Kingdom Hearts fic: A Lock For Every Secret

[mistressofmuses]

Summary: Kairi, Riku, and Sora run a shop together, specializing in locks and keys made to protect any kind of secret.
But they have a secret project of their own, one growing close to fruition.

Day 19 of AU-gust: 19th Century Steampunk
I don't think I've ever been particularly good at historical fiction, mostly because I genuinely have a terrible time with dates and remembering where historical events fall in relation to each other. And I definitely didn't have enough time to devote the research necessary to try and write a better historical piece. So, I'm using my second Joker: Steampunk.
I unironically still dig steampunk stuff. I hope that even in a pretty short fic, I managed to get through some of the neat steampunk aesthetic stuff that appeals to me, haha. Another late one going up, just under the wire in my timezone!

---

“A lock for every secret, a key for every lock.” Kairi winked at the passersby, and held up the pamphlets advertising the shop.

A few people took them, though plenty ignored her. At least most of the people who’d taken them kept them, rather than just dropping them to the street.

Kairi kept walking, calling out their slogan every block or so. When her supply of flyers was gone, she turned back.

The bell rang over the shop door as Kairi stepped into the cooler air inside the shop. This part of the shop, anyway. Riku was likely in the workshop, which tended towards unbearably hot this time of year.

The light was dimmer inside as well, cultivating the ambiance they all preferred the shop to have. A lock for every secret, a key for every lock. The majority of their business was in protecting mundane secrets: valuables, letters from illicit lovers, property deeds.

The most interesting business came when someone needed locks and keys for conceptual secrets. Truths never told, memories, broken hearts. No one wanted to speak of such things in a shop with no air of somber mystery to it.

And if no one would speak of such things, no one would pay to protect them. And if no one would pay, then the three of them would be trapped in this shop forever, never to see the world. She loved the shop, and their flat above it, but she dearly wanted to see as much of the world as she could. If they could just get their personal project to succeed...

Most of the light in the room, from half a dozen white-glowing glass bulbs, came from the table where Sora was working. He’d glanced up when she came in, but had returned to what he was working on. Bits and pieces of what looked like broken machinery was scattered around, though Kairi recognized exactly how those pieces would fit together once reassembled.

The project to end all projects.

“Any progress?” she asked, hanging up her jacket.

Sora set down his loupe and leaned back. “Not sure yet.” He fidgeted with the small copper key in his hands. “Riku thinks that this is where the issue is. I have no idea what piece isn’t working, so I may just rebuild it.”

Kairi stepped up behind him and examined the disassembled device. She recognized this part as ordinarily being near the top of the machine’s frame. That part carried a heavy load in terms of the generated energy the device relied on, so it wasn’t surprising it could be prone to weakness.

“Are we able to spread the incoming power through a couple of these mechanisms?” she asked, pointing at the mass of gears Sora had been using the key to adjust. “If the machine is burning out because there’s too much power coming right through here…”

“I’m going to try it!” said Sora, already picking the loupe back up, and yanking a drawer under the table open, reaching for the parts necessary to assemble a duplicate array.

Kairi grinned as he started muttering to himself. She leaned over to kiss the top of his head, and he blew a kiss to her without looking entirely away from his new project. He could be very single-minded, but she didn’t take offense.

She flipped a switch on the wall.

A few seconds later, one of the bulbs above it lit up with a blue phosphorescence, and she smiled. It was safe for her to go down to the workshop.

The switches and lights were one of the most useful of Sora’s many small inventions. You could flip the switch in one room, which would cause a bulb in a different room to light up. That served as a question: Can I come in? Then the person in the second room could answer yes, by flipping a switch to activate a blue bulb, or no, by selecting red.

They’d devised additional codes for each other. Light combinations that meant come here or stay away.

But Riku had said she could go down to the workshop, so that’s what she did.

It was as sweltering as always, far outdoing the summer sun. In as many layers as Kairi was still wearing, it was brutal. Though she would readily admit to liking the opportunity to see Riku stripped down past all decency to his bare chest to deal with the heat. All public decency, anyway. This was a private space.

“Gave out a whole mess of flyers,” she said.

“Started a whole mess of keys,” Riku answered. He gestured at one of the workbenches, where there was a new array of rough-cast keys. All three of them would work on refining them, perfecting their fits for a single lock.

She nodded appreciatively. There were a variety represented: the large ones, as long as a man’s hand, meant for customers who wanted the reassurance of solidity and heft in the key protecting their things; the small ones, which would be finished into delicate little things to be barely grasped between thumb and forefinger, for customers who wanted even the key to their secrets to feel like a secret.

“But most of my morning has been spent on this.”

She turned to see. He held up a length of metal, already buffed to a high shine. Kairi almost purred at how lovely it was, practically glowing from within as she took it from him.

It was a lever, cast as a perfect single piece, exactly matching the specifications she’d outlined from her research. “It’s amazing.”

“When Sora finishes his part, should we install it and give it a try?”

She nodded eagerly, gently setting it down on a length of soft cloth. She threw her arms around Riku’s neck, not caring that she was still fully dressed, and he would get sweat on her dress.

He hugged her back, likely caring even less. “Thank you,” she said. “It looks perfect.”

She felt him smile against her hair. “I hope so.”

---

Sora finished the new design for the power transfer, and even managed to fit it all within the same housing as before with some creative rearranging.

He and Riku (cleaned up and dressed again) reassembled it into the tall, upright, rectangular frame, while Kairi made adjustments to the controls. Everything had to be perfectly attuned. She checked and double checked all of the measurements that she had painstakingly researched and copied down. The mirror in the center was polished to a perfect shine, without speck or smudge.

“I think this is it,” she said. “Should we try?”

Riku nodded.

Kairi shifted the new lever into place.

All three of them pulled out the keys kept on chains around their necks.

Three keys, one for each of them, each crafted by the other two. A sentimental detail, perhaps, but important to them, and symbolic of just as much and more as any wedding ring.

There were three keyholes in the control apparatus for the machine, their most significant secret treasure. They each inserted their keys, turning them all in one motion.

Kairi pulled the lever.

The mirror seemed to glint, reflecting light with no discernible source. And then the air within the frame shimmered, like a heatwave distorting the air. She held her breath for a moment, until the wavering air seemed to snap into focus, and they were looking into a forest. Trees stretching up so tall they seemed to pierce the sky itself, in a forest so vast it looked to go on forever. Kairi let out a disbelieving laugh, and made a quick adjustment. The forest wavered, and was replaced by a field of snow, the chill of the tundra sweeping into the room. Then a seashore, soft sand barely disturbed by the gentle hush of the waves, crystal clear water extending to the horizon.

Kairi spun toward the others, flinging herself at them both, trusting they would catch her. Of course they did, hugging her and each other tight.

Riku, always the tallest and strongest, lifted both her and Sora off the ground, spinning them around in his delight. “Do you realize what this means?”

“Yes!” she said, torn almost between laughing and crying. “We could go anywhere.”