[Fic] Wake Up, Girl
Jan. 17th, 2021 03:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chirurgiqueTitle: Wake Up, Girl
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Relationship: Elrena & Strelitzia
Characters: Elrena, Strelitzia, Lauriam
Rating: PG
Content notes: unreality, fantasy violence, implied mild injury
Words: 1,933
Summary: One evening in Daybreak Town, Elrena gets an opportunity to think about the nature of regret.
Elrena sighed as she sat down at the edge of the roof. It was a nice secluded spot, just one of many expanses of purplish clay shingles that made up this little causeway of shortcuts, high over the streets below. She stretched out her legs and let her feet dangle, a whole storey up above the overflowing window boxes that poked out from the stone and stucco beneath. After an exhausting mission and an obnoxiously long party meeting, the day was finally over. Behind her, in the distance, the lumbering mechanisms of the central clocktower stirred and chimed out the evening.
“Oh... I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
Elrena turned to see a familiar silhouette lingering nervously near the door to the row of roofs. Fidgeting with her sleeve, Strelitzia seemed flustered to have found the vantage point already occupied.
Elrena just shrugged and motioned for Strelitzia to come over. Strelitzia seemed relieved, and after hesitating for a few seconds, almost tripped over to Elrena and abruptly sat down, as though she thought if she didn’t do it quickly Elrena would somehow change her mind.
Strelitzia rustled about, arranging hair and fabric around her until she was satisfied, then pushed her bangs out of her slightly flushed face and looked up. Elrena followed her gaze. Clouds of smoke from the chimneys of houses were mixing with the rising mists to create a plume of haze over the pink-orange sky, snaking in sheets like an aurora made physical.
“Wow,” Strelitzia murmured, sounding a little out of breath. “Nice night.”
It always looks like morning here as long as the sun’s out, Elrena thought to herself. But somehow Strelitzia’s wonder was quashing her usual need to be contrary.
Instead she grumbled, “It’d better be a nice night after the day we just had.”
Strelitzia smiled a bit shyly, not quite making eye contact. “...Thank you, Elrena. You worked really hard today.”
“What, like you didn’t? That mission was a nightmare, it was all hands on deck.”
“Right, but... I know you don’t like having to work with so many people at once...” Strelitzia’s already pink cheeks darkened. “I m-mean, you’re really strong on your own! B-but I just wanted to say thanks for all your extra effort... D-doing things you don’t like to do...” she trailed off mumbling, her face scarlet.
“Ha!” Elrena kicked back a little, crossing her arms. “Well, you’re right about that. All of those guys are dunces.” She rolled her eyes, out of annoyance and not because she was trying to see in her peripheral vision if Strelitzia had relaxed at all. “If we have to have a full party mission ever again it’ll be too soon.”
“I-it definitely was a lot of work...” Prognosis: still shy, but not as flustered.
Elrena sighed. “Well, what about you? Working in a big group can’t be fun for you either.”
“W-well...” Strelitzia started to pick at the hem of her dress. “I get nervous for sure. But it’s not so bad. E-especially because... I think I’d really like...”
There was a sudden sound of conversation below, as the door to a building across the street opened and a crowd of kids spilled out, all talking over each other. It looked like their party had just gotten out of a meeting, too. The tones of their friendly chatter drifted upwards, words indiscernible by the time it reached the two girls on the roof.
“... I think I’d really like to have more friends.” Strelitzia finished quietly.
Eyes forward, Elrena uncrossed her arms and pretended to brush dirt off her knee. What do you even say to that?
“Are friends... even all they’re cracked up to be?” Probably not that.
Strelitzia was looking at her to continue, though, so Elrena kept digging.
“I mean, what about if your friends turn out to be fake? Or they stop liking you? Or you end up having to say goodbye?” She said it as derisively and dispassionately as possible. “Like... say you had a favourite flavour of ice cream. But then suddenly one day they just didn’t make it anymore, and you could never taste it again. Wouldn’t that be the worst?” Elrena scrunched up her nose. “If that happened to me, I would definitely wish that I had never tasted it in the first place.”
“That... would definitely be heartbreaking...” Strelitzia considered softly as her eyes tracked the Keyblade wielders laughing and milling about below. “But...” She drummed her dangling feet together in thought, and looked back up at the sky.
“...I don’t know. I still think I would choose to try it out in the first place... I think I would rather take a chance and try to have something nice, even if it didn’t work out or it couldn’t last. I...” A slight breeze picked up, and she raised a hand to her cheek to keep her hair out of her face, eyes still trained upwards. Elrena looked up too. The wind was starting to thin out the haze, and if you looked into the darkest, clearest reaches of the sky, you could see a few stars starting to peek through the eternal dawn.
“...I really want to try.” She said it like a decision.
Elrena couldn’t even imagine being so open hearted. She really was an angel. “You really are an angel.”
... She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
That was honestly a bit much. Elrena regretted it as soon as she said it. Ugh, so uncool. Embarrassed, she frowned down at her lap to hide her reddening face. And to make matters worse, Strelitzia was taking a beat too long to respond.
...And then another beat. The silence was now uncomfortable. Jeez, that really was too much. It felt like more than just her pride was at stake now. Flipping through a mental rolodex of ways to save face, Elrena turned to Strelitzia and—
And Strelitzia was just gone. Not sitting there silent, not up and walking away.
There’s no way she could have gotten down so fast. Elrena’s mind worked as she stood in confusion. What...?
A shadow fell over the roof.
Elrena turned back, and looked up.
In the air over the street was a massive white shape. Its form was twisted and confusing, but once Elrena’s brain could make sense of what her eyes were seeing, it looked like a giant stone statue of a hooded woman. Its wings, shedding tendrils like some sort of bird of paradise, reached towards the broiling ceiling of the sky. Since when had it started to storm?
The statue’s stony face moved, opening her mouth to speak, or maybe to scream. There was no sound, though, only a bolt of lightning from the churning sky, crashing down silently and whiting out everything Elrena could feel, hear, see.
She woke up with a start.
*
“Elrena!”
Elrena gasped and struggled, for breath and against her blankets. Once upright, she recognized the dark shapes of her room in the town’s Keyblade wielder dorms.
“Chirithy! What?!”
Thunder boomed outside, and rain lashed the panes and shutters of the windows.
Chirithy disappeared off her bedside table and popped into existence in her lap. “There’s something really scary outside!” they trilled frantically. “Really seriously weird!”
With a long exhale, Elrena took her Chirithy in her arms and slid out of bed. As annoyed and out of sorts as she was — about being woken up and definitely not about any sort of dreams — she knew to take this seriously. There was no way Chirithy could spend so much time around Elrena and then be so scared of a few little lightning bolts. She approached the nearest shutterless window with trepidation.
The sky was dark outside. With the storm, and... something else. An amorphous void of pure black stood out against the gray storm clouds. It was pulsating, moving... attacking. And there were Keyblade wielders attacking back.
The wielders were darting from rooftop to rooftop, the glow of their magic lighting them up against the storm. One of them briefly landed on a roof near the window and Elrena thought she recognized her, that busybody around town who was always stopping fights. Another had a long pennant or scarf trailing out behind them when they jumped, and the third was making almost no stops on the roofs at all, staying high in the sky and conjuring some sort of impossible mass of glowing gold chains.
“It looks like the apocalypse out there,” she said to herself. The attempted joke did not calm her down.
Lightning strikes erupted one after the next, a series of horrible crashes.
And another series of horrible crashes much closer. All of a sudden, there was a frantic pounding at her dorm room door. Yelping, Chirithy vanished out of Elrena’s arms and reappeared on top of her wardrobe. The lock was already set, but Elrena still rushed over to put her hand to the doorknob, as if holding it closed could provide extra security.
A few moments passed, the rage of the wind and the rain the only sounds. Elrena all but pressed her ear to the door.
“... I think it’s that boy Lauriam,” Chirithy finally murmured with consternation. “It seems... it seems like he badly needs help!”
Elrena drew her head back. Lauriam... he was Strelitzia’s brother. The one with the fancy manners and the sly smile. Of course, Elrena had agreed to look for Strelitzia with him, and he had seemed nice enough. But to come to her of all people when he ‘badly needed help’? Elrena wasn’t sure if she wanted that. She had boundaries, after all. And it’s not like he was actually her friend.
Are friends... even all they’re cracked up to be?
She sighed deeply, sagging a little, and tried not to think about ice cream. Then she changed her grip on the doorknob and wrenched open the door.
Lauriam was there, leaning against the hallway wall beside the doorframe and looking like a drowned rat. His hair was plastered against his forehead, his eyes closed and face pale, his snooty faux-distressed vest drenched in rain, and... blood? Elrena stepped out of the threshold in surprise.
Lauriam must have heard her, because he startled as if from sleep. When he stood straight and stepped forward, Elrena could see there was actually a smaller kid, blonde and equally drenched, lying on the hallway floor behind him.
“E-Elrena,” Lauriam said, obviously trying to muster some kind of dignity. “I... I’m sorry to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble.” It most definitely was, but that probably wasn’t pink hair dye in the rainwater running down his temples.
“I’m afraid to say... When I woke up, the tower wasn’t safe... filled with monsters, couldn’t just leave—” he gestured vaguely behind him.
“I-I see,” Elrena lied.
“Chirithy told me where to find you... I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anyone else.”
“It’s totally fine, uh...” she gulped. “Do you... want help moving your friend? And, like, to come in?”
He took a moment, seemingly to steady himself, and nodded with forced grace. Elrena stepped even further out of the doorway and motioned that he should enter the room, which, limping, he did.
Elrena let out one more long, steady sigh, hands on her hips, staring into space in the hallway.
Then she moved forward.
Check out all this extra effort, Strelitzia, she grumbled internally as she bent down to pick up the unconscious little boy. Doing things I don’t like to do.
He was surprisingly light.
Thanks for reading! The title and Elrena’s ice cream analogy are references to Larxene’s story in the Kingdom Hearts Series Character Files book.
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Relationship: Elrena & Strelitzia
Characters: Elrena, Strelitzia, Lauriam
Rating: PG
Content notes: unreality, fantasy violence, implied mild injury
Words: 1,933
Summary: One evening in Daybreak Town, Elrena gets an opportunity to think about the nature of regret.
Elrena sighed as she sat down at the edge of the roof. It was a nice secluded spot, just one of many expanses of purplish clay shingles that made up this little causeway of shortcuts, high over the streets below. She stretched out her legs and let her feet dangle, a whole storey up above the overflowing window boxes that poked out from the stone and stucco beneath. After an exhausting mission and an obnoxiously long party meeting, the day was finally over. Behind her, in the distance, the lumbering mechanisms of the central clocktower stirred and chimed out the evening.
“Oh... I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
Elrena turned to see a familiar silhouette lingering nervously near the door to the row of roofs. Fidgeting with her sleeve, Strelitzia seemed flustered to have found the vantage point already occupied.
Elrena just shrugged and motioned for Strelitzia to come over. Strelitzia seemed relieved, and after hesitating for a few seconds, almost tripped over to Elrena and abruptly sat down, as though she thought if she didn’t do it quickly Elrena would somehow change her mind.
Strelitzia rustled about, arranging hair and fabric around her until she was satisfied, then pushed her bangs out of her slightly flushed face and looked up. Elrena followed her gaze. Clouds of smoke from the chimneys of houses were mixing with the rising mists to create a plume of haze over the pink-orange sky, snaking in sheets like an aurora made physical.
“Wow,” Strelitzia murmured, sounding a little out of breath. “Nice night.”
It always looks like morning here as long as the sun’s out, Elrena thought to herself. But somehow Strelitzia’s wonder was quashing her usual need to be contrary.
Instead she grumbled, “It’d better be a nice night after the day we just had.”
Strelitzia smiled a bit shyly, not quite making eye contact. “...Thank you, Elrena. You worked really hard today.”
“What, like you didn’t? That mission was a nightmare, it was all hands on deck.”
“Right, but... I know you don’t like having to work with so many people at once...” Strelitzia’s already pink cheeks darkened. “I m-mean, you’re really strong on your own! B-but I just wanted to say thanks for all your extra effort... D-doing things you don’t like to do...” she trailed off mumbling, her face scarlet.
“Ha!” Elrena kicked back a little, crossing her arms. “Well, you’re right about that. All of those guys are dunces.” She rolled her eyes, out of annoyance and not because she was trying to see in her peripheral vision if Strelitzia had relaxed at all. “If we have to have a full party mission ever again it’ll be too soon.”
“I-it definitely was a lot of work...” Prognosis: still shy, but not as flustered.
Elrena sighed. “Well, what about you? Working in a big group can’t be fun for you either.”
“W-well...” Strelitzia started to pick at the hem of her dress. “I get nervous for sure. But it’s not so bad. E-especially because... I think I’d really like...”
There was a sudden sound of conversation below, as the door to a building across the street opened and a crowd of kids spilled out, all talking over each other. It looked like their party had just gotten out of a meeting, too. The tones of their friendly chatter drifted upwards, words indiscernible by the time it reached the two girls on the roof.
“... I think I’d really like to have more friends.” Strelitzia finished quietly.
Eyes forward, Elrena uncrossed her arms and pretended to brush dirt off her knee. What do you even say to that?
“Are friends... even all they’re cracked up to be?” Probably not that.
Strelitzia was looking at her to continue, though, so Elrena kept digging.
“I mean, what about if your friends turn out to be fake? Or they stop liking you? Or you end up having to say goodbye?” She said it as derisively and dispassionately as possible. “Like... say you had a favourite flavour of ice cream. But then suddenly one day they just didn’t make it anymore, and you could never taste it again. Wouldn’t that be the worst?” Elrena scrunched up her nose. “If that happened to me, I would definitely wish that I had never tasted it in the first place.”
“That... would definitely be heartbreaking...” Strelitzia considered softly as her eyes tracked the Keyblade wielders laughing and milling about below. “But...” She drummed her dangling feet together in thought, and looked back up at the sky.
“...I don’t know. I still think I would choose to try it out in the first place... I think I would rather take a chance and try to have something nice, even if it didn’t work out or it couldn’t last. I...” A slight breeze picked up, and she raised a hand to her cheek to keep her hair out of her face, eyes still trained upwards. Elrena looked up too. The wind was starting to thin out the haze, and if you looked into the darkest, clearest reaches of the sky, you could see a few stars starting to peek through the eternal dawn.
“...I really want to try.” She said it like a decision.
Elrena couldn’t even imagine being so open hearted. She really was an angel. “You really are an angel.”
... She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
That was honestly a bit much. Elrena regretted it as soon as she said it. Ugh, so uncool. Embarrassed, she frowned down at her lap to hide her reddening face. And to make matters worse, Strelitzia was taking a beat too long to respond.
...And then another beat. The silence was now uncomfortable. Jeez, that really was too much. It felt like more than just her pride was at stake now. Flipping through a mental rolodex of ways to save face, Elrena turned to Strelitzia and—
And Strelitzia was just gone. Not sitting there silent, not up and walking away.
There’s no way she could have gotten down so fast. Elrena’s mind worked as she stood in confusion. What...?
A shadow fell over the roof.
Elrena turned back, and looked up.
In the air over the street was a massive white shape. Its form was twisted and confusing, but once Elrena’s brain could make sense of what her eyes were seeing, it looked like a giant stone statue of a hooded woman. Its wings, shedding tendrils like some sort of bird of paradise, reached towards the broiling ceiling of the sky. Since when had it started to storm?
The statue’s stony face moved, opening her mouth to speak, or maybe to scream. There was no sound, though, only a bolt of lightning from the churning sky, crashing down silently and whiting out everything Elrena could feel, hear, see.
She woke up with a start.
*
“Elrena!”
Elrena gasped and struggled, for breath and against her blankets. Once upright, she recognized the dark shapes of her room in the town’s Keyblade wielder dorms.
“Chirithy! What?!”
Thunder boomed outside, and rain lashed the panes and shutters of the windows.
Chirithy disappeared off her bedside table and popped into existence in her lap. “There’s something really scary outside!” they trilled frantically. “Really seriously weird!”
With a long exhale, Elrena took her Chirithy in her arms and slid out of bed. As annoyed and out of sorts as she was — about being woken up and definitely not about any sort of dreams — she knew to take this seriously. There was no way Chirithy could spend so much time around Elrena and then be so scared of a few little lightning bolts. She approached the nearest shutterless window with trepidation.
The sky was dark outside. With the storm, and... something else. An amorphous void of pure black stood out against the gray storm clouds. It was pulsating, moving... attacking. And there were Keyblade wielders attacking back.
The wielders were darting from rooftop to rooftop, the glow of their magic lighting them up against the storm. One of them briefly landed on a roof near the window and Elrena thought she recognized her, that busybody around town who was always stopping fights. Another had a long pennant or scarf trailing out behind them when they jumped, and the third was making almost no stops on the roofs at all, staying high in the sky and conjuring some sort of impossible mass of glowing gold chains.
“It looks like the apocalypse out there,” she said to herself. The attempted joke did not calm her down.
Lightning strikes erupted one after the next, a series of horrible crashes.
And another series of horrible crashes much closer. All of a sudden, there was a frantic pounding at her dorm room door. Yelping, Chirithy vanished out of Elrena’s arms and reappeared on top of her wardrobe. The lock was already set, but Elrena still rushed over to put her hand to the doorknob, as if holding it closed could provide extra security.
A few moments passed, the rage of the wind and the rain the only sounds. Elrena all but pressed her ear to the door.
“... I think it’s that boy Lauriam,” Chirithy finally murmured with consternation. “It seems... it seems like he badly needs help!”
Elrena drew her head back. Lauriam... he was Strelitzia’s brother. The one with the fancy manners and the sly smile. Of course, Elrena had agreed to look for Strelitzia with him, and he had seemed nice enough. But to come to her of all people when he ‘badly needed help’? Elrena wasn’t sure if she wanted that. She had boundaries, after all. And it’s not like he was actually her friend.
Are friends... even all they’re cracked up to be?
She sighed deeply, sagging a little, and tried not to think about ice cream. Then she changed her grip on the doorknob and wrenched open the door.
Lauriam was there, leaning against the hallway wall beside the doorframe and looking like a drowned rat. His hair was plastered against his forehead, his eyes closed and face pale, his snooty faux-distressed vest drenched in rain, and... blood? Elrena stepped out of the threshold in surprise.
Lauriam must have heard her, because he startled as if from sleep. When he stood straight and stepped forward, Elrena could see there was actually a smaller kid, blonde and equally drenched, lying on the hallway floor behind him.
“E-Elrena,” Lauriam said, obviously trying to muster some kind of dignity. “I... I’m sorry to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble.” It most definitely was, but that probably wasn’t pink hair dye in the rainwater running down his temples.
“I’m afraid to say... When I woke up, the tower wasn’t safe... filled with monsters, couldn’t just leave—” he gestured vaguely behind him.
“I-I see,” Elrena lied.
“Chirithy told me where to find you... I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anyone else.”
“It’s totally fine, uh...” she gulped. “Do you... want help moving your friend? And, like, to come in?”
He took a moment, seemingly to steady himself, and nodded with forced grace. Elrena stepped even further out of the doorway and motioned that he should enter the room, which, limping, he did.
Elrena let out one more long, steady sigh, hands on her hips, staring into space in the hallway.
Then she moved forward.
Check out all this extra effort, Strelitzia, she grumbled internally as she bent down to pick up the unconscious little boy. Doing things I don’t like to do.
He was surprisingly light.
Thanks for reading! The title and Elrena’s ice cream analogy are references to Larxene’s story in the Kingdom Hearts Series Character Files book.
