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Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn	By : RotSeele Category: Kingdom Hearts > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 3168 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. I do not make any money from this story.

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Thirty-Nine - Edge

“How are they?”
Marlene looked up at Tifa as she finished descending the stairs. She smiled. “Still sleeping. It looks like they haven’t gotten any decent rest for a while.”
Tifa finished drying a glass and set it in its place on the shelf nearby and sighed. “I might have been a little rough on them last night.”
Marlene took a seat on a bar stool and folded her arms on the countertop. “Tifa, I’ve known you for a long time. That wasn’t even your worst. It wasn’t even your ‘mom’ voice.”
Tifa smiled at the young woman, unsure if she wanted to feel relieved by Marlene’s words or if she wanted to feel ashamed by them. After she and Barret had run into Kaoru, Kai, and Rinally on the road outside Edge, they had brought them here, to the Seventh Heaven. Once the teenagers had been cornered, so to speak, Tifa and Barret had enlisted the help of Denzel and Marlene to get information out of the three teenagers. They had learned that Kaoru and Kai were both Keyblade wielders, and the two had even proven their statements by summoning Guardian and Sanctuary. The three had been traveling to many different worlds using the Paths of Darkness, the World Between Worlds, and that was how they had ended up so far from Edge in the middle of the wilderness. If Tifa and Barret hadn’t come along when they did, the three of them would have probably camped out that night, surviving on whatever supplies they had between them, until they could continue on.
They still didn’t know what the three of them were doing here. Kaoru admitted that they usually didn’t know until they found some clue that pointed them in a certain direction. They just ended up where they ended up, usually on a world that needed them. Tifa and Barret had been away for a while, so they didn’t know anything about current news, but Denzel and Marlene had said nothing had changed, and there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary going on. After that, Tifa had made a light meal for Kaoru, Kai, and Rin, and then Marlene had shown them the bathroom, where the three had taken turns getting baths. Tifa had gathered up their clothes, giving them spare ones from both Marlene and Denzel’s collection to wear until she had laundered theirs. After that, she had sent them to bed.
They had slept through the night and now through most of the morning. Barret had already left to see if he could contact Reeve, and Denzel had gone to try and talk with Rufus and the Turks.
“If anyone knows anything about what’s going on,” Denzel had said, “it would be them.”
That left Tifa and Marlene with the three teenagers.
“I kind of wish Cloud was here, or at least we could contact him. Him and Sora,” Marlene said, tracing a whorl in the wood of the bar with her fingertips. “They’d know what to do.”
“Cloud’s off doing Cloud-things on Radiant Garden, and Sora is who knows where.” Tifa replied grumpily. Though Cloud had begun to split his time between Radiant Garden and Edge, he still spent a majority of his time at Radiant Garden. She knew why; Cloud had explained it to her once, but she didn’t quite understand it. He’d told her that, when the worlds were destroyed and they were scattered to darkness, his soul had found a home in the body of another Cloud. Two couldn’t exist, and his soul proved the stronger, absorbing that of the other Cloud. It made him part of two worlds, with memories both his own and not, and it had taken some time to come to terms with that. When she had asked him why she hadn’t been affected like he’d been, Cloud had shrugged his shoulders and had said, “Maybe there weren’t two of you.”
If she thought about it, it made sense. After Edge had been destroyed and subsequently remade, her memories hadn’t quite been the same. Nor had the people in her life been the same. People who should have been there weren’t. Or, they were different than how they had been. Yuffie was one such person. Even though she came with Cloud now and then, she looked at Edge like a tourist might. She didn’t remember her life here, among Tifa and the rest. Cid was another one. And seeing Aerith again had thrown Tifa for a long while, considering what had happened to her. It had taken a while for Tifa to rebuild her relationships with them, for she had to make a conscious effort not to override who those people were now with what they had been.
As for Sora... Sora came and went without rhyme or reason, but he always seemed to have the same sixth sense Cloud did about his friends being in danger.
“Maybe I should try to contact Vincent.” Marlene said absently.
“Maybe. He might have a better insight than we do.”
“I’ll see what Dad can turn up with Reeve first, then. Shelke might have some answers too.”
Tifa canted her head to one side in half an acquiescence. Shelke had taken a job with Reeve and his WRO, as her abilities proved her rather influential when it came to gathering data. She still hadn’t changed much since her days in Deepground, but she had become a little more open, especially after she had met, and become friends with, Denzel and Marlene.
Marlene leaned back and stretched. “But I really wonder why they’re here. I mean, we’ve had peace for a long, long time. If anything rears its ugly head, you and Dad and everyone are always right there to stop it.”
“As they said, they end up where they’re meant to end up.”
“But the question is why they end up where they end up.” Marlene twirled around on her stool and jumped to her feet. “I’m gonna go wander around the streets, see if I can hear anything new. Maybe the reason why we haven’t learned anything yet is because nothing’s happened yet.”
“Even still, be careful.” Tifa called after her. Marlene gave her a brilliant smile and a wave, then disappeared out of the Seventh Heaven’s door.
Tifa sighed. She set the newest glass down on the shelf and moved toward door that hid to the staircase that led up to the living quarters. She listened, but she couldn’t hear any movement. Still sleeping then. She returned to the sink and stared at the dishes that still needed to be scrubbed and dried. I don’t like this feeling, Tifa decided. It’s like being keyed up for a battle that isn’t even engaged yet.
“Ah, well,” Tifa said aloud, “I guess we’ll see what happens when it happens. I should probably make some food for them. Teenagers are always hungry.”

Kai quietly shut the bedroom door and silently padded back over to where Kaoru lay, his eyes half open as he stared at the ceiling. Rin sat cross-legged by Kaoru’s feet, her hair pulled back into a tail. Her fingers traced the flower decorations of the barrettes she normally wore, a longing motion. Kai climbed back onto the bed and Kaoru pushed himself up to sit, looking at the redhead in askance.
“She’s making lunch.” Kai replied, his voice low but not quite a whisper. “She seems to be the only one here.”
Kaoru let out a soft sigh. “We’ve stirred up a beehive.”
“I think Tifa and the others are much different than what we’ve encountered so far.” Rin said quietly. “They’re warriors. They’ve been through life-or-death situations before. It doesn’t phase them.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Both Kai and Rin looked at him curiously. Kaoru looked out the window to the city. “When we told them that we end up where we end up, mostly because the world is in danger, they looked shocked. They couldn’t believe that their world could be in danger. What if the world is in danger now because of us?”
His friends were quiet. Then Kai said, “We may be the catalyst, but we’re definitely not the cause.”
Kaoru looked at Kai with a confused expression. Kai shrugged. “Think about it. You’ve always ended up on a world which needs the Keyblade. With Belle, it was to save the Beast from becoming a monster controlled by the Brotherhood. With Pocahontas, it was to stop Ratcliffe and save John and the rest of the people on that world. With Lumina Cross, it was to save me and stop Secundus. We got a break with Twilight Town because it pointed us in Tae’s direction.”
Kaoru gripped Tae’s necklace, which he’d transferred from his headphones to around his own neck. He was afraid of losing it, and it brought him some semblance of comfort to have it with him at all times. His headphones sat nearby on the nightstand. “You got us to Halloween Town.” he pointed out.
Kai nodded. “And we discovered we were fighting the Brotherhood, and what they were up to, because we encountered Hiromu. We also learned where Tae is, and that she’s pretty much protected from whatever the Brotherhood had planned for her, since Hiromu did what he did.”
“And now we ended up here.” Rinally said. “And because we have, people like Tifa are going to be on high alert and looking for trouble where there may not be any. That’s what you’re getting at.”
Kaoru nodded. “What if because we’re here, the Brotherhood moves to another world we can’t get to? Or what if they step up their operations here?”
“What if the sky turns purple and chickens dive bomb the shit out of us?” Kai said. “No matter what we do, someone is always going to be in danger, Kaoru. No matter how hard we try, someone is always going to be hurt. The difference here, now, is that the people we’ve encountered can actually fight. Like Rin said, they’re warriors. They’ve done this shit before. It doesn’t phase them. And, what’s more, they understand what we’re doing. They want to help us.”
Kaoru looked toward Kai, unsure what he was seeing in the redhead’s green eyes. He wasn’t sure how to articulate what he was feeling right now. He wasn’t sure how to tell his friends about his uncertainty, about how he felt as if his presence here was driving the danger closer and closer to the people he cared about. He’d come to terms with what had happened to him in Halloween Town, with Hiromu’s shift in attitude, and with the fact that he and his friends were pretty much all that was standing between the Brotherhood and their goals. Even still, Hiromu’s words haunted him, that events he’d encountered and had participated in just might be his fault. It had been because of him that Gaston had turned into a monster. It had been because of him that Pocahontas’s father had been shot and Kocoum had been killed. While he hadn’t been the one to put the black rod inside of Gaston nor had he been the one to pull the trigger, his presence there had been, as Kai had said, the catalyst.
And if they were the catalyst here, who else would get hurt because of him? Would Tifa get hurt? Marlene? Denzel? Barret? Anyone they cared about?
“Are you okay, Kaoru?” Rinally asked, studying his face. “You’ve never wondered about things like this before. You’ve always known what we have to do in order to save the world and its people. You’ve never second-guessed yourself and you’ve never blamed yourself, or us, for anything we’ve encountered before.”
Kaoru looked at her, unable to find the words he desperately needed. He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug.
“Is this about Hiromu again?”
Kaoru looked at Kai and shook his head. “No, not about Hiromu. It’s not about what we have to do or what we need to do to protect this world and others from whatever it is the Brotherhood is after. It’s...” he paused, words failing him again. Unable to find the right words, he lifted his shoulders again in a shrug.
Kai reached out and wrapped his arm around Kaoru’s neck. He pulled the blonde close to him, pressing their foreheads together so they were staring right into each other’s eyes. “Like I said, dive-bombing chickens. Remember what you told me about choice, Kaoru? That’s what’s happening here. If things start to go bad, we’re right here to stop it, and we’re not alone this time.”
“I don’t want to get anyone hurt.” Kaoru whispered softly.
“The only way anyone will get hurt is if you’re not there to protect them.” Kai said just as softly.
Kaoru stared into Kai’s eyes for a long time before he nodded. He pulled back as soon as Kai released him. Kai sat back as well, though his eyes never left Kaoru.
Rin reached up to clip her barrettes back into her hair and said, “The problem is, I think, is that we’re being purely reactionary. The Brotherhood moves and we move to put them in check. We don’t have any advantages, save for what our skills and your Keyblades give us. So until we get more information, we can only sit tight and wait.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the door, and then a polite rap of the knuckles came before Tifa opened the door and stuck her head in. She didn’t seem quite surprised to see the three of them awake, though her eyes roamed over them as if she were assessing them. “Are you three hungry?” Tifa asked. “Oh, and I have your clothes.” She set them on the table just inside the door. “I’ll leave them here. When you’re ready, come on downstairs.”
She closed the door and they heard her footsteps retreating.
Rinally slid off the bed and walked to the table, retrieving her clothes first. “I’ll see you two downstairs.” She left the room, closed the door behind her, and walked down the hall.
Kai didn’t move. Neither did Kaoru. The two simply looked at each other, now that they were alone. Kaoru wondered if he could get away with sliding off the bed without provoking Kai somehow. Ever since awakening his Black Knight mode, Kai seemed to have become more sensitive to Kaoru’s shifts in moods. Of course, Kaoru hadn’t been acting himself since Halloween Town, and they all knew it. Now, with his words still fresh between them, Kai was even more focused on Kaoru than before.
Finally, Kai spoke. “Can you summon Guardian?”
“What?” Kaoru asked, startled.
“Can you summon Guardian?”
Unsure what his friend was getting at, Kaoru held out his hand. His gold and silver Keyblade materialized in the air between them, and Kaoru curled his fingers around Guardian’s hilt, holding tight to the Keyblade. Kai looked at the Keyblade, studying each whorl and twirl and inch of the Keyblade’s length. Then Kai reached out and placed his hand over Kaoru’s, trapping his hand against Guardian’s hilt. He pushed himself to his knees, where he could loom slightly over Kaoru, which forced Kaoru to look up at him, and he used that new leverage to push Guardian closer to Kaoru’s chest. It also brought them closer together, so much so that Kaoru had to brace himself with his free hand to keep from being pushed onto his back.
“Kai?” Kaoru questioned softly.
“If you, in your heart, weren’t confident in what you were to do here, Guardian wouldn’t have come to your hand.” Kai replied. “I know how confused you are, how scared you are. Believe me, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt because of me or because of anything I might start, whether I know I started it or not. But I also couldn’t live with myself if I was too scared or too confused that I became completely frozen and useless and people died because of it.”
Kaoru’s mouth worked but no sound came out. Guardian vanished in a burst of light, leaving his hand tightly curled within Kai’s. Kai loosened his hold only to twine his fingers with Kaoru’s, holding their joined hands up between them.
“I know you’re raw and vulnerable right now. You’ve seen things that disturbed you on a deep, deep level. And then with Hiromu...” Kai trailed off, his eyes blazing gold for a moment before returning to their natural green. “Then with him, being betrayed like that opened a wound in your heart that is desperately trying to heal, but doubt is creeping in, keeping that wound open.”
“I told you I wouldn’t hesitate.” Kaoru whispered.
“No, you won’t. Not in battle. But you might before battle’s engaged. That’s what your doubt is about. Why you’re asking these questions. I told you before, none of this is your fault. You didn’t cause any of this. They chose. You choose to stand against them. And if you choose not to, you know what happens.”
Kaoru nodded, looking down at his and Kai’s twined fingers. “How did you deal with it? I mean, before you and I met?”
“You mean after my parents died?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought about nothing but getting revenge. Of killing Secundus. I blamed him for everything. But I also blamed myself. What if I had worked just a little harder to help my parents? What if I had just gotten a little more for them to eat, or, what if I had gotten just a little more medicine? But you can’t think about what if’s and you can’t think about what you could have done. You have to look at what you can do, now and in the future, and look at what you have that you want to protect, and do all you can to keep it safe.” Kai closed his eyes and let out a long sigh before reopening them. “That doesn’t mean I still don’t think about it on occasion, and it doesn’t mean I still don’t blame myself at times. That’s human. It’s normal. But if you accept that what happened happened, and that at that particular time, there was nothing else that could have been done differently, then it hurts less.”
“Does it every go away?”
“What?”
“The hurt.”
“Not that I know of, yet. But I’m willing to find out. If you’re willing to find out with me.”
Kaoru looked into Kai’s eyes and finally offered a little bit of a smile. “Are you saying you’re going to try to catch me if I start to fall?”
Kai returned the smile with a quirk of his mouth. “Not try. I will catch you. And I know you’ll catch me.” Then, after a moment’s visible hesitation, he dipped his head and pressed his lips to Kaoru’s.
At first, Kaoru wasn’t sure what to do. Kai had hinted before at attempting a move like this, but he hadn’t gone through with it. Now, though, he seemed to have gotten the confidence to go through with it. Kaoru had never kissed anyone before - not on the lips anyway - and it was an entirely new experience for him. When it seemed like Kai was going to pull away, Kaoru leaned into Kai’s mouth, trying to kiss him back. Something akin to a chuckle escaped Kai and his free hand cupped the back of Kaoru’s head, allowing the kiss to become deeper.
How long they kissed, Kaoru wasn’t sure, but then Kai at last pulled back and said, “Breathe, Kaoru.”
Kaoru inhaled deeply. His cheeks felt hot. Kai was smiling, looking incredibly pleased with himself. “How did you learn to kiss like that?” Kaoru asked.
Kai’s green eyes glinted with amusement. “You’re the first one I’ve ever kissed. So, maybe, it’s just instinct. I can tell I’m the first one you’ve ever kissed as well.”
Kaoru flushed redder.
“So. You want breakfast?”
Kaoru gave Kai a playful shove and followed him off the bed, each boy grabbing their clothes to change and then head downstairs where Rin was sitting at the bar, already digging into a plate of eggs, toast, bacon, and fried potatoes. Rinally looked up at them as they entered, a single eyebrow raising. Kai pointedly ignored her as he sat down and began to dig into his own plate, but Kaoru couldn’t keep the blush from his cheeks as she turned her gaze to him. Her eyebrow rose higher and Kaoru knew that, as soon as they were alone, Rin would press him for details. So he sat beside Kai and grabbed his fork, pointedly focusing his gaze on the fluffy pile of eggs before him.
Rin turned back to her own plate, but not before she gave Kaoru a knowing smile.
“How is it?” Tifa asked.
“It’s good.” Rinally answered. “Best thing I’ve had to eat in a while.”
Kai made a noncommittal noise and pushed his potatoes around his plate with his fork.
Tifa glanced at him, tilted her head slightly, but smiled after a moment. “I’ve been taking care of kids like you for a long time. It’s been a while, though, since I’ve had teenagers around.”
“Where did everyone go?” Kaoru asked.
“They went to talk with some of our other friends and see if they’ve noticed anything strange. If you want information, then they’re the ones to be talking to.” Tifa glanced at the clock that hung on the wall behind the bar. “They should be back soon, and then we can figure out our next course of action.”
“Our?”
Tifa smiled at Kaoru. “I’ve been in the fighting business for a long time now. So have the rest of my friends. When our world comes under attack, whether from outsiders or from within, we won’t stand by and let it happen. And we won’t let you fight on your own.”
Kaoru focused on Tifa and frowned. “What if you can’t fight against whatever it is?”
Tifa’s eyes slightly hardened. “Then we fight anyway. There is nothing in all the worlds that can’t be overcome, whether by intelligence or the right application of force. Even if everything looks hopeless, as long as you have hope here, in your heart, then it’s not really hopeless now, is it?” She moved closer to Kaoru and leaned on the counter, her face close to his in a manner that reminded him of his mother, how she would lean close and stare into his eyes, as if she was trying to figure out if he was lying to her or not. “The worst thing you can do is to do nothing. You have the power to save lives, to save worlds, and to not use it would be the worst abuse of it. If you aren’t willing to stand between the weak and the strong as a protector and defender, then what’s the point of having the power?”
She gently laid her hand on Kaoru’s blonde hair, ruffled it a bit, then moved away from the bar and headed around into the dining area to greet a few guests that had entered the Seventh Heaven.
Kaoru stared at the breakfast in front of him and idly pushed around his eggs with his fork. Hope. That was where power really came from, wasn’t it? As long as he had hope, then he couldn’t be defeated, no matter what happened. Suddenly he understood what had kept Kai going throughout the long years after his parents had died and the day he met Kaoru. Kai had held onto the scrap of hope that he would one day get revenge against Secundus. That had been what had kept him going. And Rinally too. She had hope that, one day, she would be reunited with her family. Kaoru himself had had hope that he would one day find Hiromu and Tae, and that they would travel together in one big group. That hope had been destroyed in Halloween Town, when Hiromu had tried to kill him. There was a wound in his heart, left gaping by the absence of the hope he’d held onto for months.
He was sure Kai and Rin and Tifa had had their own moments of hopelessness, but they had never given up. They had continued on, holding on to something that told them it would be just fine if they kept moving forward. He’d stopped believing in everything he’d hoped. He’d stopped believing that everything would work out in the end and everything would be okay. He’d given up. But how could he give up now, after coming so far? How could he give up hope now? Hiromu and Tae were alive. The hope that they would still be together one day was still alive. And there were so many other hopes now that Kaoru realized he had, and he felt something in his heart shift, as if it was a puzzle piece sliding into its proper place. It still hurt, but it hurt just a little less now.
He noticed both Kai and Rinally watching him. He looked first at Kai - his friend, his opposite, someone he loved - and then to Rinally - his first companion, his best friend, someone who he cared about - and smiled. Strangers before, but now his friends, and the undeniable source of his power, for it was they who gave him that hope.
Rinally smiled back. “I like that look in your eyes, Kaoru. I missed seeing that.”
Kai’s lips twitched into a lazy, satisfied smile. He didn’t need to say anything, for he had said it all already. No matter what, if Kaoru started to fall, Kai would catch him. Then he pointedly looked at Kaoru’s plate and said, “Eat.”
Kaoru laughed softly and obeyed.
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Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn