#functionallyimmortal

They stayed like that for a moment, as though nothing were out of the ordinary, as though they were fifteen again, tangled together the way Lea always wrapped himself around Isa who, for his part, had pretended to be irritated but hadn’t been irritated at all. And Lea had known that. He had always known that.

When he did let go and resumed braiding, Isa let go of a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Listen, Isa…about tomorrow.”

Isa stiffened. “What about it?”

“Is there anything I can possibly say to you that will convince you it’s a better idea to sit this one out?”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ve been over this.”

“I know, but I—“

“I’m not leaving you to—do you have any idea how that would make me—? To not know? Or if something happens to you and I wasn’t there to—no. No. I can’t—I can’t—“

“Hey, hey, hey. Okay. Okay. It’s okay.”

Isa closed his eyes as Lea ran his fingers through his hair. He still knew how to do it, he thought, knew exactly which motion and touch would smooth the tremors that still shook their way through his heart.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“I just could never forgive myself if something happened to you and there might have been something I could have done. You understand.”

Lea smiled sadly. “And I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to you, so I guess we’re both screwed.”

“Well, then I suppose we’ll both just have to survive then.”

“For each other.”

“If nothing else, yes.”

“I can live with that.”

“You had better intend to.”

Lea laughed, and Isa turned his head to look at him.

“Stop moving!”

“What are you laughing about?”

“You! Now look forward.”

“I fail to see the humor in it,” he grumbled, but obeyed all the same.

“It’s just—you’re so serious.”

“One of us has to be. And besides…” Isa twisted his hands together, mirroring the knotted feeling in his chest.

“…most would consider death to be a serious subject, Lea.”

And he just laughed. Again.

“Lea!”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

He looked down at Isa’s hair again. It might as well have been braiding itself if it weren’t for the flowers.

Lea usually felt compelled to fill silences. He didn’t like the spaces between, the hang time in which anyone could be thinking anything and there were no leaking thoughts or betraying words by which to read their intentions. People made him edgy. They always had.

The only exception, of course, being Isa.

And Saïx, for a while, had retained that ability to make him feel at ease. For the longest time, he had thought that nothing could get between the two of them, not even death itself, and the knowledge that they didn’t need to be able to feel it to know that they loved one another had been enough, until it wasn’t.

But he had underestimated Isa, hadn’t he? Deep down he had thought Isa had been swallowed by the darkness, that there was nothing left of the boy and then the man that he had loved with everything he had, and he was going to save him, he was always going to save him, but in his heart he had wondered if there was even anything left to save.

As usual, he had been wrong.

“You scared me, you know.”

Isa opened his eyes.

“When?”

“Last time we were up here.”

He winced. “…Ah.”

“Sorry.”

-

It had happened so quickly there hadn’t been time to do anything but react. And it still haunted his dreams, memories of a slip that had never happened, of reaching for Isa a split second too late. Because Isa had come to that clock tower to take himself out of the equation. He had come to say goodbye.

Isa?

Lea.

What are you—

Don’t.

But—

Stay away from me. Don’t!

No. You’re here. That means…you have to be—

I’m here because I—I don’t want to—I’m selfish, that’s why I’m here, all right?

What the hell are you talking about?

I didn’t want to go without seeing you again. With my own eyes.

Go where? Go where?

Goodbye, Lea.

But Isa, in turn, had underestimated the force of nature that was Lea’s heart.

And how much of that heart still had his name carved into it, because what he had not expected, when he did jump, was for Lea to jump after him. Break the fall by flinging an arm against the wall, summoning that flame of a blade and dragging it against the stone to slow both of them, because he had wrapped his other arm around Isa’s waist, and they were falling together, they were dying together or not at all, and suddenly dying didn’t seem like the best option any longer, because when Isa looked into his eyes, it became painfully apparent that Lea desperately wanted him to live.

That was what he had been so wrong about. That was why he had stayed silent for so long, allowing another to speak for and through him, not because he had been beaten, but because the heart he could not accept that he even had in the first place had been broken. And it was in that moment, at the end of a fall he had not intended to survive, with Lea clutching his shoulders and shouting what the hell were you thinking, that he realized that which he had been mourning had never even been lost in the first place.

In the face of Saïx’s grief, Xehanort had had no problems convincing him that he didn’t need his voice any longer. In the face of Isa’s will?

He hadn’t had a chance.

-

“Isa?”

“Hmm?”

“Aren’t you scared you might…?”

“Might what?”

“You know.”

“Will you be there?”

“Of course.”

“Then no, I’m not afraid of losing myself again. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”

“If he even looks at you wrong…”

“He can’t touch me now.”

“Isa—“

“What you have to remember is that I thought I had already lost you. I thought you were dead and then I thought I didn’t matter to you regardless. I didn’t have any reason to want to stay myself.” He paused and looked down at his hands. “That is…no longer the case.”

“That was never true.”

Isa’s face twitched as though he were in pain but he didn’t look up, and hadn’t seen the look of raw anguish that had etched itself into Lea’s face as he spoke up until Lea took his face in his hands and tilted it up to face him, his hands that were always so warm because he ran so hot, like his body was constantly trying to keep up with the fever pitch at which his heart operated.

“It was not and will never be true,” Lea repeated. “No, look at me.”

He couldn’t help but sigh a little when they made eye contact. Relief. Green.

“I…believe you, I think,” Isa said slowly.

“Good.”

They stared at each other for the space of a heartbeat. Lea let go and shifted again and the gentle tugging on his scalp told Isa his hair was being worked at once more. He listened for the thunk of his own heartbeat, half-cursing it for being so distracting when he was just trying to think.

“Just…”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do something for me?”

A slight break in the rhythm of his hands as Lea momentarily faltered, inhaled.

“Anything,” he said.

“Just…stay with me. Tomorrow. I don’t want…can you just promise to stay with me?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I said promise.”

“I promise. I’ve got your back.”

Isa couldn’t help but smirk. “You know, there’s a spine in there, if you’d like to borrow it.”

Lea tugged on the end of the braid a little harder than he really needed to in order to tie it off. “My posture is not that bad.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re just bitter that I got taller,” Lea muttered.

“I am not bitter.”

“Sure you’re not.”

He snorted. “You still stand like a puppet with cut strings and you know it.”

“Deflection tactic. Also, I’m done.”

“Oh. Thank y—“

Isa had reached around almost absentmindedly to touch the back of his hair and fell silent when he felt the flower petals beneath his fingers. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Well, don’t touch them, you’ll mess it up. Here—“

“Lea…are those…?”

“Moonflowers. Yeah. I don’t know if you still, I mean, I remembered they used to, when things were bad—I thought—“

“Lea.”

“…Yes?”

“Shut up,” Isa hissed, and had already started kissing him before Lea had the chance to disagree.

And it was familiar, his teeth still too sharp, lips still unnervingly cold and impossibly soft. Somehow, after all this time, kissing Isa was still the safest feeling in the world, and ever since he had thrown himself from the tower after him without thinking he had not been able to find the words say you’ll be all right, so Lea kissed them onto his lips and Isa breathed them in like a once-drowning man tasting air for the first time since he decided to survive.

“No martyrs,” Lea whispered. “You make it through this.”

Isa nodded, throat too tight to speak, and took the hand Lea offered, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

“Here—this one’s for you.”

He stared down at the white petals of the moonflower Lea had handed him, and when Isa looked up, his eyes were full of tears.

“Be careful,” Saïx said without looking up. “It’s a snakes’ den in there. Or so I’m told.”

Axel knew that tone, the bitterness in his voice muffled to an extent that would have worked on anyone else. He folded his arms.

“Saïx,” he said again, sharper this time.

“You should get going.”

There was always a reason when someone so inclined to staring people down until they withered refused to make eye contact, or even turn to acknowledge he was being looked at.

“There’s no reason for you to be hanging around here,” Saïx continued, still speaking to the wall. “I have everything under contr—“

“Isa.”

He flinched.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

And he thanked himself silently then, because he faced away from Axel, who did not see Saïx close his eyes briefly it what he would have easily and correctly interpreted as an expression of pain. All Axel saw was a gloved hand ball into a fist around the piece of paper he held, crumpling it beyond any hope of return to its original state.

“I’m sure that doesn’t concern you,” he said icily after a pause that lasted a little too long to be natural.

“Don’t be stupid.”

He hated that Axel was always doing that, echoing, speaking words that belonged to the dead. Some things should die and stay there, Saïx thought. He wished it didn’t feel so—but it didn’t, of course. It didn’t feel like anything. That was the whole point. The pit in his stomach was a memory. He knew that.

Zexion had explained it, somewhat dispassionately, how the mind missed the heart like a phantom limb, and would attempt to recreate the emotions it expected, a clumsy patchwork of memories and the clinging scraps of feelings long dead.

Long dead. How he wished they would agree to die like they had been meant to. It was worse than being empty in totality.

“Don’t be stupid,” Saïx repeated slowly. He glanced over and found that Axel was looking straight at him with an expression he had never seen before. He was also standing much closer than Saïx had thought.

“You chose a poor time to experience a resurgence of concern for my well-being,” he said finally.

“It isn’t a resurgence if it was never gone.”

“Right.”

“Isa—“

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine. Saïx. Whatever. Will you look at me, please?”

Saïx closed his eyes again. He wanted nothing more and nothing less than to do so, and yet…

“I think it’s best if you just go.”

Axel was silent for a long moment, and Saïx almost started to wonder if he was going to comply. He wasn’t sure if that would be the best possible outcome, or that which he least wanted to see take place.

But Axel was still a faded version of Lea, and Lea still remembered. He looked out from behind the eyes of a ghost at the blue-haired head before him, slightly bowed, and he knew. The knowledge that he had been hurting Saïx, been hurting Isa, sunk into his chest like a knife.

The certainty that there was nothing he could say that would fix it was even worse.

He stared at Saïx’s back, overcome by the desire to do what he knew he could not, which was make it better, make him smile again, be the friend he needed. Give him back what he’d lost, and keep him safe this time. For a split second, Axel wanted nothing more than to stay.

Saïx opened his eyes when he felt the hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t been touched by another in a nonviolent manner in…had it been weeks? Months? Had the last person to do it been Axel too? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t want to remember. It made him want things he knew very well he could not have.

“If it really is a some kind of snake pit in there, then I’ll probably need all the luck I can get.”

It was the memory of a lump in his throat. It wasn’t real. He couldn’t cry. You need a heart to cry.

He hesitated, then placed his hand over Axel’s, and finally turned around to meet his eyes. Axel looked down at him with that odd expression again, the only one that Saïx couldn’t read. But there was something close to a smile dancing at the edges of his eyes.

“Ten years and you’re still using the same line,” Saïx muttered.

“Ten years and it still works on you.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but the words got lost on their way to his tongue when Axel’s hands cupped his jaw. He hadn’t seem him take his gloves off, but then again, he hadn’t been looking.

“Just once,” Lea said.

“Once is never enough,” Isa replied.

But even the moon, in her own way, is selfish; she loved the sun too much to let him stop shining, so she took his light for herself. The night will never have you, she said. You’re mine.

And it wasn’t.

It never was.

There had been countless kisses between that first hesitant moment and today, and Axel was still surprised by how cold and how soft Saïx was, the same way that Saïx had been and continued to be taken aback by the heat that came off of Axel’s skin. He leaned into it almost unconsciously, a muscle memory. Somewhere, deep down, Saïx had always wanted to be warm.

The softness of his lips was almost terrifying. It made Axel feel as though Saïx could shatter at any moment, tearing into pieces at the lightest touch. It was so antithetical to the aura he exuded, the way he looked and spoke and held himself. He had filed his edges razor-sharp because it didn’t matter how soft something was if you had to bleed in order to touch it. And yet it had never stopped Lea, and it certainly didn’t stop Axel.

Quite literally, on occasion. He paused for air and to wipe away the blood from his lower lip where Saïx’s teeth had broken the skin. Saïx chuckled, low and humorless.

“Oh, Isa,” Axel murmured, and this time there was no protest. He rested his chin on the crown of Saïx’s head and pulled him in close. They stood like that for a while, Saïx leaning against Axel’s chest with closed eyes, trying not to think about the creeping feeling that this was a more final goodbye than either of them had expected it to be.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” Axel said finally, and Saïx shook his head, but all resolve had temporarily fled the moment their lips had met. He figured, somewhat uncharacteristically, that he had earned the right to be a little selfish.

“What’s to become of us?” he asked, the edge of desperation in his voice no longer muted.

“Nothing good.” Axel paused. “But I don’t care. Not tonight.”

It was only the memory of how it felt to have tears prick the back of his eyes. That was all it was.

You need a heart to cry.

You need a heart to…

Isa laughed.

It was a wild sound, maybe one closer to a snarl than of amusement. Undeniably laughter, and undeniably coming from him as he swung down, smashing the twisted creature beneath to smoke in a single strike.

Kind of terrifying. And, Lea thought, if he was being completely honest with himself, pretty attractive, too.

When he met Isa’s eyes, they were glowing with something entirely different from the sick yellow light that had belonged to Saïx. The look on his face was fierce, nearly frantic, and his eyes focused over Lea’s shoulder a moment before catapulting himself over it to pulverize the Heartless bearing down on him. Lea had no idea how he managed such speed while swinging that massive thing around. It’s not like Isa was a particularly large man. The claymore was practically bigger than he was, and yet the leonine grace with which he handled it was in a class completely separate from anything Lea had seen from the other keyblade wielders.

He still wasn’t as fast as Lea, of course. But then again, no one was.

“Are we even now?” he called as he took out four of them with a concentrated explosion of flames. Blue flames? They’d never been blue before. Lea shook his head to clear his ringing ears.

Isa looked back over his shoulder. “Not even close.”

“Damn.”

“You could—Lea!”

But he had already swung out of the way with time to spare.

“Wish they still listened to me,” muttered Isa, considering the berserker Dusk that had failed to land the hit.

It was Lea’s turn to laugh with the rush that came with just knowing that he was faster, moving as he did like liquid, or maybe like smoke. He narrowed his eyes at his opponent, considering. Those things didn’t like fire, and luckily, fire liked him.

Isa had wondered, more than once, if the berserkers’ aversion to fire had come from the frustration with Axel that Saïx had been feeling at the time of their genesis. Had it been frustration? Resentment? Bitterness? Regardless of the nature of the thing, he remembered that fire had made him feel sick for months, ever since that which existed between them had started to crumple under the weight of betrayal, both perceived and actualized. Maybe that was it.

Or, Isa thought now as he looked at Lea, maybe it had just been that he’d missed him. And what an unexpected joy it was, to be able to use the past tense.

Lea picked his way over and looked at him with an odd expression. “Seems like a strange time to smile,” he said.

“I…” Isa shrugged, the smile widening to a grin. “I think I’m…happy.”

“Seems like a…weird place to be happy.”

Isa opened his mouth, thought for a moment, then closed it.

“What?” Lea waited. “Isa, what?”

“Nothing. Nothing, it’s—nothing.”

“Oh, hey, that’s not fair.”

“I almost said something very—don’t concern yourself.”

“What, you’re worried about what you say to me now?”

He laughed. “You have a point there.”

“And?”

Isa sighed. “Just that…any place is the right place to be happy when you’re there.”

Lea stared at him, dumbfounded. Isa was looking firmly at the ground, and he couldn’t tell if he was blushing or just still flushed from the fight. It was almost impossible to equate this with the man who had been laughing at the rush of violence earlier, and yet.

And yet.

Isa looked up at him somewhat sheepishly when Lea reached for his hand.

“You’ve got a weird idea of timing, you know that?”

“Well.” Isa chuckled. “Point of no return, right?”

“I think it’s sweet.”

“Oh, do you now?”

“Mhm.” His smile faded as he glanced up at the castle, and the path to it they were meant to be taking. “And…I’m not letting anything happen to you up there. Point of no return or not, you’re coming back in one piece. Got it memorized?”

“Got it—hmph.” Isa shook his head, smirking.

“If you think I’m letting you do anything reckless then you really are stupid.”

“Reckless?” He laughed again. “You’re calling me reckless?”

“I’m just saying—“

“I’ll make it out for you if you make it out for me. We went over this.”

Lea brushed the strands of hair that had come loose from his braid out of Isa’s face. It was holding up well, he thought. The plait had held just like he had told Isa it would when he offered to do it the night before. Isa had laughed a little at that, the smile breaking through the worry in his eyes.

“I remember,” he said finally.

And it struck him like a sledgehammer to the chest, how badly he wanted that worry to fade forever. He wanted Isa to smile and smile and say stupid romantic things and not flinch every time he was touched.

He had been through enough.

“If he tries to hurt you again,” Lea said softly, looking hard into Isa’s eyes, “I’ll eat his fucking heart.”

It was the closest thing to I love you Isa had ever heard Lea say out loud.

“You had better not kill him before I get the chance to kick his ass,” he said. “Or I’ll kick yours to make up the difference.”

“That’s fair.” Lea looked up. “We should probably…”

“Yes, we should.” He started forward, then paused. “Lea…”

“Yeah?”

“How lucky do you feel?”

Lea blinked. He looked down at Isa.

“Very,” he said, before taking Isa’s face in his hands the same way he always had and kissing him hard the same way he always had, his skin still too hot like it had always been.

Then Isa found himself kissing a smile, and it was the strangest thing in the world, to have it feel so natural to be this happy in the middle of a war zone.  

But it did, and they were. And they would be tomorrow, Isa thought, and the next day, and the next. He would make sure of that.