[Fic] Monsoon Season
Apr. 3rd, 2021 06:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chirurgiqueTitle: Monsoon Season
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Relationship: Kairi/Xion
Rating: G
Content notes: unreality, identity issues
Words: 2,101
Summary: As the year grows long and her tenure as a member of Organization XIII grows more and more fraught, Xion is in need of some respite. Being sent on a mission to the Destiny Islands could be what she’s been wanting. It’s a good place to daydream, and a good place to run into new old friends that you’ve only met in daydreams before.
Being at the Destiny Islands always felt like a dream.
Dreams were hostile, sometimes, dark fractals of confusion and revelation. But this place was nothing so uninvited. This was one of those self-indulgent dreams, the kind that were an escape, a reassuring curtain over her eyes, where the coiled grit of waking anxiety dissolved into the shelter of unconsciousness. If she were to fall through the sky to the islands where her own self stood, then better to fall through the warm rain to warm arms outstretched.
And it was raining now, storm clouds bruising against the hibiscus sky, the sand of the beach flattened into a compact stage, springy under her step. The kids who normally frequented the play island would be staying home in this weather. Today, the dream was for Xion only.
She had long since finished her mission here, but lately the commands to RTC immediately were feeling more like suggestions. In this world especially, it was harder and harder to tear herself away each time she got a chance to visit.
It wasn’t home. Home was where her friends were, where her heart was. But home was a more complicated place to be by the day, a place of loaded silences and ugly decisions put off to the too-near future. There was value to be found in this kind of make-believe home, where she could close her eyes and dream up a life that was simple, and serene.
Xion wandered through the rain, trailing her fingertips along the surfaces of moss-covered rock walls and the leaves of blooming bushes as she went. The heads of flowers bobbed from both her touch and the raindrops. Soon, she would have to think about something else besides the trickle of water down her scalp and the patter of the rainfall into the ocean. Soon, but not yet.
But maybe sooner than she had hoped. Because when she rounded the corner and came into view of the widest stretch of the beach, she found she wasn’t alone.
Kairi was here, too.
She stood on the darkened sand facing the ocean, face tipped up towards the rain. Xion could only see the corner of her mouth, but she knew that she was smiling.
Before Xion could even wonder why, Kairi dropped her head back down, clapped her hands in front of her, and began to move.
She swayed one way and the other, holding her arms out in front of her in a circle. Then, the arc of one curved arm went up above her head as she stepped forward and back. She’s dancing. It wasn’t particularly graceful, but it pulled Xion forward like a magnet. She took a few steps across the beach almost unbidden.
Kairi switched the positions of her arms, left one up, right one around, then switched them again. Took a solid step back, placed her right foot down with a bent knee. Then she spun, wet hair fanning out like an umbrella. And of course, once she was facing the other direction, she was face to face with Xion.
“Oh!” Kairi froze, then dropped her arms, straightening as she processed her audience of one. “... Hi!”
It would have been best practices to dark portal away on the spot. “Hi there.”
“Um, I’m Kairi!”
Xion knew better than to take things that belonged to other people. She wasn’t about to lay claim to emotion that wasn’t her own. But there was a tiny corner of her heart, the corner that pleaded for sleep when the morning came calling, that saw the appeal in escaping into to a world where her love for a friend could be childish and unburdened.
Her best friend in another life. An imaginary friend’s imaginary friend. She wanted to say, It’s me.
Instead she said, “I’m Xion.”
Kairi took a few steps forward, swinging her arms back and forth a few times before clasping her hands behind her back playfully. That’s a little weird. Wasn’t Kairi shy with people she hadn’t met yet? Xion guiltily scanned what scraps of memory she felt it wasn’t rude to.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before! Are you new?”
A question with a million answers. She picked the one that felt most true at the moment. “Oh, no... I’m from here.”
“Oh, sorry for assuming!” Kairi laughed, and stopped within comfortable chatting distance, one hand on her hip. “I was the new kid once, so that’s what I thought of.” She paused as if a realization had struck her and raised a hand to her mouth. “Wait, does that mean that we go to the same school? Are you in my class?”
“No, I’m...” Her mind went to long hours sitting in her cold castle room, feet going numb under her desk as she copied down columns upon columns of numbers and letters at Saïx’s behest. “I’m homeschooled.”
“Oh, good! I mean, not ‘good’ like I wouldn’t want to be in the same class!” Kairi pressed her hands together in facetious prayer and winced — winked? — apologetically. Xion couldn’t help but at least smile. “I just was thinking that, if we were in the same class but I didn’t recognize you, that would be my bad, for sure. But that makes sense! I feel like I definitely would have remembered your face.”
If Kairi had noticed how much they resembled each other, she didn’t seem inclined to bring it up. But who knows what I even look like to her, Xion remembered with a jolt.
Kairi was continuing undaunted. “Oh, but... if you don’t go to my school, you probably don’t need to practice the festival dance, huh?” She kicked the toes of one foot against the sand a little sheepishly.
Xion couldn’t understand why Kairi was acting so friendly to someone she was talking to for the first time. She also couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t grateful to the point of crying, or didn’t want to encourage it.
“Oh... is that what you were doing before? Practicing?” Xion’s voice was a masterclass in casual temperance.
“You bet. But, the thing is... there are parts that are kind of hard to practice without a partner...”
“Oh.” Far be it from Xion to ignore someone in need. Even if the need did seem fabricated for both of their benefits. “Well, I don’t know how to dance. But is there still a way I could help?”
Kairi grinned. “No experience necessary! The teachers made the dance so that even the clumsiest kids in my school would be able to learn it. Everyone should be able to manage it, even...” Her smile faltered as she trailed off, glancing to the side with a far away expression.
Xion fought down her impulse to apologize. What was she even supposed to say? How could she reassure her? I’m right here, thought Xion, which was wrong. For one thing, she wasn’t clumsy.
Without coming to a conclusion or even really thinking about what she was doing, Xion stepped forward until she was right in front of Kairi, and extended her gloved hand, palm up. Kairi looked at it, and then up at Xion’s face.
“Shall we?”
Kairi’s lopsided smile as she took her hand was a salve as much as it was a wound to her conscience.
Kairi led, and Xion followed. Despite her combat experience lending her a certain amount of poise, Xion hadn’t been lying about not knowing how to dance. She was happy enough to serve as a nonplussed dressmaker dummy for Kairi to pin the fabric of her plans to. Kairi said their hands went up, their hands went up. She said they spun in place, then they spun in place. The driving rain turned into more of a mist, but it still called attention to the absurdity of the situation every time they had to clasp sopping wet hands. Far too silly to be stressful. You could even call it fun.
Then came a part Xion wasn’t sure was in the original choreography. Kairi grabbed her by the hand and by the waist, and whirled her around like the beach was a ballroom. Xion’s coat flared out and scattered water droplets everywhere. She wasn’t sure whose voice was shrieking with laughter.
Kairi pulled her back in from the spin and steadied her, and then they were two girls standing soaking wet in the rain, hugging each other and laughing at nothing. Xion could feel the force of Kairi’s snickering on her cheeks.
Laughter lapsed into silence and smiles. With the absence of so much movement, Xion had time to notice how even the temperate island air was lesser to the warmth of having another person nearby, at least to the raindrenched and bone-tired.
Kairi dipped her, with one hand reached around to support her back, the other cupping the back of the base of her neck. The pressure of her hand was unassailably soothing. If I close my eyes now, I could fall asleep. But Xion didn’t close her eyes.
She looked up, at Kairi. The rain ran off her hair in rivulets, forming a curtain of tiny waterfalls that fell onto Xion’s face. Behind her head was the glint of the sun, just barely emerging from the storm clouds in time to sink low into the blushing sky.
Xion knew better than to look into the sun, so instead she looked into Kairi’s face, which felt like even more of a delinquency. She was blushing too, skin all blotchy from the dancing and the rain. Her smile was huge, and kind. Xion thought, My whole life could be right here.
Then Kairi pulled her back up standing, and took a step back, steadying her hand on Xion’s shoulder.
“What do you think? Pretty fun, right?”
“Yes.” Xion smiled, and wiped the water from her eyes. “Thank you for letting me try.”
“My pleasure!” Kairi scrubbed the rain from her own face with both hands, then looked up as if to see if more was on the way.
The light of the setting sun washed over Kairi’s face. She seemed distracted for a second, awe caught by the gloaming. Xion watched her watch. My face never dimples like that. I wonder why? But Kairi’s expression fell as she seemed to process the weight of the sun in the sky.
“Oh my gosh, it’s already that late?!” She looked back and forth between Xion and the distant shore of the main island, grimacing in alarm. “It was so dark in the rain that I lost track of time...”
“Don’t let me keep you.” Xion took a step back and raised her hand in a small wave, signalling as politely as possible that she wouldn’t be joining her.
“Oh... okay!” Kairi seemed like she had more to say, but her mind was clearly increasingly occupied by the trouble she would be in if she didn’t move on fast. “But see you around sometime, okay? I’ll show you the rest of the dance later!” Kairi nodded decisively, then took off towards her little wooden canoe and began unmooring it hastily. Despite her panic, she took the time to look up at Xion one more time, and wave.
“Don’t be a stranger!”
Xion’s face cracked into a grin, and she waved back until Kairi had pushed off into the water. The shape of her retreating back — red bobble head over beacon-bright shirt — shrunk quickly into the distance.
Xion stared until what was probably the last she’d ever see of Kairi was completely gone. Her eyes stung as she was left staring intently at nothing but the sunset. Now that the clouds had gone, the sea was calm. The rain had stopped too, so now that Xion was wiping the warm water from her face once more, she would have even less of an excuse if she had to do it again.
She turned away from the beach. Back among the trees, she summoned a portal.
She spared one final glance over the island. The dripping foliage, the silhouette of the Paopu trees in the distance. The sand of the beach torn up by the footsteps of two girls practicing the school festival dance. She stepped backwards into the darkness.
The shadows enveloped her, an encompassing void. She thought of her frigid room at night, her attempts to find solace in the unyielding cold of her blankets. If she tried to lay back her head here, there would be no comfort for her.
But she could still feel the warmth on the back of her neck.
Written for the prompt “Once Upon a Dream” for KH Femslash Month 2021. Thanks for reading!
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Relationship: Kairi/Xion
Rating: G
Content notes: unreality, identity issues
Words: 2,101
Summary: As the year grows long and her tenure as a member of Organization XIII grows more and more fraught, Xion is in need of some respite. Being sent on a mission to the Destiny Islands could be what she’s been wanting. It’s a good place to daydream, and a good place to run into new old friends that you’ve only met in daydreams before.
Being at the Destiny Islands always felt like a dream.
Dreams were hostile, sometimes, dark fractals of confusion and revelation. But this place was nothing so uninvited. This was one of those self-indulgent dreams, the kind that were an escape, a reassuring curtain over her eyes, where the coiled grit of waking anxiety dissolved into the shelter of unconsciousness. If she were to fall through the sky to the islands where her own self stood, then better to fall through the warm rain to warm arms outstretched.
And it was raining now, storm clouds bruising against the hibiscus sky, the sand of the beach flattened into a compact stage, springy under her step. The kids who normally frequented the play island would be staying home in this weather. Today, the dream was for Xion only.
She had long since finished her mission here, but lately the commands to RTC immediately were feeling more like suggestions. In this world especially, it was harder and harder to tear herself away each time she got a chance to visit.
It wasn’t home. Home was where her friends were, where her heart was. But home was a more complicated place to be by the day, a place of loaded silences and ugly decisions put off to the too-near future. There was value to be found in this kind of make-believe home, where she could close her eyes and dream up a life that was simple, and serene.
Xion wandered through the rain, trailing her fingertips along the surfaces of moss-covered rock walls and the leaves of blooming bushes as she went. The heads of flowers bobbed from both her touch and the raindrops. Soon, she would have to think about something else besides the trickle of water down her scalp and the patter of the rainfall into the ocean. Soon, but not yet.
But maybe sooner than she had hoped. Because when she rounded the corner and came into view of the widest stretch of the beach, she found she wasn’t alone.
Kairi was here, too.
She stood on the darkened sand facing the ocean, face tipped up towards the rain. Xion could only see the corner of her mouth, but she knew that she was smiling.
Before Xion could even wonder why, Kairi dropped her head back down, clapped her hands in front of her, and began to move.
She swayed one way and the other, holding her arms out in front of her in a circle. Then, the arc of one curved arm went up above her head as she stepped forward and back. She’s dancing. It wasn’t particularly graceful, but it pulled Xion forward like a magnet. She took a few steps across the beach almost unbidden.
Kairi switched the positions of her arms, left one up, right one around, then switched them again. Took a solid step back, placed her right foot down with a bent knee. Then she spun, wet hair fanning out like an umbrella. And of course, once she was facing the other direction, she was face to face with Xion.
“Oh!” Kairi froze, then dropped her arms, straightening as she processed her audience of one. “... Hi!”
It would have been best practices to dark portal away on the spot. “Hi there.”
“Um, I’m Kairi!”
Xion knew better than to take things that belonged to other people. She wasn’t about to lay claim to emotion that wasn’t her own. But there was a tiny corner of her heart, the corner that pleaded for sleep when the morning came calling, that saw the appeal in escaping into to a world where her love for a friend could be childish and unburdened.
Her best friend in another life. An imaginary friend’s imaginary friend. She wanted to say, It’s me.
Instead she said, “I’m Xion.”
Kairi took a few steps forward, swinging her arms back and forth a few times before clasping her hands behind her back playfully. That’s a little weird. Wasn’t Kairi shy with people she hadn’t met yet? Xion guiltily scanned what scraps of memory she felt it wasn’t rude to.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before! Are you new?”
A question with a million answers. She picked the one that felt most true at the moment. “Oh, no... I’m from here.”
“Oh, sorry for assuming!” Kairi laughed, and stopped within comfortable chatting distance, one hand on her hip. “I was the new kid once, so that’s what I thought of.” She paused as if a realization had struck her and raised a hand to her mouth. “Wait, does that mean that we go to the same school? Are you in my class?”
“No, I’m...” Her mind went to long hours sitting in her cold castle room, feet going numb under her desk as she copied down columns upon columns of numbers and letters at Saïx’s behest. “I’m homeschooled.”
“Oh, good! I mean, not ‘good’ like I wouldn’t want to be in the same class!” Kairi pressed her hands together in facetious prayer and winced — winked? — apologetically. Xion couldn’t help but at least smile. “I just was thinking that, if we were in the same class but I didn’t recognize you, that would be my bad, for sure. But that makes sense! I feel like I definitely would have remembered your face.”
If Kairi had noticed how much they resembled each other, she didn’t seem inclined to bring it up. But who knows what I even look like to her, Xion remembered with a jolt.
Kairi was continuing undaunted. “Oh, but... if you don’t go to my school, you probably don’t need to practice the festival dance, huh?” She kicked the toes of one foot against the sand a little sheepishly.
Xion couldn’t understand why Kairi was acting so friendly to someone she was talking to for the first time. She also couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t grateful to the point of crying, or didn’t want to encourage it.
“Oh... is that what you were doing before? Practicing?” Xion’s voice was a masterclass in casual temperance.
“You bet. But, the thing is... there are parts that are kind of hard to practice without a partner...”
“Oh.” Far be it from Xion to ignore someone in need. Even if the need did seem fabricated for both of their benefits. “Well, I don’t know how to dance. But is there still a way I could help?”
Kairi grinned. “No experience necessary! The teachers made the dance so that even the clumsiest kids in my school would be able to learn it. Everyone should be able to manage it, even...” Her smile faltered as she trailed off, glancing to the side with a far away expression.
Xion fought down her impulse to apologize. What was she even supposed to say? How could she reassure her? I’m right here, thought Xion, which was wrong. For one thing, she wasn’t clumsy.
Without coming to a conclusion or even really thinking about what she was doing, Xion stepped forward until she was right in front of Kairi, and extended her gloved hand, palm up. Kairi looked at it, and then up at Xion’s face.
“Shall we?”
Kairi’s lopsided smile as she took her hand was a salve as much as it was a wound to her conscience.
Kairi led, and Xion followed. Despite her combat experience lending her a certain amount of poise, Xion hadn’t been lying about not knowing how to dance. She was happy enough to serve as a nonplussed dressmaker dummy for Kairi to pin the fabric of her plans to. Kairi said their hands went up, their hands went up. She said they spun in place, then they spun in place. The driving rain turned into more of a mist, but it still called attention to the absurdity of the situation every time they had to clasp sopping wet hands. Far too silly to be stressful. You could even call it fun.
Then came a part Xion wasn’t sure was in the original choreography. Kairi grabbed her by the hand and by the waist, and whirled her around like the beach was a ballroom. Xion’s coat flared out and scattered water droplets everywhere. She wasn’t sure whose voice was shrieking with laughter.
Kairi pulled her back in from the spin and steadied her, and then they were two girls standing soaking wet in the rain, hugging each other and laughing at nothing. Xion could feel the force of Kairi’s snickering on her cheeks.
Laughter lapsed into silence and smiles. With the absence of so much movement, Xion had time to notice how even the temperate island air was lesser to the warmth of having another person nearby, at least to the raindrenched and bone-tired.
Kairi dipped her, with one hand reached around to support her back, the other cupping the back of the base of her neck. The pressure of her hand was unassailably soothing. If I close my eyes now, I could fall asleep. But Xion didn’t close her eyes.
She looked up, at Kairi. The rain ran off her hair in rivulets, forming a curtain of tiny waterfalls that fell onto Xion’s face. Behind her head was the glint of the sun, just barely emerging from the storm clouds in time to sink low into the blushing sky.
Xion knew better than to look into the sun, so instead she looked into Kairi’s face, which felt like even more of a delinquency. She was blushing too, skin all blotchy from the dancing and the rain. Her smile was huge, and kind. Xion thought, My whole life could be right here.
Then Kairi pulled her back up standing, and took a step back, steadying her hand on Xion’s shoulder.
“What do you think? Pretty fun, right?”
“Yes.” Xion smiled, and wiped the water from her eyes. “Thank you for letting me try.”
“My pleasure!” Kairi scrubbed the rain from her own face with both hands, then looked up as if to see if more was on the way.
The light of the setting sun washed over Kairi’s face. She seemed distracted for a second, awe caught by the gloaming. Xion watched her watch. My face never dimples like that. I wonder why? But Kairi’s expression fell as she seemed to process the weight of the sun in the sky.
“Oh my gosh, it’s already that late?!” She looked back and forth between Xion and the distant shore of the main island, grimacing in alarm. “It was so dark in the rain that I lost track of time...”
“Don’t let me keep you.” Xion took a step back and raised her hand in a small wave, signalling as politely as possible that she wouldn’t be joining her.
“Oh... okay!” Kairi seemed like she had more to say, but her mind was clearly increasingly occupied by the trouble she would be in if she didn’t move on fast. “But see you around sometime, okay? I’ll show you the rest of the dance later!” Kairi nodded decisively, then took off towards her little wooden canoe and began unmooring it hastily. Despite her panic, she took the time to look up at Xion one more time, and wave.
“Don’t be a stranger!”
Xion’s face cracked into a grin, and she waved back until Kairi had pushed off into the water. The shape of her retreating back — red bobble head over beacon-bright shirt — shrunk quickly into the distance.
Xion stared until what was probably the last she’d ever see of Kairi was completely gone. Her eyes stung as she was left staring intently at nothing but the sunset. Now that the clouds had gone, the sea was calm. The rain had stopped too, so now that Xion was wiping the warm water from her face once more, she would have even less of an excuse if she had to do it again.
She turned away from the beach. Back among the trees, she summoned a portal.
She spared one final glance over the island. The dripping foliage, the silhouette of the Paopu trees in the distance. The sand of the beach torn up by the footsteps of two girls practicing the school festival dance. She stepped backwards into the darkness.
The shadows enveloped her, an encompassing void. She thought of her frigid room at night, her attempts to find solace in the unyielding cold of her blankets. If she tried to lay back her head here, there would be no comfort for her.
But she could still feel the warmth on the back of her neck.
Written for the prompt “Once Upon a Dream” for KH Femslash Month 2021. Thanks for reading!
