The Sound of the Sea

She’s leading Xion by now, knowing the way to all the shops by heart.  She could even walk it backwards, which is exactly what she’s doing.

“They say girls mature faster.” A pause.  “I mean, I did silly stuff like that when I was a kid, but that’s because Hayner and Pence have been my only friends since forever.”

“Right?  One time when we were still in elementary school, I had to explain to the teacher why Hayner was hanging out the window of the classroom, yelling at the birds.  One of the other guys in class told him to feed them, and when he took out his lunch, a seagull took the entire thing.”

“What, you’ve never noticed?  When we’re around they’re on their best behavior.  Put a couple guys together alone and they start doing stupid stuff like daring each other to eat food left around town.”

@seasaltseashells

“How does shopping sound?” Usually she’d drag Pence along with her, but there was something appealing about going with another girl.  “The guys are off doing whatever guys do on their own.”

“Shopping, huh...?”

“Sure! That sounds like fun.” Honestly, she’d never really spent much time around other girls before. Not to mention going out and picking out things just to own them. There was a lot to normal life that was pretty new, in fact.

@seasaltseashells​  ♡‘d

Every time he looks at her, he feels guilt weighing on his chest, yet can’t place why. He has flashes of memories, the visual of her here on these islands of him, but all context of those were lost. And with everything that’s happened, the two of them never really got a chance to talk before now.

“Xion… I don’t know what happened before but… I feel like I should apologize to you.”

“Mm-mm.” She shook her head. “If anything...I should be thanking you. You helped me a lot, Riku.”

Even if...he didn’t fully remember it, that was alright. Knowing Riku, he would probably feel guilty even if he did remember, or especially if he did. She got why he might, but...Xion just saw it differently. 

seasaltseashells replied to your post: [oh shit is that an isa catfight on my dash ������]

“Grossssss!”

“…Since when do you know the context for that?!”

😢Touch my muse’s shoulder while they are crying in secret

Xion jumped and immediately dashed at her face, trying to hide the fact that she’d been caught crying. A second later, she recognized who’d caught her - too late to keep Roxas from realizing, but she still tried to play it off anyway, keeping her face mostly turned away.

🤗 - Pull my muse into a hug

Xion blinked in surprise.

“Axel?” She leaned up to wrap her arms back around him and squeeze, but not too tight.

The gasp made Kiddo look quickly to Xion, but he seemed to take Lea’s advice seriously and followed her in with a shrewd look over his shoulder that made Lea think a little better of him.

But all this was…kind of overwhelming, and Lea didn’t interrupt as Xion laid it all out, propping one hand on his hip and the other over his mouth as if to stop himself from interrupting with a deluge of questions more worthy of Roxas.  His eyes only left Xion when she gestured to the younger version of Lea, and then snapped back.

In another circumstance, maybe Lea would have seen that kid and assumed he was a freakishly similar cousin, and Lea actually had family somewhere who were actually alive.  But he couldn’t ignore Xion.  He would have recognized her no matter what form she took.

“Hm,” he said finally, after a long, pondering silence.  “Y’know I think I need to sit dow–wwwn,” he got out, the last word coming out dizzy when he tried to take a step and faltered, grabbing the wall and giving his head a shake.  “You’re saying there’re other worlds?  Like this one, but…?”

Well, no, Xion wasn’t just saying that, she was being it.  Right in his living room no less.

“That’s…a lot.  I don’t know if I get it.  How…”  He looked from one to the other, inexplicable for so many different reasons.  “But how’d you grow up so fast?”

Xion hissed when Lea faltered, reaching out to catch and support him. As slight as she looked, she had grown up to be much, much stronger than she appeared. Xion had no trouble supporting Lea over to a seat. If anything, it was strange to think how easy it was, when Lea at this age would have been still sweeping her up into the air. Once he was seated, she took a seat nearby as well, perching on the edge more than committing her weight to it. Xion gave Lea a bitter smile.

The stranger’s look was clearly a cue, and Lea blinked at the redhead for an instant before his eyes were drawn straight back to the woman.  It wasn’t…just that she looked familiar, it was…

“Yeah, hi!” the redhead was saying somewhere in the background.  “Sooo this is gonna be awkward for a bit, but I’m Lea–you can call me Kiddo if that’s confusing–and this is–”

“Xion,” Lea whispered.  His expression trembled, then crumpled and he pulled away from the door with a hiss.  “Hell, you look just like your mother.  Alright.  Alright, I don’t know why you’re here but you better get inside, before someone…”

Before someone what?  Saw and asked questions?  Lea didn’t know, but it somehow didn’t seem like it could be any more obvious that something strange was happening with the two of them, and maybe Lea was just dreaming this.

It wouldn’t be the first time his dreams were so realistic.

A little gasp escaped her lips.

That was...not the response Xion had expected, at all. Her mother. Xion had never had the chance to know anything about her, or the birth father she assumed she’d had. Lea had died before Xion was old enough to ask questions about how she’d been born to just Lea. Growing up in the cottage, she’d never even had the context to think it was strange.

Her mother. She would...have to ask about that. Another time. For right now, she hurried inside and used the excuse to collect herself. She took a deep breath and let the mask she’d had to develop in the castle settle over her. Only once she had control again did she turn back to face him.

“You’re...probably wondering what this is about.” To say the least. What an understatement. She folded her hands one over the other in front of herself. “And it’s...a little bit of a long story. But the short version is, there are many worldlines like this one, but just a little different, created when you make one choice, but another ‘you’ makes a different one. Lea,” she gestured to the young one, “is from a worldline where you were adopted off the street when you were young. I am from a worldline where...you didn’t survive what happened.” She didn’t think she needed to be more specific than that.

—

The twins wouldn’t be back for a few hours yet, so when Lea heard the knock, his first assumption was that Jade had forgotten something.  He cast a quick look around the room for her benefit as he went to the door, just in case he could spot it for her, and opened it casually.  “Oh hey, that’s funny I–”

His voice died in his throat.

For an instant, the black hair had told him Jade, but the blue eyes were someone else, and Lea’s own gaze flicked past her to the redhead at her elbow who was no less strikingly familiar.

Lea probably stared for too long.

“Can I…help you?”

It was funny. Xion hadn’t expected to be nervous. She’d met so many versions of Lea in her life, was even accompanied by one right now, and yet...there was something different about this one. About his age, and the place he’d come from.

And the fact that he was so, so like her daddy, in every way except one. 

So when he opened the door, Xion’s relief that she could actually help him melded into a complicated, anxious feeling that left her twisting her fingers together and smiling nervously.

“I know!” Lea said brightly, not knowing at all.  Of course he was aware that sometimes these situations just didn’t work out for whatever reason.  But in his opinion, it was always worth a shot.

And he knew his job was now to keep an eye on Xion’s body while she was busy, so he resisted the urge to pace around and shoved his hands in his pockets.  “Take your time, I’ll be here when you get back.”

And far, far from both of them, a far older version of Lea stood with his shoulder against a doorjamb, looking out at his own quiet street.  “–Nouri for me,” he was saying.

“Yeah.”  Jade adjusted the pack on her shoulder and waved, green eyes alight in spite of the slightly worried tightness in her smile.  “…Take care, okay?”

“Always.”

And Lea waved back, watching another fragment of the life he used to have walk away.

He was alive?

He was alive! Xion hadn’t expected to find Lea’s heart in this world at all, but she had had no trouble finding his heart and touching it with her own. She saw the world through his eyes, as she always did when using her ability to touch another heart, and she felt what he felt. The streets looked like Lindblum; though she hadn’t been there frequently, she remembered sneaking away when she could to meet with Baku and Zidane and the other members of Tantalus. A princess of Liber she may be, but she was also born into Tantalus, and you didn’t outgrow that. Nostalgia filled her heart.

And a third heart echoed it.

Xion startled awake with a gasp.

The touch with that heart had been so brief and so surprising, Xion had lost the connection and launched straight back to her own body. But that brief touch was enough. She knew that heart. Xion would never forget it. She hopped more than slid off the crate she’d seated herself on, laughing with breathless relief as she turned to the little thief.

His uncle had taught him to be careful, so Lea poked his head out of the portal and looked both ways before committing to stepping out of it.  His quick assessment of the street had told him it was a back alley, but it was cleaner than most and close to a well-to-do storefront, so they didn’t have to worry about cutpurses.

Well, they already didn’t have to do that.  But still.

“Coast is clear,” he said, beckoning to the portal with his heart in his throat.

This world was and wasn’t his own.  It was a familiar story to someone who’d spent his youth bouncing here and there throughout the multiverse, constantly hearing about alternate versions of himself (in most cases from an alternate version of himself), and Lea couldn’t say he’d ever made a conscious choice to help those other versions.  It was just something he’d been raised with.

So seeing the Prince Saix of this world get killed in a play about the tragedy had told him a lot about this world already.  And Lea was determined to see if there was anything they could do about it, considering the fate his own Isa narrowly avoided.

“Don’t get your hopes up too much.”

Xion stepped out of the portal behind him, looking much more suited to the environment than Lea did. Her own protective clothing had been modeled by the Good Fairies off the attire of her home, and this world wasn’t functionally different than her own. She was a Princess of Liber and a Keybearer, and her garments and bearing both reflected it even in the dingy back alley.

This whole thing was probably going to be a painful lesson for Lea - the little one, that was, though he wasn’t that much younger than her. He was 15 to her 20. Xion just couldn’t help but think of him as the ‘little’ one, in comparison to her father. Though at this point, she was getting close to the age Lea and Isa had been when they died, and it would have been hard to remember them if she hadn’t grown up surrounded by other versions of them like she did. Her pseudo-step-brother had also been surrounded by those versions, and he’d seen so many tragic stories rewritten. He didn’t know in his bones, like Xion did, that some tragedies were permanent. She found a crate in the alley and hauled herself up on it; her power always left her body vulnerable, and sitting for it was always better. She gave Lea a sympathetic look.

“I’ll try. But I can’t make any promises.” 

After all, the Lea that was her father hadn’t survived the same tragedy this world seemed to have gone through.

Lea immediately felt terrible regret for not telling her this sooner, if it would help anyway.  At the time, he hadn’t seen how it possibly could.  Hadn’t known if he could even find the words to describe it all in the first place, at least in a way that wouldn’t translate itself to something ruinous for her to hear.

He took in a slow, shuddery breath and let it out.  “…Yeah.”  Man.  He hadn’t even cried that much, and yet he still felt drained.  Dead inside.  (Familiar feeling, really.)

But the twins would always be able to save him from darknesses even worse than this, so Lea stretched out a hand and called to the Keyblade that Isa had left with him.  His fingers closing around it always felt like holding Isa’s hand instead, somehow.  “He’s still with us.”

Turning the handle, he offered it to Xion, with the now-familiar thalassa shell on the end brushing over both their knees.  “In his own way.”

Xion looked up at Lea in surprise, as if asking permission. She’d seen him with the Keyblade before, and she couldn’t have failed to notice the charm attached to it. The first time Lea summoned it, Xion’d had to slip quietly out of the room. It had taken her some time to understand that the thalassa being here hadn’t meant Isa was left without it, but that Isa was with it. But the Keyblade had seemed…private, almost. Something for Lea.

But he was offering it now. Tentatively, Xion reached out and lightly touched the handle, and then blinked.

“It’s…warm.” She hadn’t expected that. The Keyblade looked like something that should be freezing cold to touch. Xion committed more fully to gripping the handle. It felt…right. The Keyblade didn’t feel like an object.

“It’s like…a heartbeat.” She recognized the feeling. Xion had been with Isa when he was first scarred, and she knew the sense of his heart. It was here in the Keyblade, and Xion finally, finally understood why she hadn’t been with Isa when he died. Xion blinked her tears away.

“He wasn’t scared.” And he must not have been in pain, or Xion was sure she would have been pulled there too. He was okay, here with them in their hearts. Xion sniffled hard and let go of the Keyblade to wrap both arms around Lea’s waist.