Chapter Text
It was strange, getting a call to clear out Heartless and not immediately handing it over to one of the Keybearers. (Even though he was one of them now, it was still hard for Lea to think of “the Keybearers” as anyone but Roxas and Xion.) But as he knew very well from experience, Radiant Garden’s basement was nowhere for kids to be running helter skelter.
And he had his suspicions about why Even and Ienzo were even asking. But it was true that the castle had a Heartless problem, and part of the reason why the Restoration Committee had never really made it a base of operations before the Organization’s return seemed to have to do with the Heartless always frustrating their efforts. The Nobodies that still followed Even appeared to do better, but as always, it was only a matter of time before a place got so choked that a Keybearer had to tap in.
Lea, of course, almost didn’t go.
It would have been really entertaining to watch them try to ask Riku instead (but there was an unfortunately non-zero chance he’d actually do it; he was starting to take after Sora in some surprising ways), or better, one of the others Lea didn’t know all that well.
But it so happened he had a very personal reason for exploring those dungeons after all.
“What took you so long?” Even griped as soon as he emerged from them, and Ienzo must have been sharpening his filthy looks because the one he shot Even reminded Lea instantly of Zexion.
“Thanks for your help,” Ienzo said, moving like he might step past Lea, but Lea held up a hand.
“I got it.” Turning, he pointed the Keyblade at the opening that led down into the bowels of Radiant Garden, locking the basement door firmly behind him. (Offhand, he wasn’t sure if that would keep the password from working--he certainly wasn’t very good at the Keyblade yet. But he hoped so.)
Ienzo looked totally at ease with this, and Even’s expression had turned into one of intense consternation that Lea enjoyed seeing. “Can we count on you in the future?” Ienzo asked.
Lea dismissed the Keyblade to scratch his head with a thoughtful hum. “I guess. All things considered, it’s not like I want this place to get overrun again.”
He let his gaze slip away from them before they could see the dying hope there, but he wasn’t completely sure he was successful. “Of course,” Ienzo said softly.
Has there been anything? Lea almost asked. But he already knew the answer, and he wasn’t going to put himself through that with Even standing right there. “I have some questions for you, actually,” he said, mastering himself and gesturing back at the stairs. “Let’s talk somewhere else.”
“Oh,” Ienzo said, and Lea saw that one visible eye dart in Even’s direction and back. “Yes. Please follow me, then.”
Even had arched an eyebrow, but said nothing as Ienzo led Lea back up to Ansem’s old computer.
“A girl?” Ienzo was saying doubtfully moments later, nonetheless already typing in a few keywords to search Ansem’s database.
“She would’ve stood out,” Lea said. “Like, pretty literally. Think glowing in the dark.”
Ienzo frowned. “I…” he started, and then looked down at the keys. “I don’t...remember. There were so many.”
There was a haunted note in his voice, and Lea felt a stab of empathy he didn’t really want to feel. But Ienzo’s emotional state wasn’t his to regulate. “Focus,” he said, just like he might’ve said to Roxas in a similar circumstance. “It’s only about her right now. And don’t worry about anything this late,” he added, making a dismissive gesture at the screen. “She’d disappeared by the time Isa and I joined up, so whatever you’ve got would’ve been earlier.”
Ienzo hesitated, then obeyed, adjusting his search results to get older archives. “...I want to help, but who is she? Why are you searching for her?”
“None of your business is who,” Lea said, crossing his arms and leaning one hip against the edge of the console. “She’s...probably long gone by now,” he admitted then in a low voice, and hating himself for it. There was no reason to betray this much to Ienzo, and yet he couldn’t leave it unsaid. “The least I can do is find out who she was .”
“The Keybearer?” came a voice from behind them, and both of them turned to find Even giving the console an analytical stare. “Well, you won’t find her anywhere in there.”
Lea was almost moved to round on him, but it was easier to slip back into Axel’s oiled performance around his former colleagues. “And why’s that?” he asked instead, poisonously.
“Because,” Even said, approaching and shooing Ienzo away from the computer as if he were a child tinkering with something important. “All those files were deleted long ago. Not only due to our master,” he added with a touch of chagrin Lea couldn’t be certain was real; “but someone else. One of our own,” he added, manipulating the display so that blinking red text highlighted the former locations of the missing files and a scan running in the corner consistently turned up no data.
“Xemnas?” Lea guessed.
“Quite likely,” Even said with venom.
Ienzo, who had resentfully abandoned the console when pressed, took a step closer with a hum of interest. “But we haven’t been using any of this space. If the data hasn’t been overwritten, it might still be in there somewhere. In fact, even if it has been, we could still recover some partial files.” He turned Lea’s way. “I’ll have my friend in Twilight Town take a look.”
“The hell you will,” Lea snapped. “Pence is a kid. No way are you letting him muck through your human experimentation homework.”
Ienzo looked a little offended. “I wasn’t going to encourage him to look,” he said.
“Have you met Pence?”
“Besides,” Ienzo persisted, scowling; “I was younger than he was when--”
“Yeah, and you turned out just fine, ” Lea drawled sarcastically. “Listen man, one of these days you’re gonna have to accept that your upbringing? Was not typica--hey, what?” Lea cut himself off, giving Even a startled look.
The elder scientist was still poking around in the files, murmuring to himself distractedly all through their argument. At Lea’s question, he turned to give Lea the flat expression of a philosopher who had just watched his train of thought careen from a hillside. “Yes?”
“What’d you just say about Saix, ” Lea pressed. In a way it burned to still be using that name for him after everything, but Lea had also been forced to acknowledge that the Nobodyhood that lingered up until Isa’s death still defined him to the others. (And, anyway, it was more important to get into Even’s head than correct him.)
“Ah. I was only wondering whatever interested him in the fate of this particular Keybearer,” Even said, turning obliviously away from Lea’s rapidly darkening expression. “She became something of a curiosity to Xemnas’s Heartless for a time, but evidently he had more pressing concerns.”
“Well gee, I don’t know--but it’s probably got somethin’ to do with the fact that she’s the reason he joined the Organization in the first place, ” Lea half-shouted, shaking a splayed hand in frustration. “The whole point was to find out what happened to her after you assholes--”
“Is that so?” Even asked, touching his chin and looking at Lea with new eyes. “Impressive dedication. It’s a terrible shame about him really, we had our differences of course but he would have made a fine researcher, I should have let him participate years ago--”
“Don’t you fucking dare even talk about him like--”
“LEA--Lea--Lea calm down,” Ienzo got out in a rush, stepping in to block Lea off from physically crushing Even’s windpipe into silence with his bare hands. “It’s not worth it.”
“Yes. It. Is,” Lea got out through clenched teeth, even if he didn’t seem to fight Ienzo’s grip.
“That may be,” Ienzo conceded, “but we have nothing if the computer doesn’t survive the fight. Even, can’t you go bother someone else for now?” he added in an arch tone, glaring over his shoulder.
Even was cowering, which was probably the only reason Lea didn’t ignore Ienzo’s intervention. (Also because he didn’t know exactly how he felt about watching Even’s life flash before his eyes like that.) But at Ienzo’s jab, he straightened haughtily and scowled. “Oh come now, be serious! You already reap the benefits of his work, how can you deny me a word of praise on his behalf?”
“Even! ” Ienzo shouted, pulling away from Lea to round on him instead.
It was good timing, since Lea was about to throw Ienzo off if he didn’t let go. As it was, he took a stalking step closer that made both of them back off, Ienzo’s hands in the air. “What the hell does that even mean?!”
Even at least seemed to be starting to get the message that he’d gone too far (not that it ever stopped him), so his voice was more timid; “The Replicas, you d--Lea.”
It was amazing how every single word out of that man’s mouth pushed Lea to a still higher tier of rage. “If you’re suggesting right now Isa was responsible for--”
“He was!” Ienzo and Even chorused as one.
Lea stared at them both in a menacing but slightly off-kilter way, as if he were questioning reality at the same time that he was deeply considering a double murder.
“Didn’t Roxas tell you?” Ienzo asked then.
And Lea sensed he was bringing a familiar name into this to lend legitimacy to whatever deliberately offensive nonsense Even was spewing now, but it carried the weight of truth with it. With great effort, Lea took a deep breath and buried as much of his fury as he could stand. “Didn’t Roxas tell me what,” he spat.
“That it was all Sa--Isa’s idea,” Ienzo corrected himself, shooting Even a quick sidelong look. “It was always his plan to bring Roxas back.”
“Indeed. Who do you think convinced me to rejoin the Organization in the first place?” Even asked with a wave of his hand. “Xion was, of course, unexpected. But we made arrangements.”
The world seemed to lurch in front of Lea’s eyes. That...wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. He’d braced himself for some difficult truth (or bald-faced lie) about Isa’s involvement in Xion’s original creation and all the trauma that had resulted from that. It was the first and only context in which he could connect the totally separate concepts of “Isa” and “Replicas,” but now Even (and Ienzo, too??) was somehow asking him to unite them in a new way. A mistaken way. A way that made no sense.
“He w... he’s the reason why you joined?” he got out first, incredulously. “Why would you ever listen to him?!”
Even’s lips pressed into a thin line, and Ienzo took a halting step forward. “It was complicated. But--”
“No don’t you shield him from this!” Lea shouted, pointing Ienzo’s way accusingly. “I’m not gonna let either of you lie to my face about Isa and get away with it. So why?!”
There was a silence.
“Isa,” Even said finally, “gave me hope of only one thing. The way he saw it, it was too late to expect redemption or forgiveness.” His eyes narrowed, as if sensing the objections already piling up behind Lea’s lips. “And for me, that is true. But that left the only option besides self-destruction: Reversing course. Atonement. Isa devised a way to get it using the only means available to him, but he knew the likeliest means of restoring Roxas was through a Replica. And so, he sought out my expertise,” he said, gesturing with one of the hands buried in his sweeping sleeves. Then, scowling; “ Does that clarify.”
His anger had been so strong just a moment ago, but now Lea knew the instant it ran out, he might collapse. He had to get out in front of it before it did.
“You were going to tell me this when,” he asked with the trembling dregs of it, pinching the bridge of his nose to disguise his wave of anguish.
Even scoffed. “I see absolutely no reason why he couldn’t have told you himself ,” he said imperiously, and at last withdrew with the nervous, hesitating manner of a rabbit checking behind it for the fox on its trail.
Lea made no attempt at pursuit except with the narrowed jade slivers of his eyes, weighing the sheer unbelievability of these claims against the possibility that Isa had been using that against Xemnas the entire time.
He’d thought it was odd. The way Isa had talked about wanting all that power…it just made no sense. Not if this was all about her.
Lea became conscious of Ienzo still hovering in the moment before Ienzo spoke. “I know how it sounds, Lea, but he’s telling the truth--”
Lea cut him off with a raised hand. “Got it. Thanks. Pleasure working with you as always,” he said shortly, turning that gesture into a dismissive wave as he turned to make his way out of the castle while his composure still held.
Ienzo didn’t reply until Lea was almost out of the room. “What about the girl?”
Pausing, Lea rested a hand on the doorjamb, feeling his heart stretch uncomfortably between two distant points in a frustratingly familiar way. Roxas or Xion. Isa or their friend. Lea’s new friends or his old. Just once, he wished he could make a choice that didn’t deprive him of one or both of the things on the line. “I’ll be back about the girl,” he promised, and left the room without looking back.
---
Isa hadn’t wanted him to know.
After the encounter with Even and Ienzo, plus the one with Roxas and Xion that was only slightly more fun, Lea couldn’t draw any other rational conclusion. They’d thought he knew , that the conversation he alluded to between him and Isa on the clock tower somehow involved it, because why wouldn’t it? How hadn’t it? Lea had thought through it, again and again, until he was no longer sure he remembered his side or Isa’s faithfully. If there’d been a hesitation here, a pointed glance there, or it was all just Lea’s imagination trying to fill in the blanks after the fact. Because this meant Isa’d lied to him--lied without Lea catching him--and that only turned all Lea’s impressions of their time in the Organization even more nastily askew.
What else had he missed? The only person who could tell him was long, long gone.
Other than Even and Demyx, who was apparently also in collusion with Isa against all odds (Lea forgot whatever he was calling himself these days regardless), none of the others had turned up yet. It wasn’t a reason to give up hope, as Riku had insisted to him when Lea made some pessimistic comment about it--and Lea knew how deep Riku’s need to believe that really went. After all, Lea hadn’t expected to see faces like Ienzo’s ever again. He could wait a year, if that’s what it took. Hell, he could wait ten.
But right now, he needed a direction to point his search. Castle Oblivion was completely emptied out, Lea’d seen to that himself, so the only logical place to go was home sweet Fortress of Fuck-All.
(That’s how Lea justified it to himself, anyway.)
The Dream Realm where the World That Never Was slept (what a sentence, what was his life now?) hadn’t always been kind to his sense of scale, but Lea stepped out of his portal at his full height and glanced down at himself with a sigh of relief. Did it feel kind of icky showing up in his coat like old times? Yeah, yeah it did--and he knew the new duds were supposed to protect just as well, but in the neon dark that still felt like it could instantly be choked with Dusks or worse, it would’ve been like walking in naked. Lea felt exposed enough as it was under the beacon of his hair, stemming an urge to tug his hood over his head that was almost alien in its intensity.
Then he saw he wasn’t alone, and he didn’t hesitate.
They hadn’t seen him yet; at first Lea thought it was Xion, but realized his scale was off and they were too tall for that. Demyx? He only caught their hooded profile for an instant before they made a left past the skyscraper with the crashed truck and pressed on, unconcernedly crossing a road that had fragmented at some point in the past and now hung together in pieces; a memory of itself.
Lea followed at a careful distance, not risking any portals in case the stranger heard them, and making an irritated, dismissive gesture to send his Assassins after the Heartless that unwisely decided to impede his day. (It was still gratifying to find the things still listened to him from time to time, especially all the way out here.)
The closer he got, the more certain he became.
No Organization member drew a weapon they weren’t preparing to use, and in this respect Lea had not changed. He waited until she had wandered all the way to the end of the line, assessing the pit under the castle that had long ago retracted its humming drawbridge, before he called it in a swirl of flames and a clink of steel that made her flinch.
“Evening, Larxene.” The weight distribution on the Keyblade had been an adjustment, but Lea toyed with it just as readily as he had his chakrams, dangling it from his fingers like a frisbee he was preparing to throw. “What brings you all the way out here?”
She’d whirled to face him, fists clenched, and she took a step back with a crackle of fragmenting stone and a telling glance behind her at the void. “Who are you.”
Lea’s unseen eyebrows snapped into a frown. A coat like that, but… not Xion or Larxene? Had Master Aqua decided t--no, she might not be his biggest fan, but he’d be getting a dressing down already if this were her. Puzzled, Lea found himself actively counting through members on his free hand; had he forgotten one? Was there someone who’d joined up for a minute and gotten killed in ignominious fashion basically immediately? That just put him back at Larxene again--
“Answer me, ” she said sharply, and Lea was hit all over again by the fact that he knew her voice from somewhere.
“Ohhh~, okay--yeah, no, I don’t think I will,” Lea said, shifting his grip on the Keyblade meaningfully. “Suspicious stranger in one of those coats skulking around here? Pass. If you’re out here looking for Xemnas you’re outta luck.”
He could feel the disdain in the expression he couldn’t make out under her hood. “Who?”
Lea was briefly stymied. “Xemn--Ansem? Xehanort? Any of this ringing a bell?”
The stranger didn’t answer for a long moment. Then--
“As it happens…” To Lea’s mute surprise, a Keyblade flashed into her hand in turn; it resembled something he’d seen in Sora’s hand before, but otherwise he couldn’t place it. “Yes. I am looking for a Xehanort.”
“For what purpose?”
She took a step to her left and Lea mirrored her with one to his right at almost exactly the same time.
“That depends on what he tells me when I find him.”
Lea clicked his tongue. “Gonna hafta disappoint you on that one too, then.”
Another step.
“I would prefer not to fight another Keybearer,” she said, shifting both hands to grasp the handle of her Keyblade. “But if I don’t have a choice, I will.”
Lea shrugged with false levity. “Tell me where you got that coat, and we don’t have to fight.”
She hesitated, and for a moment he thought she would.
But then her stance closed up again. “I don’t owe you that.”
“Guess we’ll do this the hard way.”
He strafed and she dove, closing the distance before he had the opportunity to pepper her with an introductory blaze, and Lea redirected her strike and got inside her guard with a kick that was compensating for his missing chakram. She gave ground, and before she could rush him again he vaulted over her, firing down on her as he twisted in a flip overhead--but to his surprise she was stepping clear of his range in nearly the same moment that he aimed, and he almost didn’t dodge the retaliating strike that predicted where he would land.
She’s fast, he thought with momentary concern.
Her blade scraped his in the next blow and Lea risked lashing out at her with a hastily summoned Flame; it struck the brilliant edge of a barrier and spun away back to the ether, and her ice spell sliced past his cheek, leaving a cut in his hood. He leapt away and she pursued; she closed in and he dodged. Her style was all Roxas, relentless power with the speed to match, but she lacked his recklessness--like Lea, she was careful. Her precision betrayed an unspoken self-reliance, the individual certainty that they would be the only ones to bandage their own wounds when this was over.
That, and the more she evaded his airborne strikes, the more he wondered. “Who taught you to fight?” he asked when they were close enough, the star at the edge of her blade caught on the curling flames at his.
“I don’t like to talk about it.” She dropped and took his legs out from under him with a sweep.
Lea made a squished noise, catching himself on his free hand and springing clear of the following overhead swing. As she straightened and a silky fan of hair tumbled free of her hood, he noticed something.
“What th--?”
She was on top of him before he had a chance to finish his thought and Lea gave ground in a defensive rush-- “Wait!” --felt his last step sink through thin air--looked behind him into the void--pinwheeled--
Just as his weight shifted past the point of no return, she caught him by the trappings of his coat and held him on the precipice, Keyblade pointed at his chest. “ Yield. ”
Lea let the Keyblade tumble from his fingers and didn’t lower his hands, hardly daring to believe it, but there it was. He hadn’t been able to pick it up under the hood until he got this close, but the hair at her collar was more obvious--resting against her coat and despite its dark color, it was glowing with a faint light.
“X?”
Her panting stopped with a gasp. She pointed the Keyblade away from him, tugging him more firmly onto the edge as she stepped back and let him go. Then she wrenched down her hood in a quick, forceful gesture, fixing him with startled but narrowed honey-brown eyes.
Lea did the same as though in a daze, with a feeling like his shaking hands were moving through molasses. They both stared at each other in search of something to recognize, and she seemed to realize at the same time as he did that they wouldn’t find it.
“Which--”
“It’s me,” Lea said, holding up his hands again appeasingly and suddenly feeling fifteen years old and possessed of all the grace of an ox. “Uh. Lea. Got it…memorized?”
“Lea? ”
She stared for so long he started to doubt. “It is X, right?” he said, regretting it a little when that made an expression he couldn’t read twitch across her face.
“Yeah, it’s me. I go by Skuld now, though.” Awkwardly, she tucked her hair behind one ear and Lea caught a twinkle of pink at the lobe.
“Oh,” he said, not sure how to take that. I go by Axel sometimes, he almost said, like it mattered or something. “Is that--your, y’know, your real name? You remembered it?”
Her shoulders jerked up and back down, quick and dismissive. “I remembered a lot of things.”
“Ah.” Man, what was he doing here? He was the wrong person for this, and Lea felt that keenly. Was this how Isa felt, helping Xion? Don’t think about that, he chided himself quickly. “Well, I…I-I mean, sorry, if I’d known it was you…”
Skuld held up a hand in an awkward way, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “Don’t cry.”
Lea sputtered indignantly. “Wh--how about you don’t--shut up!”
Skuld blinked.
And Lea began to worry about her. “Sorry, look, I, listen--sorry--why were you looking for Xehanort? He’s not exactly around like I said, but maybe--”
“Where’s Isa?”
Lea’s teeth clicked together. He stared at the reflection of a neon light in a puddle without seeing it.
“Oh,” Skuld said, heavily.
“Yeah,” Lea said, too quickly; “but maybe it’s not too late. He’ll want to, uh, say hi, if…” Lea’s eyebrows knit in confusion again. “I don’t exactly know what you’re up to these days.”
“I came looking for you,” Skuld said. Her hand was still up, and as she took a halting step closer, he realized it wasn’t a placating gesture but an offer.
He reached out in turn, and his fingers threaded through hers and brought their palms together before he consciously knew he was going to do that.
Hello.
Just like that, her eyes filled with tears. “It is you,” she whispered past a lump in her throat.
Lea scoffed against the feel of his own throat closing up, fighting the upturn of his eyebrows and the blur in his eyes. “Isa should be here for this,” he got out before he could think too hard about it.
Skuld nodded once. “I know. But sometimes…” He felt her fingers tremble. “Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, y-you know?”
Fuck. There was an appeal in her eyes, a search for a safe place to land that Lea hadn’t expected her to seek from him. Not… him , and not now , the person he was, instead of the person he used to be.
Never had been able to turn away a stray.
But she dropped her gaze in the moment he parted his lips, and the vulnerable girl from the basement disappeared into the self-reasserting sigh from the grown woman still clutching the weapon that could have killed him. “How’d you pick up a Keyblade?”
Lea reluctantly honored Skuld’s bid to reclaim her hand, knowing he’d missed some kind of cue he couldn’t name. Probably something Isa would’ve picked up on, if he were here.
“Oh, man,” Lea said, and rubbed his temple. “There’s…so. There’s a lotta ridiculous bullshit to catch you up on,” he groused, avoiding her eyes so she wouldn’t see the past in his. “Like, a lot . We really oughtta do it over ice cream,” he added, and his gaze flickered back her way then, eyebrow crooked in a question.
Skuld’s expression relaxed into a smile, and she blinked twice, fast. “I’d like that,” she said quietly.
---
It felt like a betrayal in a weird way, but Lea didn’t invite her to the clock tower. Not yet. There was just too much chance of running into Roxas and Xion there, or the rest of the Twilight Town gang, all of whom would have a lot of questions and none of whom were likely to set Skuld at ease.
Especially once he understood more about her.
“My memories just…all came back, at once, a while ago,” she explained, cupping her hands around the stick of her ice cream from where they leaned against the bailey’s windowsill. “I’m not sure what happened. But that’s when I knew I couldn’t stay. Luxu didn’t want to let me go, so I fought him, and ran.”
Lea had listened quietly, not pressing her too hard for details on her brief sketch of a life on the move, with this mysterious (asshole) Luxu guiding her from one world on the fun patrol to the next, but at this he sucked in a breath like he might speak--and didn’t, only letting out a soft “Mmh.” At her questioning look, he shook his head. “I just…it’s just. Uncanny. Isa and I were…the situation we were in was a lot like that.”
The silence stretched.
“What happened to him?”
Lea scratched his temple with his free hand.
“I know it wasn’t good,” Skuld said reluctantly, offering. “That’s probably enough.”
“No,” Lea said with an inhale that hissed against his teeth. “You deserve to know, but…y’know, it’s kind of a long story, and I should start at the beginning.” His half-eaten ice cream passed from one hand to the other, and back. “We, uh…”
Skuld waited. When Lea glanced over at her expression, it was full of open curiosity, but she sensed the tension even before he got the words out.
“We joined up with Ansem’s team, after…after you disappeared.”
He couldn’t fail to see the horror that flickered across her face. “You what?”
“No no! Not--we were trying to find you,” he said quickly, turning more fully and pushing away from the sill. “We thought maybe…” He shook his head, waving a hand irritably. “It doesn’t matter what we thought, we were stupid kids and it didn’t work. It turns out that Xehanort guy was building a cult, and we were the first ‘volunteers.’ Kept trying, though. This ‘Luxu’ guy must’ve really covered your tracks, Xemn--Xehanort literally never brought it up again.”
Skuld was still staring, and Lea cast about for something to say.
“Um. Do you like it? It’s kind of an acquired taste, the whole ‘sea salt’ gimmick--”
“You were looking for me?” Skuld said, her voice pitching slightly. “This whole time?”
Lea felt an instant stab of guilt. “Not--I mean kind of, but I don’t--don’t get too excited on my account, alright? I thought we were just…too late. I guess I kinda gave up,” he admitted.
Her shoulders drooped slightly at that, and then she squared them again, reminding him for a terrible moment of the way Namine fractured and then rallied under stress. “Of course you did. Who wouldn’t, after all this time?”
And Lea took a bite of ice cream with the air of a man desperately craving a stiff drink. “That would be Isa.”
Skuld said nothing as Lea levered himself up onto the sill, suddenly needing the ability to curl up and rest an arm on his knee in a gargoyle’s slouch.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Wow,” she said with a touch of sad awe in her voice. “Isa was so…”
Lea flinched, but didn’t find his voice to correct her.
“Larger than life.”
After a stunned silence, Lea frowned. That was…well, now that she’d said those words they somehow felt true to him, but they weren’t the ones he would’ve used. “You think?”
“Yeah. Passionate,” Skuld said, returning her attention to her ice cream for a moment while she thought. “The kind of person who gives all of themselves to their goals, never hesitating or turning back. Always one step ahead of the rest of us.” The corners of her lips drooped then. “I…used to have another friend like that. His name was Brain,” she added in an almost lilting way, like a storyteller getting lost in her tale (and this was enough to silence Lea’s reflexive choke). “I like to think he and Isa would’ve gotten along.”
Lea hummed a distracted response, both fascinated but full of dread. “Haven’t heard of him, but we should keep an eye out,” he suggested.
Skuld’s expression soured as though he’d said something in slightly bad taste and then she shook her head gloomily. “I don’t know. This was…a long time ago.” She looked up and caught his eye. “A really, really long time ago.”
“Huh,” Lea said faintly.
“So. I still hope, but…I can’t even find the person I was traveling with.” A fragile look crossed her face then and she blinked quickly. “He always was pretty bad at sticking together.”
Lea smiled an ashen smile. “Guess I can’t throw stones at that.” Then, because that felt like the wrong sentiment-- “But, seriously. If you think Isa’s intense, wait till you meet Sora, whenever we dig him up from wherever he’s disappeared to this time. That kid’ll be done carving his way through an army of Heartless to get to somebody else’s friends on the other side before they finish telling the sob story.”
“I think I know the type,” Skuld said wanly.