her, watching her lips quirk into a smile. “So you aren’t hiding chronic baldness!” she announced proudly.
Vivi stumbled further back into the waves when Eiko planted her hands on his shoulders so she could better stand on her toes, his patchwork tricorne still in one hand. “Uh, n-no, why would you think that?”
“I don’t know, why else would you wear a hat all the time?” Eiko asked. She took a moment to watch the dim moonlight in his hair, how the black was so dark and deep it turned even the silver sheen of moonlight into a dark blue once it hit him. Behind them, she could practically hear the moogles stop in their flight to watch them. “And you know what the other thing is?”
Vivi gulped, his dark skin refusing to cool. “Uh, what?”
“You’ve eaten my cooking for just as long, but have I ever seen your mouth?” she asked.
Never in all his life had the black mage ever wished he could swallow his own lips. “Uh, I-I, what?”
Eiko moved carefully, leaning one cheek against his and biting her lip, trying not to poke him with her horn.
Quietly, standing amidst the waves, she pressed her lips against his.
Somehow, Vivi’s heart sped up only after Eiko released his mouth, when he realized that he hadn’t just dreamed the whole thing and Eiko really was as pink as him in the face.
“Um,” he managed. He was just full of intelligent conversation tonight.
“Well I figured that we needed to keep our minds occupied and you and I both know that was coming for a while and oh my eidolons what will Freya and Tifa say?” Eiko babbled, pressing her fingers to her lips.
All awkwardness was swiftly forgotten when the six moogles descended upon the couple like a pack of pale pink crows. In a swift flurry of giggling ‘kupo!’s, Chimomo fluttered off with Vivi’s tricorne. “Hey!” Eiko shook a clenched fist after them, immediately starting up the beach after them.
She hesitated when she heard Vivi make no move and looked back at him, hair sweeping in a purple arc as she turned back to him. “You coming with, Viv? I uh, it is your hat…”
“I’ll catch up in a second,” he replied, voice somewhere between a dreamy sigh and a nervous quiver.
Eiko gave him the most adorable grin he had ever seen and went after her moogles.
Vivi was floating on air as he followed behind. What would everyone say? Roxas hadn’t known them as long, but Captain Luxord and Xigbar and even Barret back home knew them. He would have to ask Eiko (the syllables of her name suddenly like two notes of a song in his heart) what Barret’s note had said when Moco had returned.
He bobbed along in a daydream until something landed in the sand in front of him. The impact was so heavy and so sudden, it was like a blow to the chest, and Vivi fell onto his behind though nothing had hit him.
His heart, just coming down off its heightened speed, stopped in his chest.
The body laying in the sand in front of him was so badly beaten, torn open, bleeding, and broken that Vivi thought a corpse had suddenly appeared on the beach. Were murders common on these islands? There didn’t seem to be any government, being full of outcasts as it was, but… The thoughts were swiftly pushed from his mind as he raised his eyes from the body to the imposing figure standing above it.
One of the Black Waltzes themselves glared down on him, its yellow eyes a harsher starker yellow then his own. Vivi could barely breathe just looking back into those eyes. Its purple claw-like hands were coated in blood, as was its sapphire blue coat.
“Captain Xaldin wanted to make sure your band of thieves knew that we don’t negotiate with cowards,” it said, though Vivi couldn’t see its mouth in the darkness of its feathered collar and steepled hat. Its voice was as dark and as encompassing as a night sky without constellations. “If Luxord wants to exchange words, he’d do well to remember that.”
With that said, it was gone back into the air with a pump of its mighty wings.
Waves washed onto the shore and Vivi’s mind was a confused blank slate. This was a dead body, lying before him. Tifa and Xigbar weren’t dead. They were just…
He realized with a dawning horror that the blood he smelled still glistened under the moon, fresh and wet. And worse than that, there was laboured breathing coming from the body, when he listened closely enough. A fresh red wound arched its way down the man’s face, dangerously close to the left eye.
“Xigbar?” Vivi asked, pushing himself forward a little.
The waves washed the shore.
~~~
Mirage was already awake when the shouts woke the lagoon-inn.
“HEEEEEEEEELP!” The cry, a young woman’s voice, was half choked with tears and there were stumbled attempts at incantations along with the sound of pounding feet along the docks.
From her vantage point of the doorway of her hut, the situation evaluated itself within seconds: the Black Mage boy carried someone on his back and the summoner girl was trying to perform cure spells and failing in her panic, if the flickering green lights were any indication. Other members of the crew were surging towards them, over the series of wooden docks where other travellers looked out of their rooms, bleary-eyed and confused. The Burmecian woman leaped nimbly from roof top to roof top as Mirage strode forward.
Her stomach gave the slightest twinge when she recognized the way white streaked itself through the victim’s hair, but her resolution was too rock solid to crack. “Get him inside,” she said to Vivi, and though she didn’t raise her voice above a loud whisper, he heard her perfectly.
The rest of the crew arrived just in time for Xigbar to come awake, yowling in pain as Vivi set him down upon the bed. Everyone started speaking at once, calling his name. Luxord asked Vivi what had happened and there was a loud ‘I don’t know!’ Mirage wheeled on Eiko and her moogles. “Tell your pets to get Vexen or any doctor they can find, immediately.”
Eiko nodded, wiping at her red eyes. She didn’t even bother to correct the innkeeper, that the moogles weren’t pets. “You heard her, boys. Get Vexen over here now. Carry him if you have to,” she ordered weakly. The six off-white creatures were gone in a hurry; Naminé and Roxas, hesitating in the doorway, moved out of their way as the arched quickly into the sky.
“We need to know what happened,” Luxord muttered to himself, then hurried to crouch beside Xigbar. “Xigbar, can you hear me?”
“He isn’t well,” Mirage hissed, trying to pull the captain away.
His glare was as cold as frosted steel. “I need to know what happened,” he repeated.
“He needs his rest,” Mirage replied, her voice steady in its fury, like a ship plowing to the eye of the hurricane.
“Pen and paper,” Freya said, grabbing a pad of grainy stationery and a ballpoint from the desk in the corner. She pressed the pen into Xigbar’s shaking hand, miraculously cut-free but still covered in blood, then held the pad of paper against the tip. “Xigbar, if you can hear us,” her voice was as calm as Mirage’s but far more anxious than anyone was used to, “write.”
Xigbar’s eye was clamped shut but he gave a sudden purposeful exhale. The pen scratched a long inky scar across the sheet. Freya repositioned the pen and paper; nodded to Luxord. “He can hear us,” she said, but her ears pressed flat against her white hair.
“Xigbar,” Luxord said, fighting to make his voice gentle, but it was no less authoritative. “Tell us what happened.”
Xigbar swallowed hard and fought to open his eye and concentrate. His hand inched painfully slow across the paper, letters wobbly.
all black cant think
“Try,” Luxord prodded. “Did something go wrong with the negotiation?”
There was a long, excruciating pause as Roxas, Naminé and Vivi came closer for a better look. The pen dragged.
broken tricked he lied
Naminé gasped and pressed her fingers to her mouth. Freya’s sharp fingernails left shallow grooves in the edges of the pad of paper as her hands tightened their grip.
The captain’s voice was flat as a reef; emotionless as stone. “Tifa?”
Xigbar’s voice rasped in his lungs as his eye shut, gritting his teeth against the pain. Mirage shifted where she stood. “We need to stop the bleeding or-”
“Xigbar!” Naminé squeaked as her father shouted, reaching out to shake Xigbar by the shoulder. “Answer me! Where is Tifa?”
Mirage grabbed his arm and pulled him back with a surprising amount of strength, her eyes blazing with fury. She opened her mouth to speak, when the first mate again shifted where he lay.
Wincing, he lifted his pen to the paper again and wrote out a single word in large shaky letters.
PARLEY
In the ensuing silence, the sound the pen made as it dropped from Xigbar’s fingers was as loud as a thunderclap: as deafening as it was foreboding.
Glossery/Foot Notes
• Oh.
Hey.
Remember when I said that Xigbar didn't have scars in this universe?
I lied.
He does now.
• The whole siren stone process is a bit of reference to the summon from Final Fantasy 8.
• Just in case it wasn't clear, Moco, the moogle sent to tell Barret that the crew has changed courses since Thebes in Chapter 6 has since returned.
• 'Malu Lani' means 'Protected by heaven'. So I guess it did end up being ironic, didn't it, James? Huh.
Chapter 10 ← Chapter 11 → Chapter 12
Chapter Listing
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.
Notes: Cut out all the pairings and characters and such, 'cause if you guys have read 11 CHAPTERS OF THIS STUFF you probably know the deal by now, and if you really want to, you can check the tags. xD Also, I did use a tonne of music for inspiration this time, but I'll keep it to myself, because the fake titles could end up becoming spoilery.
I swear Xigbar isn't secretly the main character of this fic. xD With that said, events occur in this chapter that move the plot forward! SHOCK.
(And just in case, though I don't think anyone does this, don't read the foot notes at the bottom of the chapter until you've actually read the chapter. xD Spoilers and such.)
In which negotiations are made.
Drink Up, Me Hearties
Chapter 11: The Moon
Nobody moved.
Xaldin only smiled from his place in the doorway, a smile which peeled into a smooth grin when the silence stretched onward.
Finally, Xigbar spoke. “Xaldin.”
“There we are. And here I was worried you’d forgotten,” the captain said smoothly, standing up straight and striding into the room. The floorboards creaked beneath his heavy boots. Small chains disappeared into the numerous pockets on his coat, reminding both men of the types used on some islands to keep a pocket watch from being lost.
“What are you doing here?” Vexen asked, posture and voice the epitome of icy calm.
“Come now, Vexen,” Xaldin chided casually, shrugging his great shoulders and opening his arms. “Is it a crime to visit old friends? Especially ones I haven’t seen in years?”
“No, but it is a crime to enter a man’s house without permission,” Vexen replied.
Xaldin cast a casual glance over his shoulder, a piqued frown on his face. “Someone left the front door open.”
Xigbar winced when Vexen shot him a glare. “I thought you were in danger!” he whispered defensively.
“Yes, you really can’t blame him, Vexen,” Xaldin said, turning back to them, obviously having heard. “He never would leave a friend in danger.”
Quiet settled in the lab again as something twisted in Xigbar’s gut. He had left them all those years ago, hadn’t he? How old would Zexion have been, again? He was so young when they found him in the first place; Lexaeus was practically his father. How old was Vivi now, in comparison? Oh, stars…
“Uh,” he managed, glancing at the floor.
“You’re looking good, Xigbar,” Xaldin said, in the exact tone he would’ve used years ago, when they talked in the crow’s nest of a different ship. “I’m sorry to hear that things aren’t going too smoothly with that innkeeper friend of yours.”
Xigbar reeled, nearly stepping back into one of the lab counters. “Wh- how-?”
“You know, Zexion asks about you two from time to time,” the man in black continued, strolling to a stool at a nearby counter and sitting. He took off his tricorne, inky black and undecorated and set it on the counter in front of him. “Still speaks in riddles, but keen as a knife. And Lexaeus, well… He was never one for talking but I can tell he still-”
“What do you want, Xaldin,” Vexen made the question a statement, biting while still composed.
“Hm.” Xaldin dropped his eyes and smiled softly. “It appears there is something on this island that I need.”
He glanced up at Xigbar, who sighed. “The compass.”
“I’ve heard from two painfully reliable birds that at least two of the younger members of your crew know where it is.” The captain held up a placating hand at Xigbar’s glare. “This conversation is between us men, Xigbar. The children will not be harmed.”
The cordial smile disappeared. “Unless they try anything.”
There was a beat of silence as Xaldin waited for either of his former crewmates to respond. When neither did, he said, “Hand over the compass tonight and we’ll go peacefully.”
“You dare to demand we hand you anything when you barge in here unannounced and proceed to make boorish threats against my home? You are lower than a paramecium to think so, old friend,” Vexen said, his words snapping out despite the way the hand holding his cane shook. “If I had more strength in me-”
“But you don’t, Vexen,” Xaldin said calmingly, “and it’d be wise not to speak to me in that way. I’d advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head lest I forget my own manners. The Door was kind enough to leave you with one leg.” His eyes grew a hint darker, more dangerous. “Don’t squander that gift.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Xigbar’s voice cut through the tension. “We can get through this without ripping each other’s throats out. You want the compass, Xaldin?” he asked, sending a glare over. “Fine. But we have some demands of our own, and you’ll listen to them if you ever want to leave, compass or no compass.”
Xaldin sighed deeply, and it seemed as if the wind outside the mansion sighed with him. “And now you’re threatening me as well, Xigbar. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little wounded.” The gold glare remained steady when Xaldin raised his eyes to him. “I’d thought we had gone through enough together to avoid that, but very well. In honour of our friendship, I’ll listen to your demands.”
“Not here,” Xigbar replied without a hint of hesitation. “It needs to be on neutral ground, somewhere where we can’t get a drop on each other. Vexen’ll pick the spot - he knows the lay of the land pretty well, don’t you buddy?”
Vexen started to splutter a protest when Xigbar put a hand on his shoulder, but quieted at the long smirk the shorter man gave him. He made a muttered sound that sounded vaguely in agreement.
“We’ll meet there in three hours, and negotiations will start.” Xigbar turned back to Xaldin. “Is that a deal?”
Xaldin smiled again. “I’m glad to see your confidence hasn’t changed a bit, Xigbar. I believe it is not an unreasonable deal. We shall meet in three hours at a place of Vexen’s choosing. Yes, I think that’s fair.”
“Well, I don’t,” Vexen scoffed harshly. “I’m insulted you think so little of me after all this time. Don’t you think I know that you have the mansion surrounded? What’s to stop you from torching this place - the whole island even - once you have what you need?”
Xigbar choked beside him and gave him a glance that nearly shouted for him to shut his trap, but Vexen continued. “Do you expect us to trust your word? I’m not stupid. Don’t expect me to think you are.”
Xaldin chuckled, as though discussing the fate of the island was just good humour. “As cynical as always, Vexen. I should’ve expected nothing less.”
He stood again, the small chains on his coat twinkling in the light of the lab, picking up his hat in one hand. “Yes, why should you trust me?” he asked quietly, as though speaking to himself, then smiled decidedly up at the two of them. “In exchange, I will have Quistis, my seer, seal our powers until the truce is over and we are several leagues away from these islands.”
“Impossible,” Vexen accused. “No one can seal up magic powers unless you have-”
“A siren stone, I know,” Xaldin replied, making a polite gesture with his tricorne. “Quistis has one, of course. I wouldn’t offer something I couldn’t provide. That would leave me in debt, Vexen.”
“One last thing, Xaldin,” Xigbar said, taking a half-step forward. “What exactly were you planning coming to Hawaii if you weren’t going to negotiate?”
“You mean besides tearing these islands asunder until I find the compass? I would-” He paused suddenly, something catching the corner of his eye. He turned to the far side of the lab, where the Ladies flinched by the window. “Good evening, my ladies. How are you? I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“If you so much as look at them the wrong way, I will end you,” Vexen hissed acridly, suddenly surging forward despite his limp and Xigbar had to restrain him.
Xaldin only chuckled menacingly, from deep in his chest. “I see we’re in agreement then. I hope to see some of your crew in a couple of hours, Xigbar. I’m intrigued to meet the people you’ve spent all your years with,” he said, replacing his hat. “The meeting place then, Vexen?”
“Malu Lani,” Vexen bit between his teeth, like he was chewing on cold metal. “A spit of land off the northeast shore.”
Xaldin nodded and smiled as though a very friendly business deal had just come to a close, turned and left, his chains and boots clinking and rumbling after him.
The Ladies rushed from the window as soon as he was gone, full of “Oh darling, don’t you dare…” and “Vexen, what will we do”’s. Before anyone could do much of anything, however there was another sound from downstairs, too brief to determine the origin.
The group of five followed the sound out to the top of the stairs. Xaldin had stopped half-way down them, as Luxord and the rest of crew stood in the front hall; everyone who had a weapon held it at ready and blocked the door. Xigbar was willing to guess that the sound they had heard was a sound Vivi had made in surprise, as he could seeing that the mage’s gloves were not surrounded with black magic ready to fire
“Xigbar, what is he doing here?” Luxord asked, without taking his stormy-eyed glare off of the captain swathed in black.
“Put down your weapons, Cap,” Xigbar replied. “We’ve uh, both taken a moment to wave the white-flag.”
“Waving the white-flag - him?” Tifa demanded, her fists still clenched. No one else lowered their weapons.
“If he hadn’t, he would’ve torched this place by now,” Xigbar replied.
“He speaks the truth, Captain Luxord, or would you doubt your own crewmate?” Xaldin asked, folding his hands neatly behind his back as he descended the stairs.
Luxord’s eyes never left Xaldin’s face as he sheathed his sword at his side. Slowly, Naminé and Roxas did the same at the back of the group, and Freya let her spear rest against her shoulder only when Tifa let her hands rest by her sides.
Xaldin’s cool smile never seemed to leave as he looked the other captain over. “The famous Luxord Marrus.”
A clock ticked somewhere in the depths of Vexen’s house, filling the silence distantly. Finally, Luxord said, “If an armistice has indeed been consented, then I trust that we will not be spied upon.”
“Of course not, my good man. I’m sure Xigbar will explain everything to you. We’ll be waiting.” The crew parted as Xaldin moved to walk out the front door. Just as he moved over the threshold, he said, “I hope you are as brave as your mother.”
He was gone in the heartbeat he lacked, swallowed by the night. Even so, Luxord lunged for the place he had stood, before Freya clapped a hand on his shoulder and caught him with her green eyes. He nodded silently and the Burmecian woman patted his shoulder in a way that might have been consoling.
When Roxas cast Naminé a confused glance, she only shook her head slowly. “He doesn’t talk about it,” she said in a barely audible whisper.
“What a night, huh?” Xigbar asked as he descended the stairs, his loose white shirt and the familiar clack of his hip-holsters a stark contrast to Xaldin’s descent seconds before. Freya stared into the cool breeze that blew through the front door before closing the double doors with a quiet click. The crew moved to make themselves comfortable around the front hall.
“Exactly what are the conditions of this cease-fire, Xigbar?” Luxord asked as Xigbar sat on the bottom steps. Vexen descended the stairs behind him, Mélisande’s arm as an extra support.
“We bring him the compass in three hours, and he gets his spooky-psychic girl to silence their powers. They sail away with the compass, powerless until they’re far away from here. We don’t die immediately, but hand over something Xaldin obviously needs to destroy the world as we know it,” he reported.
“But we don’t even know if the compass Io and Lilo showed us is the real deal,” Roxas butted in. “What if we give him the wrong one and-”
“You really are an idiot,” Vexen said when he touched the ground floor. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“Give him a fake compass,” Freya supplied. Her inflection revealed nothing of what she thought of the idea.
“Keep the real one and use it to find something we can use to really stop him, if that’s how it works,” Vexen continued.
“Lilo and Io believed it did. It leads you to what you want most. I think that’s what they said,” Roxas nodded.
Naminé, who had been leaning against the doorframe that led into the parlour, fetched something from the pocket of her blue overcoat. She walked across the room to her father and pressed it into his hand.
The compass’s golden needle bounced behind the glass, before swinging in long swoops and changing directions. “Points to the heart’s deepest desire,” she recited.
“You stole their compass?” Roxas asked, coming to stand next her.
It was the first time Naminé had ever felt sheepish at the mention of a theft she had committed. “I was going to put one back for them,” she said, flushing pink.
“Right, then.” Luxord squeezed the compass in his hand and released, gestured to the blonde triplets standing beside Vexen obediently. “Ladies, if it’s not any trouble, can you fetch us a spare compass?”
“I know just the thing,” Margot chirped, grinning. She made quick work of walking off into the house and out of sight.
“Now, I don’t take much stock in superstitions-” Luxord began in the voice that he used to address the crew when on deck.
“Since when, Papa?” Naminé asked, giving him a sceptical smile.
Luxord cleared his throat, ignoring her. “-but the fact remains that we’re dealing a risky, not to mention a potentially hazardous, hand here. I don’t want to give Xaldin any advantage over us, no matter the presence of a silencing spell.”
“Listen, boss,” Xigbar spoke up, rubbing his legs before leaning his elbows on his thighs. “I’ve been your first mate for a hella long time. We’ve pulled some ridiculous batshit crazy stunts in our days, and hell, I helped you with them, yeah. But believe me when I say that this is different. You don’t know Xaldin like I do. He knows things. If he finds out we’re playing him for a sucker-”
“Which is why you will be the one tasked in finalizing these negotiations,” Luxord said, cutting off his sentence.
“…What.”
“Think about it, Xigbar.” Everyone watched as Luxord went and sat beside his first mate. “If what you told us was true, the two of you were once the closest of friends. The two of you have probably been through hell and back in your time together.”
“Don’t try to deny it, Xigbar,” Vexen said with a stiff sigh beside them. He waved off Michelle and Mélisande, and they nodded, hastily disappearing in a different direction than their sister in red. “You and I both know it’s true.”
“What reason would he have to believe that his best friend is selling him a falsehood?” Luxord continued.
“Because I left!” Xigbar said as he stood up suddenly, pacing. “Because he thinks I abandoned them by saving Vexen, I don’t know.”
“Then you’ll just have to convince him that your friendship is still there,” Luxord said calmly. Michelle reappeared with two wooden chairs from the kitchen and glided past the pacing Xigbar to give them to Vivi and Eiko. Mélisande followed behind and did the same with Roxas and Naminé. “You’re a very talented actor when you need to be, Xigbar, more talented than you realize. And even if you weren’t, I have little doubt that Xaldin would still believe you.”
“Why?” Xigbar asked, as he rounded, having reached the front door.
“Because I believe the friendship the two of you had is still there.” Luxord hardly noticed the curious stare everyone directed towards him.
“That’s… stupid,” Xigbar said, pausing in his path, wrinkling his brow. “We’ve both changed, not to mention the fact that he’s literally a heartless killer now. There’s nothing there.”
“I don’t believe that for a second, Xigbar, just the same as I believe that you haven’t given up hope on bringing him back to the way he was before he lost his heart,” Luxord said.
“Th-that’s-!”
“True, isn’t it?” Luxord shrugged a single shoulder and rubbed at one of the piercings in his ear idly. “It’s why you brought us all the way here to Vexen. Of course you want to find out why he’s destroying worlds, but more than that, you want to see if there’s a way to restore his heart.”
“I…” Xigbar sighed, hands on his hips and shoulders slumping. “You’re one smooth talker, you know that, boss? I bet you sold the eggs back to the hens when you were a kid to make a pretty penny.”
“I’m sorry it took so long,” Margot said as she reappeared. She showed the rest of the room the glint of the broken compass she held. It was obviously older than Lilo’s, the gold of the metal having faded to a dirty yellow. “I couldn’t remember where in the navigation room I had put this. It’s been in there for years; never could bring myself to throw it away…”
“Give it here,” Xigbar said, stretching his hand out to her. “I’m the one who’ll be needing it.”
“If Xigbar’s the man for the job, then who are we sending as his backup?” Freya asked from where she leaned against one of the front hall’s decorative tables.
Tifa smiled at her from across the room. “I say Freya and I go as back-up. Because if thing’s don’t go as planned, Xigbar’s gonna need some muscle.” Xigbar rolled his eye at her wink as she flexed an arm. “And if nothing else, I can help with that.”
“No,” Luxord said from the stairs.
This time he did notice the curious glance everyone sent him, though Tifa and Freya’s looks were punctuated with frowns. “Not three of you,” he said, correcting himself while stroking his beard thoughtfully. “I portend it would be more fastidious for Xigbar to beguile Xaldin if there are three of you.”
Freya gave a heated sigh that whistled softly through her rat-like teeth. “Alright. I may not trust Xaldin as far as I can throw him, but at least Tifa can throw him.”
Luxord nodded slowly. “Very good then. It’s settled.” He rose. “Let’s get you two ready.”
~~~
“Captain, certain that we are not to spy, you are?”
“How rude can you possibly be, Zorn?” Xaldin asked, eyes narrowed as he turned to look at the thief in red. As he did, the wind picked up, gusting into Zorn’s chest so quickly it pushed him back from the edge of the cliff the crew stood upon. Thorn only cackled at his twin, watching as he struggled to straighten his cap.
The wind slowed and blew his hair around and into his face as Xaldin turned back to the mansion below them. “I never go back on my word, and I told Captain Marrus that they would not be spied upon during their discussions.
“There is one thing that I am a bit curious about, however. Zexion?” The young man in question blinked his glowing eyes from where he stood beside Lexaeus, watching a salamander made of secrets crawl up his friend’s massive arms.
“Yes, Captain?” he hummed as he came forward to stand next to him.
Xaldin laid a heavy arm over his shoulders and Zexion smiled, looking lethargic and pleased at the gesture. “Can you tell me if there is indeed a magical object in that house?” his captain asked, pointing to the house with the watchtower and thatched roof.
Zexion focused on it intently, as though he were having a staring contest with the place. Finally, he said, “Oh, of course, Captain. A small one, but still ma-hhahahaaa!”
He suddenly bent over, clutching his sides with mad laughter. Xaldin let go of his shoulders to let the boy sink to his knees with it. Lexaeus stepped forward from the shadows, but Xaldin only shook his head gently. It didn’t stop the axman from glaring. In the shadows, Saïx and Quistis said nothing, and neither did Marluxia, who only smirked and shifted more comfortably against the rock wall.
After a moment or two, Zexion wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “Oh, how deplorable of me, laughing at such things. Yes, yes,” there were a few more choked laughs as he stood again, using Xaldin’s coat as a ladder. “There is a magic object in the house. The moon and the sea and the earth say it is so.” He dropped his voice to a secret-trader’s whisper: “I think the dragonflies say so as well.”
“Very good,” Xaldin said. “Let’s get moving out to this Malu Lani. All hands back to the ship.”
~~~
The bottom of the rowboat shifted through the dark gold sand as Tifa and Xigbar dragged it up the beach. “The tide’ll probably be in by the time we get out of this,” Tifa said conversationally.
“Yeah…” Xigbar brought the fake compass out of his pocket, and tapped the glass so the wobbly arrow spun about before tucking it away again. They walked toward a line of palm trees and fern fronds that looked as though someone had miniaturized some trees from the main islands and moved them, the colours and thickness of the trunks nearly the same. “You know, this is probably a trap.”
Tifa shrugged, some of her hair falling over her bare shoulders. “Maybe. I think it’s safe to say neither of us trust Xaldin, but he didn’t attack us in the mansion when he had the chance. And from what Vexen’s assistants told me, he seems obnoxiously polite, or something. Was he always like that?”
Xigbar gave her a pointed grimace from the corner of his eye.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Tifa winced. Rubbing salt in old wounds and all that.
The sudden snap of a twig breaking in the quiet of the underbrush was as loud as Vexen’s explosion to the two pirates. Immediately, the two stood back-to-back to look into the lush vegetation, Tifa raising her fists while Xigbar’s fingers hovered at the ready by his holsters.
A man with long blue hair tied back from his face appeared on Tifa’s side, and Xigbar turned to face him. “You must be Saïx,” Tifa said.
He nodded stiffly, flat gold eyes watching them like a cat would a mouse. A string of beads was woven into the strands of hair that fell in front of his ears, and he wore buckskin leggings despite the tropical heat of the night. A thick leather strap across his white shirt held a claymore to his back.
At his continued silence, Tifa raised an eyebrow. “Did Xaldin send you?”
“Captain Xaldin,” Saïx corrected, almost as a reflex. “And no. I scouted ahead to find you and follow you to the meeting place.”
“Why?” Xigbar asked.
“Xaldin trusts you, Xigbar. I do not,” he said, utterly calm. “And should this meeting turn out to be a ploy of your design, I will not have the same qualms about tearing you or your pretty companion apart.”
“Wooow,” Xigbar drawled, draping a casual arm over Tifa’s shoulders. “This has gotta be the best welcoming party I’ve ever had. It’s almost like he cares about us or something.”
Tifa gave him a tiny smile and turned inside his grip, back to the path they were on. “If that’s the way it’s going to be, then let’s go.”
A few minutes later, the path opened up onto a long stretch of sand in the middle of the tiny island. A group of dark figures emerged from the trees on the opposite side just as Tifa, Xigbar and Saïx did. Before anyone could do much of anything, there was a loud delighted laugh.
“Xigbar!” Zexion proclaimed, darting out of the group and grabbing the man’s hands. “It is too good to see you!”
“It’s… good to see you too, kid,” Xigbar said, hesitating a second before forcing the grin across his face. Tifa frowned as she watched Zexion tug him about in a dance that stumbled through the sand. Saïx silently rejoined his crew, making a wide circle around the awkward greeting in the centre of their meeting place.
Zexion stopped suddenly and turned, grinning at Lexaeus. Xigbar’s throat went dry when he caught a look of the scars across his old friend’s lips and dangerously close to his left eye. They were eyes just as sombre and blue as he remembered them.
“Lexaeus says hello as well, Xigbar.” Zexion said politely, grinning as he let go of Xigbar’s hands. “He sings a song of doves for you as well,” he remarked absently as he returned to the axman’s side.
Xaldin stepped forward, hands folded politely behind his back again. “Xigbar.”
“Xaldin,” he responded, the numbness is his chest at seeing Lexaeus and Zexion, utterly mad, melting within seconds.
“And this must be Tifa Lockhart.” There was an appreciative sound from the crew behind him as Xaldin nodded at her. “The woman with the strength of a hundred men.”
“A thousand,” she corrected, arms folded across her chest. A whistle this time, from who could only be the man named Marluxia; a man with a dangerous smile and russet hair.
“Of course,” Xaldin said, looking and sounding truly apologetic, bowing slightly at the waist for his grievance.
“I apologize for my mistake and my first mate’s behaviour,” he said, giving Saïx a narrow glare. “When it comes to the people whom he thinks has wronged his captain, he is notoriously… unforgiving.”
“Fitting,” Tifa replied, coming forward to stand next to Xigbar without a trace of fear in her steps. “I guess that’s something he and I have in common.”
Xaldin smiled kindly at her. “I find that admirable, Miss Lockhart. Captain Marrus is surely proud to have someone like you on his crew.”
Her red-eyed glare didn’t faze him in the least as he turned to Xigbar. “Anyway, shall we begin? I’m sure you’re just as eager to begin negotiations as I am.”
“Hold it, ‘old buddy’,” Xigbar said, casting a significant glance to the blonde woman in the black and red dress standing beside Marluxia. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”
“Of course,” Xaldin clucked his tongue at himself. “Where are my manners? Quistis, you may start the spell, please.”
Quistis’s long hair swept back over her bare shoulders as she strode forward, her black boots silent in the sand and the uneven tips of her red skirt leaving ghosts of trails behind her, like a sidewinder’s tracks. She plucked a stone out of the right sleeve of her black shirt and held it out for Tifa and Xigbar to see as she stopped an arm’s length away from them. Her thick glasses sparkled pale blue and hid her eyes, but her smile was plain and devious on her lips.
The stone in her hand, small enough to rest in the centre of her palm, would’ve looked like glass if it wasn’t flecked with spots of silvery-white. Tifa looked to Xigbar for confirmation, having never seen a siren stone for herself. “It’s good,” Xigbar said, nodding.
Quistis nodded, then clasped the stone firmly in both hands. She lifted it to her lips, whispering incantations as she walked backwards, closer to her crew. As though she were holding a match, white light sparked in her clasped hands then flared brighter.
Everyone watched as Quistis drew the stone away from her lips and lifted her cupped hands to the heavens. The stone, glowing like a glass coal lifted slowly upwards until it was above the highest of the small palm trees of Malu Lani.
Several thin beams of light, looking like shooting starts burst from the stone and travelled over the crew of the Boreas, the trees, and continued on to the horizon, supposedly marking the line they would need to cross to regain their powers. As they past over the other pirates, some of them slumped a little or ran a weary hand through their hair. Zexion’s blue eyes stopped glowing. The siren stone suddenly dropped back into Quistis’s hand when she herself sagged a little under the force of the spell.
“That was a pretty flashy display,” Xigbar called as the light faded from the stone. “How do we know you’re not just bullshitting us?”
Xaldin was still standing perfectly upright where even Lexaeus was leaning a little on one leg over the other. “I’m insulted you don’t trust me a little more, Xigbar, but I suppose it is understandable,” he said, placing a hand on his empty chest to show his honesty. “I can assure you that our powers are quite useless, now. I’ll attempt a simple fire spell for you.”
He brought a hand out from behind his back, and opened a glove as black as tar. A brief flicker of flame appeared, but fizzled out as quick as it had come, like a child’s firecracker.
Xigbar inhaled and exhaled deeply, nodding. “Alright then.” He dug in his left pocket and the compass gleamed dimly under the stars. Squeezing the rim, he watched the needle rattle and swing. “I know that nothing good’s going to come from me handing this to you.” He cast his gaze to Xaldin. “But if I do, I want your word - that you won’t destroy any islands ever again.”
Xaldin laughed and looked into the trees, grinning and shaking his head as though talking to an amusing child. “Once I have the compass, there’ll be no need to destroy the islands,” he said, turning his sharp violet eyes back to Xigbar.
“That’s not good enough,” Xigbar's voice was as hard as a bullet. “I want your word.”
“Then you have my word,” Xaldin said, immediately serious as he offered a hand to shake. Xigbar came forward and took it with his right, and they shook hands.
Xaldin wasn’t satisfied, as Xigbar saw his eyes darken slightly. “Come now, Xigbar, you know a simple handshake won’t be enough on a deal of this gravity. Let’s do this properly, the way we used to.”
Xigbar pressed his lips tightly together, as though the handshake had suddenly turned into an interrogation. “No. You know that was only… before. It… it doesn’t have… It doesn’t mean the same thing anymore.”
“It does to me, Xigbar,” Xaldin said, squeezing Xigbar’s hand the tiniest bit tighter. “It always has.”
Xigbar sighed and Tifa watched his shoulders slump from behind.
It was hard for either parties to see the process of the actual handshake, but it went as follows: Xaldin and Xigbar laid their palms flat against each other, as though going to high-five. Xigbar’s fingers pushed off Xaldin’s like a springboard, and Xigbar rocked back on his heels in the sand. As he leaned back, Xigbar’s hand balled into a fist, and as he leaned back in, he brought his fist down in a punch, which Xaldin easily caught.
Zexion laughed. For the first time in years, a smile played on the edges of Lexaeus’s lips.
Xaldin grinned a grin that was too sharp and killed the uneasy smiling twitches Xigbar was feeling himself. “Thank you, old friend,” the captain said.
Xigbar nodded, and pressed the compass into the black glove, warm from his sweaty hands by now. “Here it is. Deal’s a deal.”
He backed away to stand next to Tifa as Xaldin studied it, turning it over and over again in his hand. “Xigbar,” Tifa whispered, pulling him closer by his shirt-sleeve so they could talk. “I know he was your best friend, but I… can’t trust him. Radiant Isle was my home.”
“I know, trust me, I know. I don’t expect you to forgive him for that. But… I don’t know. Something inside tells me that we can count on him to keep his promise.” Xigbar gave her a confident grin, though she still frowned at him anxiously. “Come on, babe. I haven’t steered you wrong before, have I?”
They both flinched at the sound of shattering glass and splaying metal.
The compass, the glass pan cracked open and the needle utterly broken, lay in Xaldin’s hand. His smile was tight and unpleasant now.
“What… what…” Xigbar grasped for words and didn’t find any.
“I appreciate your willingness to negotiate peacefully, Xigbar, but to be frank…” With a flick of his wrist, the pieces of the compass clinked as they landed in the sand between them. “This was never what I really wanted.”
“H-How did you know?” Xigbar scrambled for words, anything as a distraction as Xaldin started to walk towards them, the rest of his crew trailing behind.
“Know what?” Xaldin asked, eyebrows perking.
“That… that the compass was fake?” Xigbar took a step back for every slow step Xaldin took forward, trying to pull Tifa behind his back. She refused, staying by his side.
Xaldin eyes darkened. “You just told me, Xigbar. I’m disappointed in you, trying to trick me like this. If the compass had been what I really wanted, I’d seriously be doubting our friendship at the moment.”
The words clicked and Xigbar spoke with sudden horrid understanding. “The circle on the etching beneath the key. It isn’t a compass rose at all. It’s something else.”
“Yes, yes,” Xaldin rolled his eyes. “But you see, Xigbar, the problem is that because you played false with me,” Marluxia chuckled behind them as Xaldin came to a stop, “I have no reason to uphold my end of the bargain. I can rip the archipelago from seam to seam if I wished.
“But,” Xigbar flinched as a hand came down on his shoulder, “I won’t.”
“You won’t,” he repeated resolutely, looking up into Xaldin’s unreadable face. His heart was beating a mile a minute and he felt Tifa’s grip on his sleeve tighten protectively. “Right.”
“Because that’s what friends do, Xigbar,” Xaldin smiled, a storm inside a bottle as he turned back to rejoin his crew and lead them away. “They forgive each other.”
Tifa narrowed her eyes at Saïx, having seen the way his hand was preparing to reach up behind him and unsheathe his monstrous sword. But his captain put an end to that as well. Marluxia gave her a lasting smirk as he draped a casual arm over Quistis’s shoulders and Zexion waved to them both slowly but not sadly.
Xaldin stopped with his back towards them, just before disappearing into the trees. “Oh, and Xigbar? Would you be so kind as to give your captain this message?”
He turned back to look over his shoulder. Zorn and Thorn grinned dangerously and cart wheeled in perfect symmetry, to stand to the left and right of their group. “Regardless of whatever history we have, I find your captain’s choice not to arrive at our negotiation ill-flattering to the Dread Pirate name.”
The sand exploded into the air and Tifa gave a small yelp as both she and Xigbar ducked close to the ground.
The Black Waltzes had careened out of the night sky and now stood before them, summoned by Zorn and Thorn’s raised arms as a signal. One in muted brown and red tones hunched close to the ground while the one opposite ghosted above the ground, its green-blue robes dragging in the sand as its midnight blue wings beat the air. The third stood completely upright between them, its yellow eyes glaring out onto the blue feathers in its coat.
All three had hands an unnatural purple colour with nails as sharp as knives.
“The next time he wishes to pursue a discourse with me, it would be more… flattering to his reputation if he didn’t hide behind his first mate,” Xaldin’s voice came from behind the impenetrable wall of monster muscle.
And the creatures lunged, eyes intent on their fellow: a single gold eye.
~~~
“Vivi, how long have we known each other?”
Back on the main islands, the crew of the Wheel of Fortune had gone back to their inn on Nomanisan Island. Luxord had said that if anything happened, it was better to have some sleep in them than to stay up all night worrying.
Of course being told not to stay up all night worrying never stopped Vivi Orunitia from worrying. A quick moonlit walk to Eiko’s small hut above the water and a series of quiet knocks revealed what he already knew: she was the same way.
Since then, they’d gone back to where the Wheel of Fortune itself was docked to call the moogles out of their roost in the crow’s nest, and then wandered the beaches of Nomanisan, skipping stones out over the waves. The tiny winged creatures chased each other through the palm fronds high above, always generally following along behind the two young mages.
“I don’t know, fifteen, sixteen years?” Vivi skipped a stone. “Two,” he mumbled, obviously displeased with his count of times the stone jumped on the water. “I got four last time.”
“Yeah, something like that. Our little Naminé is all grown up!” Eiko wiped a fake tear from her eye with an exaggerated pout that made Vivi laugh. “But in all that time, Vivi, have I ever seen you without a hat on?”
The taller mage ducked when she went to go grab it, spinning into the shallow water. “What’s wrong with my hat?” he asked, sounding nervous.
“Nothing!” Eiko laughed, her long purple ringlets blown back from her face. “I’m just curious! We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Well, of course we’re-” Eiko’s horn, curving up from top of her forehead, bumped against the rim of his tricorne as she stood on the tips of her toes and leaned in close. Vivi felt his face burn with sudden heat. “Of course we’re friends!” he repeated, his voice squeaking.
When Eiko took his hat off, a big mess of hair, black as pitch, flopped into his eyes and across his face. He blinked big gold eyes at her, watching her lips quirk into a smile. “So you aren’t hiding chronic baldness!” she announced proudly.
Vivi stumbled further back into the waves when Eiko planted her hands on his shoulders so she could better stand on her toes, his patchwork tricorne still in one hand. “Uh, n-no, why would you think that?”
“I don’t know, why else would you wear a hat all the time?” Eiko asked. She took a moment to watch the dim moonlight in his hair, how the black was so dark and deep it turned even the silver sheen of moonlight into a dark blue once it hit him. Behind them, she could practically hear the moogles stop in their flight to watch them. “And you know what the other thing is?”
Vivi gulped, his dark skin refusing to cool. “Uh, what?”
“You’ve eaten my cooking for just as long, but have I ever seen your mouth?” she asked.
Never in all his life had the black mage ever wished he could swallow his own lips. “Uh, I-I, what?”
Eiko moved carefully, leaning one cheek against his and biting her lip, trying not to poke him with her horn.
Quietly, standing amidst the waves, she pressed her lips against his.
Somehow, Vivi’s heart sped up only after Eiko released his mouth, when he realized that he hadn’t just dreamed the whole thing and Eiko really was as pink as him in the face.
“Um,” he managed. He was just full of intelligent conversation tonight.
“Well I figured that we needed to keep our minds occupied and you and I both know that was coming for a while and oh my eidolons what will Freya and Tifa say?” Eiko babbled, pressing her fingers to her lips.
All awkwardness was swiftly forgotten when the six moogles descended upon the couple like a pack of pale pink crows. In a swift flurry of giggling ‘kupo!’s, Chimomo fluttered off with Vivi’s tricorne. “Hey!” Eiko shook a clenched fist after them, immediately starting up the beach after them.
She hesitated when she heard Vivi make no move and looked back at him, hair sweeping in a purple arc as she turned back to him. “You coming with, Viv? I uh, it is your hat…”
“I’ll catch up in a second,” he replied, voice somewhere between a dreamy sigh and a nervous quiver.
Eiko gave him the most adorable grin he had ever seen and went after her moogles.
Vivi was floating on air as he followed behind. What would everyone say? Roxas hadn’t known them as long, but Captain Luxord and Xigbar and even Barret back home knew them. He would have to ask Eiko (the syllables of her name suddenly like two notes of a song in his heart) what Barret’s note had said when Moco had returned.
He bobbed along in a daydream until something landed in the sand in front of him. The impact was so heavy and so sudden, it was like a blow to the chest, and Vivi fell onto his behind though nothing had hit him.
His heart, just coming down off its heightened speed, stopped in his chest.
The body laying in the sand in front of him was so badly beaten, torn open, bleeding, and broken that Vivi thought a corpse had suddenly appeared on the beach. Were murders common on these islands? There didn’t seem to be any government, being full of outcasts as it was, but… The thoughts were swiftly pushed from his mind as he raised his eyes from the body to the imposing figure standing above it.
One of the Black Waltzes themselves glared down on him, its yellow eyes a harsher starker yellow then his own. Vivi could barely breathe just looking back into those eyes. Its purple claw-like hands were coated in blood, as was its sapphire blue coat.
“Captain Xaldin wanted to make sure your band of thieves knew that we don’t negotiate with cowards,” it said, though Vivi couldn’t see its mouth in the darkness of its feathered collar and steepled hat. Its voice was as dark and as encompassing as a night sky without constellations. “If Luxord wants to exchange words, he’d do well to remember that.”
With that said, it was gone back into the air with a pump of its mighty wings.
Waves washed onto the shore and Vivi’s mind was a confused blank slate. This was a dead body, lying before him. Tifa and Xigbar weren’t dead. They were just…
He realized with a dawning horror that the blood he smelled still glistened under the moon, fresh and wet. And worse than that, there was laboured breathing coming from the body, when he listened closely enough. A fresh red wound arched its way down the man’s face, dangerously close to the left eye.
“Xigbar?” Vivi asked, pushing himself forward a little.
The waves washed the shore.
~~~
Mirage was already awake when the shouts woke the lagoon-inn.
“HEEEEEEEEELP!” The cry, a young woman’s voice, was half choked with tears and there were stumbled attempts at incantations along with the sound of pounding feet along the docks.
From her vantage point of the doorway of her hut, the situation evaluated itself within seconds: the Black Mage boy carried someone on his back and the summoner girl was trying to perform cure spells and failing in her panic, if the flickering green lights were any indication. Other members of the crew were surging towards them, over the series of wooden docks where other travellers looked out of their rooms, bleary-eyed and confused. The Burmecian woman leaped nimbly from roof top to roof top as Mirage strode forward.
Her stomach gave the slightest twinge when she recognized the way white streaked itself through the victim’s hair, but her resolution was too rock solid to crack. “Get him inside,” she said to Vivi, and though she didn’t raise her voice above a loud whisper, he heard her perfectly.
The rest of the crew arrived just in time for Xigbar to come awake, yowling in pain as Vivi set him down upon the bed. Everyone started speaking at once, calling his name. Luxord asked Vivi what had happened and there was a loud ‘I don’t know!’ Mirage wheeled on Eiko and her moogles. “Tell your pets to get Vexen or any doctor they can find, immediately.”
Eiko nodded, wiping at her red eyes. She didn’t even bother to correct the innkeeper, that the moogles weren’t pets. “You heard her, boys. Get Vexen over here now. Carry him if you have to,” she ordered weakly. The six off-white creatures were gone in a hurry; Naminé and Roxas, hesitating in the doorway, moved out of their way as the arched quickly into the sky.
“We need to know what happened,” Luxord muttered to himself, then hurried to crouch beside Xigbar. “Xigbar, can you hear me?”
“He isn’t well,” Mirage hissed, trying to pull the captain away.
His glare was as cold as frosted steel. “I need to know what happened,” he repeated.
“He needs his rest,” Mirage replied, her voice steady in its fury, like a ship plowing to the eye of the hurricane.
“Pen and paper,” Freya said, grabbing a pad of grainy stationery and a ballpoint from the desk in the corner. She pressed the pen into Xigbar’s shaking hand, miraculously cut-free but still covered in blood, then held the pad of paper against the tip. “Xigbar, if you can hear us,” her voice was as calm as Mirage’s but far more anxious than anyone was used to, “write.”
Xigbar’s eye was clamped shut but he gave a sudden purposeful exhale. The pen scratched a long inky scar across the sheet. Freya repositioned the pen and paper; nodded to Luxord. “He can hear us,” she said, but her ears pressed flat against her white hair.
“Xigbar,” Luxord said, fighting to make his voice gentle, but it was no less authoritative. “Tell us what happened.”
Xigbar swallowed hard and fought to open his eye and concentrate. His hand inched painfully slow across the paper, letters wobbly.
all black cant think
“Try,” Luxord prodded. “Did something go wrong with the negotiation?”
There was a long, excruciating pause as Roxas, Naminé and Vivi came closer for a better look. The pen dragged.
broken tricked he lied
Naminé gasped and pressed her fingers to her mouth. Freya’s sharp fingernails left shallow grooves in the edges of the pad of paper as her hands tightened their grip.
The captain’s voice was flat as a reef; emotionless as stone. “Tifa?”
Xigbar’s voice rasped in his lungs as his eye shut, gritting his teeth against the pain. Mirage shifted where she stood. “We need to stop the bleeding or-”
“Xigbar!” Naminé squeaked as her father shouted, reaching out to shake Xigbar by the shoulder. “Answer me! Where is Tifa?”
Mirage grabbed his arm and pulled him back with a surprising amount of strength, her eyes blazing with fury. She opened her mouth to speak, when the first mate again shifted where he lay.
Wincing, he lifted his pen to the paper again and wrote out a single word in large shaky letters.
PARLEY
In the ensuing silence, the sound the pen made as it dropped from Xigbar’s fingers was as loud as a thunderclap: as deafening as it was foreboding.
Glossery/Foot Notes
• Oh.
Hey.
Remember when I said that Xigbar didn't have scars in this universe?
I lied.
He does now.
• The whole siren stone process is a bit of reference to the summon from Final Fantasy 8.
• Just in case it wasn't clear, Moco, the moogle sent to tell Barret that the crew has changed courses since Thebes in Chapter 6 has since returned.
• 'Malu Lani' means 'Protected by heaven'. So I guess it did end up being ironic, didn't it, James? Huh.
Chapter 10 ← Chapter 11 → Chapter 12
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