Part Ten: Painted Roses
The spiky-haired warrior looked positively apathetic at Sora's accusation. He shrugged. "I saved your life. That's what matters." Clad in a burgundy cape with a collar that obscured the lower half of his face and sporting a fearsome metal claw on his left hand, the man was intimidating enough, but it was the eerily glowing blue eyes and the ease with which he took down a platoon of Heartless that really put Sora on his guard.
Sora struggled to his feet, gasping at the ache in his head as he tried to focus. A wasted potion allowed him to stand without having to hear the rhythm of pain pounding at his temples; a second one washed away the rest of the injuries inhibiting him. "Thanks." Sora said, glum but aware that the stranger had saved his life even if it had been at the expense of a couple of Heartless.
They hadn't just been Heartless. Heartless attacked without mercy, stole hearts, destroyed worlds. Hatter and Hare had served tea and given presents. Even though neither of them had spoken, they had been able to understand human language, and Hatter had even written. Something akin to guilt welled up within him and Sora shoved it down furiously.
"They were Heartless. All of them." The warrior interrupted Sora's thoughts. "Killing them was mercy, for them as well as you. And if you want to survive outside of the safe worlds, you're going to have to get over this." This lecture, accompanied by a steely, dispassionate glance was all the man said before he turned heel and left the garden.
Sora almost let him go. Not a friend, he warned himself, but not a foe either, and after so many battles fighting alone, having someone to fight beside would make his –adventure? task?– situation easier. "Wait up!" Sora ran with newly renewed strength until he caught up with the man.
"Why should I wait for a kid like you?" The question was asked with the same indifference that accompanied all his previous actions, but still Sora sensed that he expected to answer. The man slowed his pace though and allowed Sora to catch up.
"I'm tougher than I look." the 'kid' bragged. Sora brought up his sword to show the warrior. "I've taken out tons of Heartless."
An amused 'hmmph' was the response to that statement. Otherwise the man just kept walking on.
Sora nearly jogged to keep up with the long strides of his companion. "Hey. I'm Sora," he said, futilely trying to keep up the conversation. "What's your–"
"It's Cloud." The man said, not waiting for Sora to answer. "And I prefer silence when traveling."
Ignoring the all too obvious hint, Sora continued speaking. "Do you know where everyone else is? We have to get them off this world?"
Cloud shrugged, not breaking his pace at all nor deigning to answer Sora's question. His purposeful strides reassured Sora and caused the boy to follow in Cloud's direction, encouraged to make conversation or otherwise.
Not that he wanted to make conversation with such a surly person, especially one who had just killed the two sanest beings he'd met since he landed on this topsy-turvy world, but these awkward, walking silences made him uncomfortable– reminded him of the occasional horrible times when Riku or Kairi had been genuinely mad at him. Sora himself had never been one to give the silent treatment, but his friends had been experts, almost as much as this enigmatic man.
Unfriendly as his new companion might be, Sora couldn't deny how much safer he felt around this man, a feeling proven by the numerous Heartless encounters on the road. Where Sora alone might have struggled to hold his own and spent his supply of restorative items, Cloud handled whole groups of Heartless easily, with Sora only having to back him up occasionally. So when they finally reached a wooden sky scraper that Sora realized later was a dried out tree trunk, he was barely injured even after fighting several packs of Heartless.
"This is where I'm going." Cloud said at last, pointing to some tall grass at the forest's edge. Someone had parted some of the blades, forming an arched path to the next destination.
"Than-" Sora started as Cloud turned away and disappeared into the grass. The "Thank you" dropped off abruptly as Sora changed his call. "Wait up!" Too late. Cloud had already walked out of hearing distance or chose to ignore Sora. Regardless of the situation, he followed the path Cloud took more so out of curiosity than any desire to talk to the warrior again.
Alone, Sora tensed at any rustling of leaves or grass, understanding the need for extra caution, especially when his line of sight extended an couple of inches on either side and a few inches forward. No Heartless ambushed him yet when the grass tunnel widened into a path crossing a neatly trimmed lawn and surrounded by a peculiar garden.
No wonder the Heartless stayed away from this place, Sora observed as he took in the unusually shaped hedges and trees. With everything trimmed in the shape of a heart, they most likely felt intimidated or mocked by the presence of this place, if they had anything resembling feelings. Heartless might not like this place, but Sora did. At least he had found the most likely place for civilization to exist on this world and all he had to do now was convince them that their world was in danger and abandon it for another, safer world.
Gardeners tended the roses, and Sora approached them, hoping to get a better idea of his situation before he requested an audience with the leader of the world and explained to him or her the danger of staying on a Heartless-infested world.
"Umm..." he poked the gardener-in-charge, who was directing the work around him with sharp instructions and imperious gestures. He also appeared to be as flat as a playing card, an impression furthered by the intricate designs on the back of his uniform. It required a few more pokes to secure the head-gardener's attention, and when he finally whipped around his body to confront Sora, the human boy realized that instead of merely resembling a playing cart, the man was really a playing card, albeit with human limbs and a head attached to it. His designation was Ace of Spades, appropriate for a gardener.
"What!" Ace of Spades said, reminding Sora of a crotchety old man. "Oh, you must be the part-timer," he concluded. With an authority acquired only after years of working in a position of authority, he summoned over another card-gardener, this one designated as an eight. "We have an extra worker. Get him some paint and a brush. The more workers we have on this project the better off we are." He shooed Sora and the other worker from his sight.
"Paint?" Sora asked.
Eight of Spades sighed. "Guess they don't do much 'splainin' down at castle. Not that I blame 'em 'course. 'Er Majesty gets sure mad when things ain't just so and all." Sora nodded and encouraged the gardener to go on, even though he wasn't sure if he understood the man through his thick lower-class accent. "''Er Majesty, she gots a love o' roses and mades us a demand that we get 'er some right quick."
"So why the paint?"
"Right particular about havin' things just so, 'Er Majesty is. Roses gotta be red, else they jus' won't do. Acey o'er there, screwed up royally and ordered white roses instead. So now, we gotta paint the roses or risk losing our heads. I might not use it for much, I s'pose, but I'm right fond of my head stayin' on me shoulders, thank you very much. So get paintin'."
Sora stood staring at the brush and can of red paint that he suddenly found himself holding until Eight of Spades's scream galvanized him to start working. Sora walked over to the nearest white flowered bush and set the paint bucket down, all the while wondering exactly whether one could actually paint roses with any sort of success. With a dip of the brush into the can of bleeding-red paint, Sora proceeded like he might when painting a house or a fence. The roses did not take the color well, which caused the majority of the paint to drip onto the ground in a crimson puddle.
"No! No! No! No dripping!" Ace of Spades yelled, rushing over to Sora and hitting the youth over his head with his shovel. "Like this..." The card prepared to demonstrate but the sound of trumpets playing caused a scramble in him and the rest of the gardeners as they stopped painting, tried to hide evidence of their activities and rushed over to line the path.
Since he had no clue as to what was going on, Sora stopped painting, but hung back, watching the incoming procession from a reasonable distance. The white rabbit Sora had first seen when entering the world led the parade, blowing a bugle and announcing the arrival of "Her Majesty, the Queen of Hearts."
The ugliest woman Sora had ever seen, carried on a litter borne by eight heart-suited cards, followed the rabbit, and, judging from her expression, she was livid. The spades cowered before the queen as she glared down at them, scrutinizing them and the gardens for fault, not that she had to look very hard.
"What is this!" She bellowed at the cards, obviously displeased at the white roses and red paint.
Ace of Spades reluctantly stepped forward to explain. "You see, your majesty...We uh... I mean... I... they..." he whipped his head around, looking for something or someone to get himself out of what he perceived to be imminent danger. His eyes locked on Sora. "It was him!" he let out at last.
Belatedly, Sora realized that he still held the bucket of paint and a brush. He quickly dropped them, remembering that one of the cards had said something about losing his head if the queen were displeased, and like that card, he did like having his head attached to his body. It was too late for actions though, as she had not only seen him with the paint, but his shoes were splattered with the horrid substance.
Why was he worried? If his life were in danger, he could take her and the lance-carrying bodyguards. What was a furious, lazy, out-of-shape queen compared to mobs of Heartless, who were all competent and serious fighters? Nothing. Nothing at all. He strode forward, and commanded that two of the groveling cards parted for him.
"I was painting the roses, your majesty." Sora challenged her, "If you weren't so harsh, they– I mean– I wouldn't have to go through such drastic measures." Chin up and shoulders back, he glared up at the queen, who immediately picked up on the challenge Sora offered.
She glared back. "So you, you would dare defy me? Off with your–"
Oops. Sora realized that beyond needing to prevent his execution, he needed to convince this imposing presence that her world was in danger and to let her and her subjects abandon it. "Wait... your majesty, I need–"
The white rabbit interrupted Sora's interruption of the queen, by reminding the queen: "Your majesty, we're already backlogged on execution. There's the girl who beat you at croquet, and now that man who just stole your tarts. We simply don't have–"
"Then just throw him in the dungeon!" The queen bellowed, sending club-card soldiers rushing at Sora. Hard as Sora tried to fight, the cards refused to stay down for more than a few seconds. Several soldiers grabbed Sora's limbs, while another confiscated his weapons, and a last one clubbed him on the head, causing Sora's vision to go dark and stopping his struggle.
A musty smell woke Sora some time later, and instead of the garden's bright daylight; a dungeons dim torchlight greeted his eyes, a relief that he didn't have to adjust to the sun's harsh glare.
"So we meet again?" Cloud's flat voice called from a dark corner of the same cell. His blue eyes illuminated the room with an hitherto unnoticed light that spooked Sora.
Sora jumped back and hit his head on a stone wall. Rubbing it, he addressed Cloud. "So, what are you in here for?"
"Human weakness." his cell mate answered without actually giving any information. "You?"
"Painting roses, mouthing off to the queen." Sora shrugged, "Nothing interesting. She's really got a temper, doesn't she?"
Though Sora couldn't see the smirk in the shadows of the prison, he could hear the little 'Humph' of amusement that came with it. "That would be one way of wording it, I suppose."
Their conversation lulled, though the quiet that came with it was peaceful and natural unlike the time in the forest. Even now, Sora wasn't sure how to measure up the person sitting across from him in the cell and was still upset at the unconcern for friend or foe that he showed in the forest earlier, but now the youth wondered whether that made the man a bad person or just guarded after a time of fighting Heartless and maybe seeing his friends succumb to them. Regardless, Sora extended his natural friendliness and decided to give the man another chance.
Cloud had too apparently. "So what's a kid like you doing on a world like this anyway?"
What did Cloud know about the situation? Enough, if Sora's intuition were correct. "I'm here to save these people from the Heartless. You?"
"I'm searching for something." The non-answer didn't surprise Sora. Ever since he'd first shown up, Cloud had acted with the purpose of a man with one goal in mind, and he'd always been elusive with his conversation. "You're a little young to be doing this kind of job." That wasn't a question or even an opinion that could be debated, but rather a statement of fact.
When was sixteen young? Okay, so he wasn't as grown up as Cloud, or Aerith, or Cid or most of the other people that he'd met since he'd been taken from his island. "I'm skilled for my age."
"They must be getting desperate to send someone as young as you to do this dirty work." Another statement of fact, and one that hit home for Sora.
"They? I volunteered for it and proved myself!" Because I want to find my friends and find out what happened to my world, Sora added to himself. If Cloud would withhold important information from him, Sora would keep the more vulnerable crevices of himself hidden. That and the guilt that gnawed at him when he realized that he hadn't spent any time on this world actually looking for them. They weren't here anyway. He didn't know how he came to that conclusion, but he had this idea that he would just know if they were, in the same way that he knew that up was up and down was down.
Cloud acted like he didn't hear Sora's objection. "They think they can save everyone from the Heartless by bringing them to another world. They can't. They're just delaying the inevitable." It could have been Sora's imagination that heard the regret and bitterness in his usually apathetic tone, but he doubted it. "They know it too, so why do they just hang on?"
Saying nothing at first, because he was unsure whether Cloud really wanted a response, Sora nonetheless offered his answer. "Maybe they want something to hope for. If we can hang on long enough, maybe we can win. I know that wherever my friends are, I'd want them to have a chance to make it. Maybe they want the same thing."
"Perhaps." The dialogue ended there as they both realized the impasse they'd arrived at. A leaky faucet dripped at regular intervals with a beat that drove Sora crazy as he tried to ignore it and failed.
"That move back there, the one you did when we first met, how'd you do it?" Sora asked, just to get a reprieve from the drip-drip of water.
"You have to want it. You have to focus on just one goal and then pursue it with all you have. Then all you have to do is push off and go. No doubts. No moralizing." Oh, how Sora could hear the emphasis placed on the last word.
"I see." He didn't, not really, but he understood the message: If Sora wanted to succeed, if he wanted to see his friends safe and sound, then he'd have to get over some of his petty objections, objections that Sora didn't know if he could give up without a heaping pile of guilt.
The card-guards came then, effectively ending the conversation. "Quiet! The prisoners shall not talk to each other," one of them barked, before all of them marched off in unison.
Cloud stayed quiet and kept his head down until the sound of shuffling footsteps had faded. "We should get out of here." He mumbled to Sora, raising a metallic something in his hands that glinted in the dim dungeon light. A key?
"How... how did you get that?"
"I knew that I'd have to break someone out of prison today, just didn't think it'd be me. So I made sure I was prepared. Are you going to ask questions, or would you like to escape?" Somehow, Sora had no doubts that Cloud would leave him behind if Sora didn't answer correctly.
"Escape is good." Sora conceded.
Cloud didn't say anything but worked to open the tiny cell in which he and Sora were being kept. A few moments later, the rusty hinges gave a satisfying creak as the door swung open. They were free.
They were also weaponless, a condition that would be remedied in short time. Their weapons, Cloud's enormous sword and Sora's smaller one, were guarded by a single guard.
"I'll distract the guard while you get the weapons." Cloud instructed.
Cloud's distraction was nothing more than a well-timed blow to the head that caused the guard to slump unconscious on the dirty stone floor. Sora reclaimed his weapon easily but struggled with Cloud's heavier sword. Just more completely circumstantial evidence of how he was just a kid, Sora surmised as Cloud came and retrieved his sword, hefting the bandaged covered sword over his shoulder as if it were made of wood. Without another word, Cloud walked briskly towards the exit, leaving Sora once again to almost jog along to keep up with them.
More distractions were in store for the several other guards who intersected Sora's and Cloud's pathway, but eventually they made it to Cloud's apparent destination, a hedge-lined courtyard that was currently functioning as a court. They sneaked around until they found a good observation spot behind the hedges.
A bugle sounded, alerting Sora to the presence of the white rabbit and presumably the rest of the procession he had seen earlier in the rose garden. The sliver of view the hedge provided was generous, enough that Sora could see the whole of the proceedings.
"Court is now in session! All rise for Her Majesty, The Queen of Hearts." The rabbit announced for the benefit of the audience. All the guards and courtiers and any miscellaneous card people stood at attention as the same imperious boar of a queen who had confined him to prison for painting a rosebush entered the garden and took her place of honor at the front of the improvised courtroom. Everyone clapped very politely as her majesty sat on a throne a size or two too small for her.
"You may be seated," she decreed, and the court fell silent again.
The rabbit continued with the proceedings. "Today we hear the case of the croquet cheater. The defendant, a Miss Alice."
A red curtain by the Queen's stand revealed a cage and a blond-haired girl of no more than twelve trapped inside and looking very afraid of what waited for her, probably a beheading if observation meant anything on this world.
But before the beheading, the Queen had some speaking to do. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the defendant is accused of a grave crime, cheating at the civilized game of croquet against yours truly, the best croquet player in the kingdom. Does the defendant have anything to say in her defense?"
The frightened-looking Alice stood up straighter and put her hands on her hips, making her look not nearly so meek as Sora had believed she was when he first saw her. "Of course. I won that game fairly. Just because everyone loses to you on purpose does not make you the best player. Quite the opposite actually." Her speech finished, Alice brushed an imaginary crumb off her immaculate white apron.
For a moment, Sora could hear nothing in the court except for his and Cloud's breath. The queen's face drained of color before angry red refilled it. "What? You dare imply that you, a mere child, is better than me, the Queen of Hearts, in croquet?"
"Yes. I believe that is exactly what I'm implying." Alice said, in defiance of the queen.
"She's got a backbone." Cloud murmured. It was only Sora's imagination that made him think that Cloud sounded troubled by that revelation.
Sora agreed in a tone that was as quiet as Cloud's. "We should rescue her. It's not her fault that she won a game fair and square."
Their short conversation had distracted them from the rest of the evidence, as the Queen prepared the verdict. "The court finds the defendant guilty as charged for the crimes of cheating at croquet and defying my will. The sentence: Off with her–"
Not able to take the mock trial anymore, Sora stepped out of the bushes to make his presence known. Maybe it was his inner sense of justice that compelled him to stand up for the defense of a complete stranger, but more likely it was his growing frustration that a 'kid' or a 'child' was automatically inferior to anyone older than them, regardless of actual skill. Whatever motivated him to step forward, step forward he did, betraying his and Cloud's hiding spot.
Sora walked forward, sword at his side, until he was at the single witness stand provided at the trial. Instead of being at the side of the judge's podium, the witness stand was directly in front of it, putting Sora face to ugly face with the queen. Despite her frightening appearance Sora stared directly at her as he stood for himself, Alice, and anyone who had ever been underestimated, and at the same time he realized that this was probably the best time to explain to the queen what exactly was coming.
"Your majesty," Sora addressed the court while everyone was still shocked from his intrusion onto their playacting, "don't you have something better to do than put people on trial for winning a game?"
The queen stared down her nose at him as if his ideas were worthy to be put on the compost heap with the white roses. "What? Are you implying that there is something more important that preserving justice within this world?"
"Doesn't there have to be a world in order to preserve justice in it, and don't you and your subjects need to be alive in order to appreciate it?"
The Queen of Hearts looked slightly alarmed, but she shook it off like a dog shaking off the rain. "There is nothing at all threatening this world. You're stirring up mutiny, a very, very grave crime. So on Articles 29, 31, 84 through 982 and 1417 you are–"
"He's right." A voice came from behind Sora. Cloud had stepped up to the podium, sharing Sora's defiance of the queen. "Your world is on the verge of being destroyed, and all you can do is execute people for minor infractions. I don't know why he's even bothering with trying to save you."
The red-faced queen turned a deeper shade of scarlet. "You! You!" She sputtered incoherently for a few minutes, completely at lost. At the unfortunate minute that she regained her composure, she shouted orders to all the guards, "Seize them!"
The courtyard around them changed. Except for the hedges that bordered the perimeter of the courtyard and made it impossible for Sora and Cloud to escape, every thing else from the witness stand they had previously stood on, to the spectators and their chairs, to the bailiff's platform sank into the ground, leaving only the Queen's dias and Alice's cage from the original set up.
Not that he had time to pay attention to that stuff, Sora remembered as a card jumped him and Cloud narrowly managed to cut the card in half before the card could split Sora. So he concentrated on the fight instead of the scenery. As they had in the rose garden, the card-warriors did not stay down for very long, although with two people fighting, it remained a manageable fight. While the cards couldn't get in a hit, neither could Sora and Cloud deplete their numbers and actually win.
"The tower!" Cloud shouted to Sora over the roar of the battle. Complete nonsense, Sora thought at first until he noticed that there was a small tower smack dab in the middle of the battlefield. Since Cloud was being so nice as to hold off the cards, Sora allowed himself the luxury of rubbing his injured nose from where he bumped into the stone structure.
How was he supposed to destroy this thing? He looked at the structure. The wooden gears sticking out from the ends would be a good place to start and he wouldn't have to try to cut through solid stone–at least not right away.
One gear broke easily, and so did one of its brothers, but by the time that he worked on getting the third one destroyed, the cards had started to slip through Cloud and made their way to Sora. He shook them off the best he could, although he couldn't concentrate that much on them. Unlike the Heartless, if one of them slipped through, they'd simply use their mostly ceremonial weapons to scratch up Sora before retreating to safety. After the third gear was destroyed and Sora started to show the tears from all the dull blades being stabbed in his direction, the tower fell and the chaotic melee gave way to ordered retreat.
Sora paused to take a breath. Falling back, the cards too, stopped to collect themselves. When he'd fortified his eyes, Sora looked up at the queen who had become sickly pale again.
"See what you've done!" She said in a rage that was probably the only quiet thing her highness possessed. The queen pointed to the cage next to her. Instead of a meek and afraid, but somehow defiant Alice behind the bars, the empty cage mocked them all with its door swinging free on its hinges.
Cloud had also left, Sora noticed, though he didn't bring that up to the queen. Good, so he'd obviously managed to help Alice escape while Sora had attacked the tower. Something prevented him from enjoying his little victory– something completely black except for the yellow eyes that glowed even in the daylight.
"Your Highness," Sora addressed the queen with as much respect as he could muster for a lunatic, "You and your subjects need to leave this world. Now."
The queen didn't even have a chance to protest, because at that moment Shadows swarmed from all sides of the area, and quickly turned the green field into a black sea of Heartless.
"Oh my..." was all the queen could manage. Apparently, she now saw the seriousness of the situation. Unfortunately, the seriousness of the situation was staring back at her.
Author's Notes: The second of the old parts that needed posting. When I do continue this, expect a change of style from this way-back-when stuff for everything after this is going to be all new. For better or worse, I don't know. Thanks to anyone still reading/supporting this.