musefic | Kingdom Hearts fic: Strangeness

Summary: Everyone knew there was something strange about Kairi, and they blamed her for it. As if she had the choice to give the strangeness away, like an unwanted gift, and simply decided not to.
In town she offered small vials of strange tinctures she made. No one wanted her, but some of them liked the things she made. Luck, or health, or a fix for a night of drinking. Warmth in the winter, a soft glow to light your bedside for a time, a guarantee of pleasant dreams.
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Sora and Riku know that Kairi has never harmed anyone. They take to escorting her on her trips into town, wanting to shield her from the unkind words of others. As time passes, they grow closer, but Kairi fears she'll never be ready to let them as close as she wants.

Day 30 of AU-gust: Magic AU
Somehow I made it this far, and realized I didn't have a real idea for this prompt! So this one came about very much on the fly, but I wound up pretty pleased with it! I love the idea of Kairi having an affinity for plants (being princess of Radiant Garden and all.)

“There’s something strange about that girl.” It was said in a low hiss of disapproval.

Kairi pretended not to hear. Everyone knew there was something strange about her, and they blamed her for it. As if she had the choice to give the strangeness away, like an unwanted gift, and simply decided not to.

“Unnatural,” the first man’s conversational partner agreed. She spat on the ground. Not directly at Kairi, but it was meant for her all the same.

Kairi tried to keep her trips into the center of town to a minimum, but there were times it couldn’t be helped. After, she’d retreat back to her small house, and try to avoid coming here until she was forced to again.

“You know, I think they’re actually glad that you’re here.” The new voice was cheerful and friendly, nothing like the biting snideness of the others.

She glanced out of the corner of her eye. A young man was standing there, hands clasped behind his head. She’d met him before, though only in passing when they were young. She hadn’t gone to school with other children. His name was Sora, if she remembered correctly.

She didn’t say anything. No one spoke to her unless they needed to.

“If it weren’t for you, they’d have to find someone else to gossip about, and they aren’t exactly clever.”

She felt a smile twitch at the corner of her mouth, but didn’t let it bloom. “What do you want?” she asked instead.

He looked surprised at the question. “Nothing,” he said after a pause. “Just wanted to walk you home.” He glanced behind them.

Kairi risked a quick glance back, and saw both the man and woman glaring toward them. They, and the interchangeable others like them, had never directly harmed her, probably more for fear of her strangeness than lack of desire to.

“No one comes to my home,” she said.

“Just making sure you get there safely.” He kept up a running commentary on their surroundings, on the forest, about how he never came out this way, but that it was very nice…

She made a few sounds in return, though she didn’t have anything to say.

Her house was small, more of a cottage, really. Sometimes it still felt too large. Sora walked her to the door.

“When do you need to come into town again?” he asked, pausing a few paces behind her.

“I try not to, often.”

“But you sometimes have to, right?”

She looked at the bag she was carrying, the supplies she’d had to barter for, as acknowledgement.

“Two weeks,” Sora said. “Make your next trip in two weeks, and I’ll make sure you get to and from the town safely.”

“In exchange for what?” He had to want something, a favor or charm that he was afraid he couldn’t afford.

He shrugged, and grinned up at her. “I don’t need anything.”

“Okay. Two weeks.” She let herself in through her front door, and shut it behind her, not letting him see inside.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, the plants growing on every surface reached for her, the proverbial flowers to the sun. She smiled, reaching out, letting their leaves and blooms brush her fingers.

Even if she could give up the strangeness about her, she wouldn’t.

Kairi didn’t expect Sora to be there two weeks later, but there he was, waiting along the path to her house.

“You’re here,” she said, before she thought better of it.

“I told you I would be.” He grinned. “To the market, then?”

He accompanied her the entire way, waiting unobtrusively behind her when she approached the shopkeepers to barter.

She offered small vials of strange tinctures she made. No one wanted her, but some of them liked the things she made. Luck, or health, or a fix for a night of drinking. Warmth in the winter, a soft glow to light your bedside for a time, a guarantee of pleasant dreams. These she’d trade for cuts of meat, or tools, or other things she couldn’t make herself.

Sora walked her home, and no one said anything. She felt their eyes on her, but there were no insults thrown her way.

“Two weeks?” he asked again, leaving her at the edge of her land.

“Two weeks,” she agreed.

It became a routine, though not one she’d ever anticipated.

Every two weeks, Sora would wait for her under the trees along the path, and escort her to the town and back.

He’d talk while they went, about things he’d seen in the forest, or stories he’d heard. It was… nice. She didn’t know what to say in return, so often she didn’t say anything. Though as the weeks continued, she would tell small stories of her own. Fairy tales she remembered, mostly.

Every time she said something, he’d look at her like it was the most delightful thing he’d ever heard.

A few months into the pattern, she pressed a potion into his hands. “Luck,” she said. “You don’t drink it, you just keep it with you.”

It was one of the best luck tinctures she’d brewed, better than the weak things she bartered away. He deserved it.

Another month passed, and Sora was not waiting for her.

There was another man in the same spot, another that she’d seen around the town.

“Hello,” he called. He put his hands up, like he needed to reassure her that he wasn’t threatening. “My name’s Riku. Sora sent me to help you.”

She stared at him for a long moment, but it didn’t taste like a lie.

She approached, and he kept talking. “Sora is out of the village for a few days. Nothing bad, just something with his mom’s family. He asked me to come take you to the market and back if he was still gone.”

She’d met Riku once or twice as a child. When she’d been found, a nameless, wandering thing, she’d been kept away from other children. Riku had been one of the brave ones, who would dare to approach her. But never to be cruel.

“Thank you,” she said, and they started to walk.

“One of your potions saved his mom once, did you know that?”

She shook her head. Though she knew he must mean Sora and his mother.

“A healing potion,” he said. “When his mom got sick, maybe five years back. I know they must have been desperate, that anyone even came out to ask you. But it worked. You saved her.”

Kairi remembered it, or thought she did. In the middle of the night, pounding on her cottage door. The mayor, insisting she owed him for the fact that he hadn’t left her in the woods as a child. She would have made him the tincture without the attempt at emotional blackmail. They’d never told her who it was for.

She was glad it had been for Sora’s mother. Not that she was glad the woman had needed it. Just glad she’d helped.

“After that, Sora would never hear a word against you. Which is correct, of course. You’ve never hurt anyone that I know of, but you do a lot of good.”

“There is something strange about me,” she said, giving him a sharp look.

“Better strange and kind than proper and cruel.”

After that, it was both of them. Sora and Riku both came to bring her to and from the market safely.

Sometimes there were still whispers. In addition to her ‘strangeness’, there were accusations that she was a ‘temptress’, and had ‘bewitched’ the both of them.

She asked them both if it bothered them, that people said that.

“Is it true?” Riku asked. “I don’t feel bewitched.”

She shook her head, frowning. Of course it wasn’t. “None of the tinctures I make could do that, and even if they could, I wouldn’t.”

“Exactly,” said Sora. “And we know it.”

Seasons changed. Sora and Riku kept accompanying her every two weeks. And then they started to visit on the weeks she didn’t have to go into town.

She would lead them on walks in the woods, showing them how to forage, what plants could be used and which should be avoided. Sometimes they’d bring cold foods, and all three would eat together in one of the calm clearings she knew.

They told each other stories, fairy tales and adventures. Sora pillowed his head on her lap, while she wove flowers into Riku’s hair. Riku cradled her head against his shoulder as he pulled them backwards into the soft grass, and Sora fell into both of them. She tasted her tinctures, the non-magical ones made of berries and herbs and honey, on their lips. They tasted them from each others’, and from hers, and she would never have traded her life for anything.

Kairi never invited them inside. She wanted to, but… In the woods she could control it, the impulse of the plants to shift and grow towards her. If she wasn’t careful, sometimes wildflowers bloomed at her feet, but it wasn’t like in her cottage. Her plants and herbs there knew her, and she couldn’t keep them from reaching for her.

As much as Riku and Sora said they didn’t mind her strangeness, she couldn’t risk scaring them away by forcing them to see it.

Kairi could feel the storms. They were building over the mountains, and she knew they would break near the village.

She’d begged Sora and Riku to stay away from the river, in case it flooded. She’d pressed the best luck tinctures she’d ever brewed into their hands. And she was terrified it wouldn’t be enough.

She didn’t sleep. The plants in her cottage wavered, responding to her worry as if they were in the storm outside.

The rain pounded on the roof and against the windows, but not hard enough to block out the sound of someone at her door.

She hurried across the room, almost breaking the lock as she slammed the door open. Riku, drenched to the skin, carrying Sora.

“Help him,” he gasped.

The journey from the village was miles, in the dark and the rain. And Sora wasn’t moving.

She brought them inside, closing the door on the storm.

The plants strained toward her, and she had no attention to spare on pushing them back or on worrying what Riku might think. She swept her worktable clear, not caring that things crashed to the floor. They could be repaired or remade.

Riku lay Sora on the table, and pulled at his shirt. The rain had disguised it, but now she saw the mess of blood covering his side and chest.

And after being carried over miles…

“The river,” Riku said. “He went out to help someone stranded. He got them across to the shore, but the water swept too much down with it. Something hit him.”

She pressed her fingers to the side of his throat, finding a pulse, fluttery, but there.

There was a smear of stickier liquid, somehow untouched by the rain, spread across his chest. The luck tincture. Of course; if it had broken when he was hit… it could have fulfilled its purpose one more time.

“This will be fine,” she murmured, her focus already narrowing to the wound.

She raised a hand, calling certain plants to twine around her fingers. She pulled off a few leaves and petals, willingly given from her plants, crushing them between her palms and then into a stone bowl. A splash of oil from a jar on one of the shelves, grinding it together, and she smoothed the mix across the wound in Sora’s side.

She pressed her hand across it, and pushed her energy through it. The power that made plants bloom at her feet and twist around her hands rose through Sora, encouraging the injured muscle and skin to grow back together.

Riku helped her to clean the rest of the wound, and pack more of the plant and oil mixture along the wound itself. It already looked less serious than it had when they’d first gotten him on the table. With Riku to help lift Sora, she bandaged his chest, holding the medicine in place.

She pressed her lips to Sora’s, relief at his strengthening heartbeat almost making her collapse.

Riku helped move Sora to her bed, and then climbed in between Sora and the wall. She lay on Sora’s other side, leaving her hand pressed to his side, encouraging the flow of energy.

Riku leaned over to her, carefully not jostling Sora. “Thank you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. She turned her head so he could kiss her on the lips instead.

“Thank you,” she whispered back. “You got him here.”

They held Sora through the night, as his breathing grew stronger and steadier.

They woke to weak sunlight filtering in the windows. The sky was still clouded over, but the rain had stopped.

Sora reached up a hand, and one of the vines twined around the head of Kairi’s bed swayed to touch his fingertips. “It wasn’t a dream,” he said.

She shook her head. There was still a slight undercurrent of fear, that now that they’d seen the strangeness so close, both Riku and Sora would run.

“It’s amazing,” he breathed. “You saved me.”

“Riku, too,” she said. If Riku hadn’t managed to carry him to her…

“Both of you,” Sora said. He almost sat up, but winced, and lay back down. “Both of you saved me.”

Riku propped himself on an elbow to look at them both. He looked like he wanted to say something, then paused. After a moment, he said, “I love you. Both of you.” It came out almost desperate, and she understood why. There had been no loss, but the threat of it had been real.

“You know,” she said. She felt shy and vulnerable to even mention it, but she had to. “It’s possible that this cottage could fit three.” She hoped he knew that was her saying it back.

“I think that’s very possible.” Riku gave a slightly breathless laugh, and she thought he understood very well.

“I supposed we’ll have to make sure,” said Sora. “Together.”