#ninjaprincessofthieves

Didn’t work.  The expression on Sora’s face when he saw Lea’s was twice heartbreaking, and Lea looked sharply away.  His lips moved in what would have been It’s Lea now, but Sora, like Kairi, still had every right to call him by that name.  Besides…something felt wrong about it.  Lea didn’t want to think why.

“Um,” Sora said in a voice already close to tears, and Lea was touched that he could be so easily moved.  Even more so when Sora got himself under control.  “Flora and the others mentioned you were…upset.”

Lea made an offhanded noise.  “Yeah, well.  I’m just–frustrated.”  Not that Lea was even sure that he was, or what he was.  All the emotions came at him with so much intensity.  “I can’t believe…”  He paused, finding the strength to say the words.  “I can’t believe Isa’s on his side.”

Sora scratched his head.  “I thought it might be something like that,” he said, and Lea looked at him in stupefied wonder.  Sora grinned a little anxiously, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  “I–Roxas uh…Roxas showed me his memories.”

“You–you saw Roxas?  …You saw that whole–” Lea got out, and then groaned and covered his face in his hands and sat down.

“Yeah.”  Sora even sounded apologetic, though Lea couldn’t think why that would be.  “Did Sai–” he said, and winced; “Did Isa…want to become, y’know…Xehanort?”

Lea let out a hysterical laugh behind his hands, and then looked up.  “You’re serious,” he realized, and Sora nodded emphatically.  “Y–what, no.  Become Xehanort?  What does that even mean?”

“Like Xigbar!” Sora said, afire with the urgency and potency of his message; “He said he’s already half and ‘m not sure why but I think it’s got–something to do with his eyes?  And he and Xemnas said it was always about that, it was to turn you and everyone else into ‘empty husks’!”  Sora’s eyes flashed with anger as he got to the crux of his argument.  “They lied to you!  About your heart, about–all of it!”

Lea considered that.  He’d thought for some time that Xemnas’s goal couldn’t really be to get their hearts back–it made sense to him in the beginning, but not when Xemnas was the one who took their hearts in the first place, and not when so little was being done to forward that goal–but this..  “So that’s what he was trying to do to you,” he said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, exactly!” Sora said, still sounding a little pugnacious, and then frowned.  “What did you think he was trying to do?”

“Iunno.  He was talking about darkness, I figured that couldn’t be good.  I was kinda in a rush.”

Sora’s expression turned thoughtful and he nodded and sort of shrugged like he couldn’t see any logical flaws with that.

“Well,” Lea said, and it was difficult to get out; “in that case, then…”

Sora made an uncertain noise at the emotion in his voice.  “Maybe–maybe it’s like with…Riku?  Just a little?  Maybe Isa’s still…aw Axel, don’t be sad!”

“I’m not sad, silly!” Lea laughed out, scrubbing at his eyes.  He swallowed and closed them, exhaling to calm himself.  “I’m really…I just needed to hear that.  Thanks, Sora.”