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bisoras · 7 years

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let’s keep this “kh aus i’ve never completed but still actually like” train a truckin with the latest installment: a fic i’ve had drafted since at least 2012 and this is all i’ve got to show for it

all i really remember abt what i wanted when i started writing this was it was a spite fic???? i was tired of every single kh au making sora and roxas brothers/twins, completely disregarding the wayfinder trio, and making cloud and leon sora and roxas’s dads so :^)

it cuts back and forth between third and first person but the majority is in third person

My first memory is of green eyes. Wide, curious, insect-like, large set against his face – the boy stared at me from above, and for a few seconds I thought I had died.

As he stepped to the side, I could do nothing but blink at him. He stood tall and gangly, a toothy grin settled comfortably on his features. He looked at me expectantly, a large hand extended in front of him. “I’m Lea,” he said unabashedly.

I remembered nothing else from that meeting. I had been four years old, and who could remember anything other than that striking an impression of bright red and green?

Roxas sped down the empty highway, watching as the roads steadily became smoother and the landscape cleaner. He drove not long but slowly, dragging what would have been an hour long drive into almost two.

Dread settled in the bottom of his stomach like magma, churning and boiling unpleasantly, as he neared the place he was said to have been born. His eyes burned with exhaustion, and he now regretted his decision to forgo a night of sleep at the place he had made his home. A place he now had no chance of returning to.

The dingy inn not far from his destination beckoned him lovingly, and the blonde paused only to count the munny in his pocket before he parked in the seemingly abandoned lot. He entered sluggishly, spoke shortly to the bored clerk, and trudged his way to the room he was assigned, falling asleep on the blankets without even bothering to take off his shoes and socks.

He woke up only when the sunlight glared at him through the outdated curtains. When the abandoned cell phone inside his pocket chimed, Roxas did not bother to look at the ID. He received it and put the phone to his ear in seconds.

“Dumbass, they’re gone,” the hoarse voice snapped instantly. “You’re chasing people who forgot you existed and left you to rot, so get yourself back in that ratty car and back where there are people who you know are here for you.”

Seifer stopped and the voice changed – quiet and musical, Namine spoke to him: “Please, Roxas, we love you. Ignore Seifer, but he was right about one thing: they’re gone. We’ve been there for you, not them. We’re your family, Roxas; please come home.”

Her voice cracked at the end and Roxas squeezed his eyes shut against the ever-deepening pit inside his stomach. Indistinct voices behind theirs, yelling and laughing and arguing, rang after Namine stopped talking, all belonging to a never-ending circle of children who lived in the old, abandoned mansion. He heard Seifer say something on their end, and a gravelly, flat voice replied, “He’s made up his mind.”

That voice – the one Roxas would recognize to the end of days – was the final straw, and he hung up the call, prying the battery out of the phone for good measure only a minute later.

“Rox, you’re trying too hard to remember.” Axel stopped and glanced at me, his words biting but tone gentle. “Stop fussing about this and use your head.”

“Shut it,” I told him. My fingers massaged my temple and I squeezed my eyes shut. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. A tall boy, nimble and quick. His name, starting with a V. “I remember them – I know I do.”

“You were four,” he muttered. “You were four and you were alone in a closet with no one around.”

“You think I don’t remember?” I asked him, a grimace on my face. Axel shook his head. He placed an arm around my shoulder, walking on without a care in the world.

I opened my mouth in retaliation, but shut it and froze when the sound of footsteps echoed around the block. Axel immediately crouched defensively, his fingers aglow, and in my hands materialized the keyblade I fought with, a spell already at my lips. But the more we listened the less I could tell we needed our weapons – laughter ricocheted against the brick buildings. Despite the clanging of metal on metal, I could hear airy voices casting spells. Somebody was running forward, a sopping wet boy, casting magic I’d never seen before as mines shot out of the ground around him and began traveling, two heading directly towards Axel and me.

Axel placed his hands on my waist and jumped the second I summoned a barrier underneath our bodies to protect from the explosions that fired around us. The sound of my spell startled the boy, his smile wiping away and his eyes wide, apologies on the tip of his tongue, but then he stopped and our eyes locked, his name popping into my head clear as day because I’d known it since the day I came into the world – Ventus.

“Yo, what the fuck?” Axel said, checking me for any injuries, the fire gone from his hands and a healing warmth radiating instead. When he seemed sure I was okay, he looked me in the eyes – following my struck gaze to the man in front of me, and then he, too, stopped dead in his tracks.

“Is everything okay?” an anxious voice asked, and behind Ventus appeared a blue-haired woman. “I heard someone cast a spell, but it wasn’t any voice I recog…” she faded off, looking at Ventus with worry in her eyes.

“Roxas?” he questioned, ignoring the woman.

Axel hovered protectively behind me. Neither of us uttered a word.

Once a beautiful getaway from the toils and troubles of the war, Radiant Garden was now far from. Why Roxas was found abandoned and why Axel had been the one to discover him was a direct result of the demolition of the once-beautiful town. The castle, a former sign of glory, love, and peace, had long-since been destroyed, ransacked, pillaged, and raided. Murderers ran rampant and kidnappers carefree.

Over the thirteen years of Roxas’s absence, the remaining townspeople, few and far between, began rebuilding the town, attempting to restore it to its former glory, but it was a long and daunting process, and they still were incredibly far from completing their task.

Eyes peeled for blonde hair and blue eyes, Roxas ambled across a square of cobblestone, his ears strained for any loosely familiar voices or distant footsteps. He allowed his feet to move of their own volition, stepping forward methodically, one foot in front of the other, while he tried to dig up memories of the town from the deep recesses of his memories.

He followed a path through the town, up a steep set of concrete stairs, and into a demolished hideaway. Curious, Roxas followed the narrow sidewalk, eyes gazing over the graffiti-ed wall and the scattered belongings. He soon found himself at the castle wall, curiosity overcoming his hesitance, walking past the circle, down the steps, through the door. He navigated the maze of walkways with ease, his feet carrying him as if he’d done it every day of his life. His hand grasped the doorknob of a heavy, yellow door just when he heard approaching steps behind him.

Roxas immediately went on the defense, spinning around and clenching his fists, grounding himself in the stance Seifer taught him when he was only five. Blue eyes immediately locking on the distant form of an older man, Roxas began taking quick notes on the stranger: long hair, easy to pull; busy outfit, easy to use against him; gunblade on his hip – Roxas’s optimism began dwindling as the man neared him.

“Hey,” he began, squinting his eyes for a better look at the blonde. A look of confusion shrouded his features upon studying the boy before an unmistakable look of recognition flashed over the man’s features, his eyes widening as his he forced shut his parted lips. “This is private property. What are you doing here?” he said, channeling a calm over his words.

“I was walking,” Roxas stated, slowly easing the strain on his limbs. The man walked closer still, now on the last step of the landing.

He looked closer still, gray eyes calculating as he stared at Roxas’s tanned face. “Do you need any help?”

With a plan forming in his mind, Roxas relaxed his features completely. “I’m fine.”

The man extended an arm. “You’re going to have to leave. This area is off-limits to civilians. I could have you arrested for trespassing.”

Roxas stood up straight, holding out his wrists. “So arrest me.”

It was like bad fiction. Axel watched me carefully while I stood stock-still, my eyes fixated on the man in front of me. For a second we could only manage to stare at each other. When he took a hesitant step towards me, I bolted away without even remembering Axel, my limbs carrying me back home while even the most insignificant of memories poured back into me.

Axel thought I was crazy when we returned and I immediately began packing.

“I have to go,” I told him, my fingers deftly curling through my hair. “I know they’re out there now – I need to find them. I need to know my family.”

Axel laughed, and I looked at him, my eyes wide with hurt. “Ax, I need to go. I’ve got to talk to them, to meet them. I can’t sit here and know they’re alive and not do something about it.”

My friend looked on at me, his expression slowly morphing from amusement to shock. “You’re serious,” he stated. “You’re actually serious. You’re leaving, just like that?”

“I’m an adult, Axel,” I told him, wincing at the look of forming anger on his face. “I’m going to find my family, and I can take care of myself.”

Axel laughed. A hard, short bark of a sound.

Silver handcuffs were placed on Roxas’s wrists as the dark-haired man looked over him warily. Roxas followed obediently as the man led him further out of the building. As they neared the town, Roxas was led through the demolished bailey and into the canyons of Radiant Garden. Roxas didn’t so much as bat an eyelash as the man steered him past a crystal cove and into what was clearly a new development onto the land: a large building with several branched-out blocks. A sign in front of the largest building read Radiant Garden Police Department.

The dark-haired man went through standard procedure with methodical gestures – he processed Roxas’s fingerprints, took his pictures, and finally led him into a vacant cellblock – all in a cautious manor, eyes returning to study Roxas every few minutes. Once out of earshot, he pulled a phone out and dialed a memorized number with practiced ease.

“Cid, you might want to get down to the station,” he spoke, eyes glancing back once again at Roxas’s closed off cell.

“It’s my day off!” a gruff voice exclaimed. “The hell is so important that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“Roxas Fair,” the man responded, the two words snapping Cid into silence.

“Shoulda called Tifa,” Cid muttered. “Jus’ ’cause I’m head detective don’t mean I need to be the first person here when the Chief’s son pops up after bein’ missin’ for thirteen goddamn years.” He looked a bleary hazel eye in Roxas’s direction.

“Tifa would go straight to Aerith, and you know that.”

“Yeah, well….” he mumbled. “What are you gonna do?”

Leon crossed his arms over his chest. “Get Ventus?” he said. “But he’d tell Aqua and Terra before anybody else.”

Cid looked at Leon shrewdly. “Aren’t you forgettin’ somethin’?” the blonde asked. “Ventus doesn’t remember anythin’ from before the bombings.”

“Roxas remembered,” the brunette claimed. “He was already at the entrance to the library. This is the first time he’s been through in years, and he didn’t even seem fazed.”

“Muscle memory,” Cid brushed off. “Ven remembered how to get to the lab when he first came back down here, too.” He paused. “What about Sora?”

“What about him?” Leon asked, already bristling.

Cid rolled his eyes. “Well, he was friends with Roxas – I say we bring him over, put ’em together, an’ see what happens.”

Leon took a deep breath. “There are no records of Roxas anywhere – not here, not in Twilight Town, not in Destiny Islands. Wherever he’s been, he’s been under the radar, completely MIA.”

“Your point?” Cid asked.

“My point,” Leon continued, “is that we have no idea what kind of person Roxas has grown into. He went into a fighting stance when he saw me. I’m not bringing my son in here to talk to him on his own just to ‘see what happens’.”

The older man scoffed. “You’re a cop. You’ve been drillin’ Sora on how to protect himself since the explosion, and he’s older than Roxas. Sora can take him.”

Leon stared at the gruff man. Cid grinned at Leon. “So – who’s gonna call the kid?”

Great blue eyes pierced into Leon’s for nearly a minute before the latter finally looked away in defeat. Ventus, flanked by Terra and Aqua, watched him intently even then.

“I want to talk to him,” Ventus said, tone uncharacteristically biting. His features were hard, unyielding – no match for even Leon. “He ran off before I could talk to him yesterday –”

“You saw him and didn’ bother to tell us?” Cid barked. “If he ran off you shoulda followed the bastard!”

With a frown on her lips, Aqua looked at Cid. “He was with someone yesterday, and, well… after he ran off, Ven started to panic. I had to call Terra to help calm him down.”

Ventus’s features remained as stoic and impassible as ever. “They were immediately on the offensive when I rounded the corner. His partner was strong, definitely more than I could take on myself, so I let them go in relative peace.” He locked eyes with Leon again, just as Sora entered the room. “Let me talk to him.”

“He isn’t who you remember,” Leon told him, shutting his eyes against his budding headache. “It’s been thirteen years – he isn’t a child anymore.” He blinked, then met eyes with the blonde. “He’s an adult, and he wasn’t raised by us. We have to assume –”

“What, the worst?” Ventus finished, his eyebrows raised incredulously. “He’s my brother,” he said. “We have to assume he’s my brother. End of story.”

Sora edged into the room unnoticed and looked around at everyone’s faces: Ventus was beginning to flush with frustration while Leon’s face sagged with exhaustion; Terra and Aqua exchanged nervous glances with one another as Ventus got more and more worked up; Cid was watching silently, obviously already fed up with the arguing. In fact, everyone was so involved that not only did they not notice Sora’s presence, but Sora also saw, in the opposite doorway, a blonde boy his age watching with mild amusement etched on his face.

Instead of walking through the precinct where everyone gathered, Sora toed his way around the hallway, reaching the cellblock to find the lock melted and the door wide open. Creeping up towards the other entry to the office he saw the blonde boy steadily watching the scene unfold, and softly he whispered, “Rox?”

He looked at Sora a few seconds later, and then quietly he backed away from the doorway, Ventus and Leon steadily arguing.

“So it really is you?” Sora asked, his blue eyes meeting Roxas’s.

For a long time, I didn’t ask anybody about their childhoods, but one day I asked Namine. She was quiet for a long time, and I didn’t think she’d actually answer, but she did, eventually.

“I was a little older than you were, Roxas,” she told me. She looked at me with sadness in her eyes. “Seifer was about ten, and I was six. Our home wasn’t destroyed until after we left, though.”

I looked at her, not quite grasping what she was saying, before she smiled at me. “Seifer seems harsh, but he wants what’s best for everybody. That’s all he’s ever wanted.” She looked down at her hands, her eyebrows scrunching together. “Our dad – he wasn’t good, Roxas. Seifer could see it, but we were so young…. After–” Her words caught in her throat. “After my birthday, Seifer grabbed me and we left. A week later the town was destroyed.”

It took me years after that to understand her story, and then it seemed like I understood everything: why Namine was so gentle and kind, why Seifer was so intolerant of unnecessary violence, and why all they wanted to do was help the lost kids.

“Where’d you learn magic?” Sora asked him.

Roxas looked down at his fingertips, a cool expression on his face as flurries danced around the room. “I taught myself,” he answered slowly, allowing himself the small lie as memories of Namine showing him the basics -- how to summon fire and lightning, how to heal and create barriers -- flashed across his mind.

Sora nodded, sitting down, watching Roxas with curious eyes. “Do you remember us at all?”

“I…” Roxas muttered. “I remember some people. I remember Ven.”

“Yeah, he’s pissed Dad isn’t letting him in to talk to you.” Sora chuckled, but at the look on Roxas’s face he sobered. Softly, he said, “Why did you decide to come back?”

Roxas looked into Sora’s eyes with a frustrated expression. He clutched his hands tight to his sides. “They told me this is where I came from, and I wanted to look around.”

Sora watched Roxas’s face flip through emotions -- mostly what seemed to be confusion and frustration.

Abruptly, the flurries around them vanished and Roxas lifted his gaze, his eyes locked onto Sora’s. “Why are they treating me like this?” he asked.

Sputtering a nervous laugh, Sora ran a hand through his hair. “Like how?” he asked. “Like a prisoner? From what I understand, you told Dad to arrest you.”

Roxas shook his head quickly, grimacing. “No, I get that,” he said dismissively. “I mean, why won’t they let Ventus see me? How come they’re keeping me isolated? What’s so bad about people knowing I’m here?”

The slight curve of Sora’s lips straightened with a frown. He rolled his shoulders around, lifting his eyes to the ceiling as he chewed on his lip thoughtfully.

“The war changed a lot of people,” Sora said finally. He let out a deep breath and as he did, his body seemed to deflate, folding in on itself. Roxas watched attentively, thick brows furrowed over deep eyes.

Sora looked down at his hands and his face soured. “A lot of people went missing and started to pop back up after the bombs went off. We didn’t have any reason not to trust them, you know? There they were, covered in all kinds of injuries, saying all kinds of things like how they were taken by ‘the Master’s’ followers and tortured for information about Ansem.

“We welcomed them back with open arms. Almost all of our houses were destroyed so we all stayed together in a few different camps. Our best healers mended their wounds; they were given tents to share with their friends and neighbors, and they had hot food to eat and fresh water to drink.”

He spun his fingers around in a delicate circle and a breeze swirled around the room, bringing with it the smell of sweetgrass and earth. Sora straightened and his face relaxed in the fresh air before dismissing the magic. He opened his eyes to meet Roxas’s once again, a peaceful, though sad, look in his eyes.

“We didn’t want any confusion or anxiety around the camps, so we had open meetings. Complete transparency among the entire remaining population,” he explained. “We were going to rally what was left of our guard and put together a search party for everyone we couldn’t account for, and while we were out lead a raid on the enemy camp.”

Roxas’s eyes cleared in understanding. “The ones you welcomed back used your trust against you,” he concluded.

Sora nodded. “We barely survived. Ever since, we’ve been… weary of any who come back.”

“How many have come back?” Roxas asked.

Sora winced, his blue eyes opening back up but refusing to meet Roxas’s eyes. In a small voice, he admitted, “There have been a handful, but there were investigations on all of them and each one has been found guilty of treason.”

Suddenly, the bubble the two found themselves in was popped as the sound of arguing closed in on the holding cell. Sora remained on the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of the cot, as Ventus rounded the corner and Leon followed close on his heels. Roxas, on the other hand, stood quickly. He kept his body open but tightly controlled. Sora watched his fingers flex and mouth twitch, ready to fire magic at any moment.

But what he hadn’t been prepared for was the figure that came in just behind Leon: a man with heavy black hair and electric blue eyes wearing a well-worn and fading uniform, a sword the length of his body sheathed at his back.

The man stopped at Ventus’s side.

He breathed an exclamation, his eyes rolling over Roxas’s entire frame, over Sora, then--

“Sora?” Leon asked, concern coloring his otherwise even voice. “How did you get in there?”

Roxas felt the corner of his mouth tug in a smirk, and he threw the melted lock in the air, waving his hand to encase it in a gravity spell before the group.

“You need to work on your security,” he told them casually. “I could’ve gotten out blindfolded and hogtied.”

#basically every kh2 character + the wayfinder trio #kingdom hearts #fanfiction #au #post-apocalyptic au #mine

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writedisaster · 8 months

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was thinking dumb meme thoughts, and somehow that led to me writing an entire post about how my variously scarred characters would react to someone kissing their scars? Okay.

under the cut because this ended up being a weird mix of horny stuff and discussions of trauma

The Marquis de Carabas: Most of the Marquis's scars come from that one time he was tortured to death. If anyone tries to pay special attention to them, he will extricate himself from the situation with the grace of a cat evading a toddler's embrace. There have, in the fullness of his life, been one or two people who were exceptions to this. He will never reveal their names, but it's safe to assume that you're not one of them.

Jim: doesn't really have any strong feelings associated with her scars, which hail from mundane, non-life-threatening physical accidents. As such, she wouldn't really have super strong feelings about anyone kissing them. It would seem cute and soft to her, and would probably get her in a gooey romantic mood, but it's definitely not the only (or even most impactful) way to get Jim in a gooey romantic mood.

Bête: If you have no power over Bête and you attempt to kiss xir scars - or even to touch xir scars, or even to push back Bête's clothing to expose xir scars - you're getting backhanded. If you do have power over Bête... I mean, I don't really want to use this space to dwell on Bête's experiences when people with power over xem cross xir boundaries. But a note to those who believe they can treat Bête however they please with no repercussions: sure, quite possibly. But it would be best to spend the rest of your life being very, very careful that those repercussions never get a chance to find you.

Pliers: If you've gotten close enough to Pliers Mahoney to consider kissing her scars, it's because she wants you to. She's proud of her battle scars; a partner taking the time to linger on them would be a fun part of body worship for Pliers. It feels like a recognition of her strength and prowess in a similar way to boot worship (which, yes, she's also into) but with the more conventional intimacy of skin-on-skin.

Lip, mainverse: Well, in all honesty, it's hard to find a spot to kiss on mainverse!Lip's body that isn't marked by a scar, so for this paragraph, "kissing Lip's scars" will be understood as a kiss that pays obvious attention to the contours and texture of scarring, not just a kiss that happens to take place over a scar or two. Anyways, if someone's approaching Lip's scars with that kind of deliberate focus, Lip is going to assume it's a sex thing for that person. Which is completely fine by them! Well, kind of. Lip does deliberately lean into the sexualization and fetishization of their scars, but like a lot of other things Lip leans into, it's not necessarily wholly healthy for them. They may enjoy scar worship in the moment, but after it's done, it would be really good for Lip to get aftercare focusing on them having worth outside of the availability of their body and blood. But Lip is bad at recognizing their own emotional needs, and has accepted the post-sex mood crash as a normal part of their experience, so unfortunately, I don't think they'd be able to actually ask for that specific aftercare.

Lip, VtM verse: VtM!Lip only has one set of scars- the set from the initial attack. So they feel very differently about those scars than the self-chosen smokescreen of their mainverse scars. But people do still sexualize and fetishize those scars, and Lip... I don't know if it would be right to say they lean into it, because I don't think they feel like they have a ton of choice in it? But they are very much aware that those scars are kind of their trademark, and they work with what they've got. So they don't reject attention to the scars. But anyone kissing those scars is likely to make Lip dissociate. (Which is partly due to the initial trauma of the attack, and partly due to an early partner of theirs who noticed they had strong reactions to the scars being touched and basically used those reactions as a way to control Lip.) The severity of the dissociation varies, as does what it looks like from the outside. Occasionally, Lip will present with the classic thousand yard stare, but it's much more likely that they'll continue to be vague and bubbly and flirtatious, just... without anything behind the eyes. People who know Lip and/or care enough to pay attention to their responses will almost definitely notice that Lip isn't all there, but people who are unfamiliar and/or distracted by their own desires tend to take the facade at face value. The fact that Lip's instinct is to feign okayness and even arousal in situations where they feel unsafe has meant that sometimes, they stay in those unsafe situations longer than they need to. But at other times, it's kept those situations from escalating into something worse.

#a creature of pure irony | abt: the marquis #| abt: bête #time to learn to enjoy the apocalypse | abt: pliers #find limits past the limits; jump in front of trains all day | abt: lip

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