#i think about ven never changing his form to keep his friends memory alive even after /two millennia/ of seeing the face you can never get

[lanternlightss]

looking back at posts and its so fun seeing exactly which two characters in genshin i was hyperfixated on and that even after like three years it has not changed Once 😭

venti and nameless bard have me wrapped around their fingers istg

[currantlee]

Language: English Rating: Mature (M) / P18 Warnings: Mentions of Cannibalism, mentions of non-consensual body modification Fandom: Kingdom Hearts Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Horror Characters: Kairi, Sora, Ienzo, Yozora (memory), Ventus (mentioned), Master of Masters (mentioned) Relationships: Sora & Kairi or Sora/Kairi (SoKai) - can be interpreted either way Words: 4,544 Chapter: 1/1 Beta: FanficWriter827 Notes: This is probably one of the darkest fics I’ve written so far. Nothing explicit or extremely gorey, but please be sure to proceed with caution regardless. Other Platforms: -

Kairi tried to be quiet when she closed the door of the lab behind her and walked towards the middle of the room.

Sora was sitting on an examination bed, his legs dangling over the edge. He didn’t look happy, but calm and relaxed. Almost as if he had never been gone in the first place. Seeing him with an expression like this, it was a bit hard to believe the horrific things that had happened to him during the year and the few months he had spent in Quadratum alone.

He almost instantly spotted Kairi when she came through the door, despite her best efforts to be quiet. A wide smile formed on his face. “Kairi!”

She smiled back. “Hey.”

Kairi still couldn’t quite believe that he was really back yet, even though Riku and her had found him weeks ago. Maybe she just wasn’t used to it yet.

Sora slid off the examination bed and walked towards her.

Kairi tried to not stare at his body. She didn’t want to make him uncomfortable… In a helpless attempt to distract herself, she turned to Ienzo, who was currently arranging some papers, probably related to the examination he had just completed by the looks of it.

“How are you?”, Sora asked. He now stood right next to her.

She shrugged as she turned back to him. “I’m good,” she said. The more important question was… “How are you, Sora?”

He laughed. “I guess I could be worse.”

Kairi supposed that was true. The past few weeks and month had been rough. There had always been the very real possibility that Sora was already dead and their search was for nothing, something Kairi and Riku had feared very much. Despite that, they refused to give up on him, especially after they finally had a clue that was as good as a confirmation that he was still alive.

Even after they had finally saved him, they initially weren’t sure whether he would recover from what had happened to him for some time. And after that, there had been little time to spare for looking after his wellbeing. Yozora and his friends had needed every bit of help they could get, and of course Sora had wanted to help too. She just hoped he hadn’t overdone it, especially after everything he had been put through previously.

“Are you sure?”, she asked. “You’ve been through a lot…”

“In fact, he is doing surprisingly well despite his… Current condition,” Ienzo remarked as he walked towards them. Apparently he was done arranging his papers. “I must admit that when I first heard about the occurrences that befell you, Sora, I presumed you would be in a much worse state.”

Kairi bit her lip. So there was something wrong with him aside from the obvious part?

“If you excuse me, Kairi, but I must ask you to leave the room for a few minutes,” Ienzo continued. “I want to talk to Sora about his condition…”

“It’s fine,” Sora interrupted. “I don’t mind her listening.”

Ienzo turned to Sora. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “It’s fine, Ienzo. Really.”

Ienzo sighed and did something with his papers. “Alright…”

“How bad is it?” Kairi couldn’t keep quiet about this question any longer. It had been lingering in her mind ever since they rescued Sora from the Gigas – well, actually, she had wondered about it ever since she first met Yozora. He had been through the same thing after all, although he additionally had his memories erased as well, something that Sora had fortunately been spared from.

Ienzo sighed. “As I’ve already told you during the examination, Sora, some of your organs were technologically augmented. Several of them were also removed and replaced with mechanical compounds entirely.”

Kairi gulped. That sounded awful. She couldn’t help but think about what the Gigas must have done to him in order to get those augmentations where they were, and she felt like the thought alone was tearing her apart. It disgusted her. But even more so, it made her angry to know that Sora, or more accurately his body, had been modified in order to be used to power and control a weapon, all while he had been forced to watch without being able to do anything about it. Now he had to live with the aftermath of it, while the person behind the Gigas force had gotten away and would likely threaten their reality next. Kairi had no idea what the Master of Masters was up to, but she wanted to tear him to shreds for the pain he had caused Sora, albeit indirectly.

It was just so unfair!

To her surprise though, Sora seemed to take the news with much composure – he simply nodded slowly. Maybe it was because Ienzo had already told him before, or maybe Sora had changed at more than she had realized yet.

“Disregarding those deviations in your physiology however, your bodily functions are just fine. Again, I must say I am quite surprised.”

Kairi sighed. That was a relief… She had been prepared for worse. That still didn’t answer the big question though…

“Can…” Sora paused. He was looking down on his own hands, and the black plating that covered the skin. It made him look more like a machine than a human, but Kairi knew that underneath that façade, he was still Sora. He would always be Sora.

“Can you… Change me back to how I was before?”

Ienzo looked down onto his papers. He was avoiding direct eye contact, Kairi realized. “I have to admit… I do not know.”

Sora sighed and hung his head.

“I will have to discuss it with Even,” Ienzo continued quickly. “He knows much more about these things than I do.”

“Can’t you duplicate the missing organs with the replica technology?”, Kairi suggested. She didn’t know too much about how it worked, but… “You did replace one of Ven’s kidneys that way when it had stopped working in the Realm of Darkness.”

“Indeed,” Ienzo nodded. “However, it was a fairly easy surgery with little risk of failure. If it had not worked, he would still have had the other one to keep him alive. At worst, we would have had to remove the replica kidney again if his body had rejected it.”

Kairi already knew that the procedure had technically not been required. But Even had been eager to try and see if the replica technology could be used for good purposes, such as medical ones, as well. Ven wouldn’t have had to agree, but he had done it anyways. Much like Sora, he could never decline an opportunity to help someone, even when it meant getting surgery for research purposes.

“In Sora’s case, however, it would involve multiple complicated surgeries, some of which I am not sure we are even qualified for. Additionally, the internal organs are not what I am most worried about regarding such a procedure.”

Kairi gulped. That didn’t sound good…

“Then what is the problem, Ienzo?”, Sora asked. He had become very quiet.

“The exoskeleton,” Ienzo answered. “It is practically fused with your skin. In order to even reach the internal organs, we would have to remove at least parts of it, which subsequently means that we would have to remove your skin in the area concerned as well.” He sighed. “In any case, it would be a very lengthy procedure with multiple complex surgeries involved.”

So there really wasn’t any way… Kairi lowered her head as well. Of course she had been aware that it might not be possible to restore Sora’s body to how it was before he had been taken by the Gigas. She had hoped that there might be a way though, for his sake. They had never really talked about how he felt about the state of his body ever since his rescue, but she strongly suspected that he didn’t feel comfortable with it. She couldn’t blame him after everything he had supposedly been put through.

If it already upset her that much – how must he feel about it?

Sora lifted his head and nodded. “I understand.” He tried to manage a small smile, but it didn’t look like an honest one to Kairi. “Thanks regardless, Ienzo.”

“You are very welcome, Sora,” Ienzo said. “I promise I will talk to Even as soon as I get the chance. I just don’t want to make you any promises right now.”

So there was still hope? Kairi would have liked a definitive answer better than this…

“Why don’t you two catch a bit of fresh air and come back later?”, Ienzo suggested. “It might help to take your mind off the situation.”

How long had it been since she had last spent an extended amount of time with Sora alone? They hadn’t exactly gotten to that in Quadratum, unless the times when Kairi had watched over Sora while he was asleep counted.

“It sounds like a good idea to me,” Sora said. “Are you up for it too, Kairi?”

She managed a small smile. “Of course,” she nodded. “Let’s go!” After all, that’s what she had come here for: to spend some time with him, and maybe to help a little if it was required. She just wanted to make sure he was okay.

 ---

They ended up going to the castle garden, where they sat down on a bench near the fountain. It was currently in the shade of a tree, so the sun didn’t burn down on them.

For a while, neither of them said anything. Kairi didn’t really have an idea on how to start a conversation with him. As many questions as she had, she didn’t want to pressure him into talking about the time he had spent in Quadratum alone, the state of his body, or his appearance for that matter. He was the one who had to decide whether he was ready for that or not.

So she simply allowed herself to look at him for once, taking in all the changes to his appearance for the first time in weeks.

Instead of the comfy clothing he used to wear, a skin-tight black exoskeleton now enclosed his entire body up to the neck. It had a few scratches here and there, but overall it seemed pretty indestructible. Kairi still had no idea what exactly it was made of, but it surely wasn’t metal. She had been surprised by how little Sora weighed when she had freed him from the wreckage of the Gigas he had been the central unit of, since she had expected him to be much heavier.

He also had those weird things that looked a bit like headphones now. At first, Kairi had assumed that he could just take them off, but as it turned out, that wasn’t the case. Just like the exoskeleton, they were like a part of his body now.

The by far most outstanding piece of the exoskeleton however, at least when Kairi was concerned, was the backpiece. It looked a bit like a second spine, just that it had some red-glowing circuits and ports on it. It was the part that had connected him to the machine he had been a part of. Kairi knew there was also a tracker in it, but it wasn’t functioning anymore. Ran, one of Yozora’s friends, had ensured that so the Gigas would stop trying to retrieve Sora in order to insert him into another mech – or to turn him into nutrition for other central units.

Kairi’s stomach turned just thinking about that. She remembered how shocked she had been when she first learned about this from Yozora, back when he had first explained what Gigas did with the humans they abducted. ‘What did you expect?’, Yozora had commented in response. ‘The central units still have to get nutrients. And it’s not like the Gigas can just walk into the next store to buy some food, especially considering they give it to them intravenously.’

‘I know that,’ she had retorted. ‘I’m not dumb! It’s just cruel and really gross!’

‘They’re machines,’ Yozora had responded in his rather infuriating calm and collective way. ‘They don’t care about ethics.’

The conversation had taken place before they had found out that the Master of Master was responsible for the creation of the Gigas – and also the one who gave them the idea to use humans as a core component of their mechanical bodies. It just made the entire thing even more gross in Kairi’s opinion.

After all of this, she was simply glad Sora was still alive, even though they hadn’t found a way to restore his body to how it was before he had been transformed into a central unit yet. Quadratum might be free from the Master of Masters’ rule at this point, but the city was still in chaos. The undamaged equipment at the hospitals was needed to treat the injured survivors, and things would likely take some more time to calm down.

They also didn’t want to be an additional burden to Yozora, who had turned out to be none other than the rightful heir to the throne and was now getting accustomed to his new duties. It hurt to leave their new friends behind, especially since clearly everything wasn’t well just yet. But like Yozora had said: they had done everything they could for Quadratum. They rest was something they could help very little with. They needed to look after themselves now. Besides, someone still had to stop the Master of Masters, who had escaped to their reality. Kairi really wanted him to get a taste of his own medicine.

Therefore, they had decided to return to their own reality, hoping that Ansem and his disciples might find a way to restore Sora’s body to its former state. She had barely realized it had already been a week since then – it felt like yesterday since they had finally arrived home.

„You know,“ Sora said, „this body actually has its advantages.”

He didn’t sound too convinced of his own words. Knowing him, he might just trying to be optimistic in order to push his true feelings away, since he couldn’t change his situation right now anyways.

Kairi raised an eyebrow. “Like?”

“Uhm…” He seemingly couldn’t think of a single thing immediately, which only supported her suspicion.

Kairi sighed. Ever since they had returned from Quadratum, he had been avoiding his friends to some degree. Whether it was because he didn’t want them to see him like he was now or because he didn’t want them to worry about him because they noticed how much he hated the state he was in she didn’t know, but it was so unlike him. She wished he would open up about those feelings, but she also knew she couldn’t force him to.

“I can hear a lot better than before,” he finally said, but he still didn’t sound convinced of his own words. “Like, I can hear very high and very low sounds, even if they’re really quiet…”

“You actually hate it, don’t you?”

Kairi couldn’t bite her questions back any longer. It hurt to see him like this, trying to convince himself that everything was fine when it obviously wasn’t. Why did he not open up about it? Was it just a classical, stupid Sora-move because he didn’t want to bother his friends with his problems? Or did he not trust her anymore? Maybe he even thought she couldn’t take it because she was too weak…

‘No,’ Kairi thought. ‘Sora would never think of you that way, even though you were too weak to prevent this from happening.’

Had she not get caught by Xemnas, Xehanort wouldn’t have killed her. If Xehanort hadn’t killed her, Sora wouldn’t have used the Power of Wakening to bring her back, which eventually led to his disappearance to Quadratum. And if that hadn’t happened, he would never have encountered the Gigas, meaning that he wouldn’t have been transformed into a central unit for one.

It was all her fault.

“You’re right,” Sora admitted quietly. “I do hate it. But it’s not your fault that I am like this, Kairi.”

Kairi meant to tell him that he was being too good – it was her fault, at least indirectly. But she knew it would only lead to a discussion she wasn’t here for. She wanted to help him as far as she could, not argue with him. “You can still talk to me about it though.”

Sora sighed and leaned back against the back of the bench. He looked up to the sky, seemingly absent-minded. “You heard Ienzo before,” he finally said quietly. “He doesn’t even know whether they’ll be able to restore my body to how it was, and even if they are, it could take a long time. I might as well come to terms with it.”

It made sense, when he put it like that. But at the same time, it scared Kairi. The Sora she knew would have stayed optimistic that Ansem and his disciples would come up with a way to restore his body. Had he really changed that much in Quadratum or was he just desperate?

“I...”

He hesitated. Kairi bit back another question that burned on her tongue – she wanted him to take all the time he needed if he was going to open up.

“I miss eating.”

Kairi had never really thought about that part before. She had gotten so used to him not showing up to the meals that she didn’t even question it anymore, and neither did the others. She knew that the central units were fed intravenously – with what were technically human remains, that part would undoubtedly haunt her forever. In fact, both Yozora and Sora still took in their meals that way, although nowadays their nutrients came from labs, not from corpses.

“I know you don’t have to eat anymore, but can’t you just get yourself something and eat anyways?”, she asked carefully, realizing that she still had no idea how all of this worked and probably should have asked about the details sooner. She didn’t want to upset him even further.

But Sora just shook his head. “They replaced my entire digestive system with mechanical compounds,” he explained. “If I eat or drink, it might damage them beyond repair. I could die.”

“Oh.” She should have thought of something like that. Kairi knew he liked to eat, and especially to try out new dishes. If there was any way he could still eat, he probably would have already. “I’m sorry, Sora.”

“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I just wish I could at least drink some water. It’s not the same to get your nutrients injected into your veins, even though that at least keeps me sated.”

He sounded so sad… Kairi wanted nothing more than to take his hand and squeeze it, but she stopped herself from doing so, seeing as his hands were also covered by the exoskeleton. He had explained to her, shortly after waking up for the first time, that the sensors in it registered the touch and even told him what it was, but he couldn’t feel it and how that was weird. Kairi found that a bit hard to imagine. She didn’t know if holding his hand would actually help him or only remind him further of the fact that his body had been changed without his consent.

So instead, Kairi slowly raised her hand and gently brushed the skin of his cheek with her fingers. It was a lot cooler than she expected – was that another effect of having part of his body mechanized?

Sora turned to her with a surprised look on his face, and for a moment, Kairi worried that she had gone too far. But then, a small smile tugged on his lips.

Encouraged by the fact that he was apparently fine with this, Kairi placed her entire palm on his cheek. She even dared to push a few hairstrands behind the weird headphone thing that covered or replaced – she wasn’t entirely sure about that part – his ears.

His hair was shorter than it had been before Quadratum, but spiky and unruly as ever. Kairi suspected that it had been shorn off completely when Sora had been changed, and that it had grown back over the time he had spent inside the Gigas as its central unit. According to Yozora, the machines weren’t exactly known for great maintenance, since it was much more efficient to build a new one than to repair the old ones beyond the most basic functions. So why should they have cared about his hair beyond what was necessary to change his body for their purposes?

Sora leaned into her touch, sighing quietly. “I miss this too.”

“What?” She had never touched his cheek like this before, so that couldn’t be what he meant.

“Feeling,” Sora clarified. “I mean, I can still feel things on my face and head, and I get information from what the sensors in the exoskeleton are picking up, but���” He didn’t finish whatever he was going to say, and instead nuzzled her hand with his cheek, closing his eyes. “This is so good.”

“But it’s not the same?”, she tried to finish what he had said earlier.

“Yeah,” Sora confirmed. “At least on the parts covered by that stupid exoskeleton.”

Kairi suppressed a giggle, not wanting to give him the feeling that she was laughing at his situation. She couldn’t help a smile however. It was good to see that he hadn’t changed in each and every possible way.

Sora yawned. “I’m tired.”

She hadn’t heard that from him in a while. Immediately after his rescue though, she had heard it a lot, but she couldn’t blame him for it.

Apparently the entire time he had spent inside the Gigas, he had been fully conscious. How he and others that had been rescued before him had managed to survive this ordeal was a complete mystery, but after his rescue, the first thing Sora had done was to sleep for several days straight. No one had been able to wake him during that period of time, and Kairi had even been worried that he might never wake up. Even once he did eventually wake on his own, he had still complained about how he was incredibly tired for two weeks. She was pretty sure he had slept more than usual as well.

“Do you want to rest a bit?”, Kairi asked him, just like she had back then whenever he had mentioned how he was tired again.

But Sora simply shook his head. “Nah. I’ve already been resting quite a bit after all.” He yawned once more and stretched. “I just didn’t sleep that well tonight.”

Kairi had a suspicion why. “Nightmares?”

He nodded. “The usual ones.”

Kairi sighed. ‘The usual ones’ meant dreaming about being stuck in that robot again, with no control over his own body, forced to watch as horrible things happened in front of him. She would have liked to give him a hug, but she wasn’t sure whether Sora was comfortable with that either. “Do you want to talk about it?”, she asked instead.

Sora shook his head. “Not right now,” he responded. “Maybe another time.”

“Okay.”

Sora yawned again. “Maybe I could close my eyes for a little bit though…”

Kairi grinned. Sure – just closing his eyes for a little bit. “Do you want to lean on me too?”

It was a joke that had become common between them after Sora’s rescue, when at first he had gotten tired quickly and needed to rest frequently. Every time, Kairi would ask him jokingly if he wanted to lean on her, and every time Sora would end up responding in some non-sensical way. They would then both have a laugh, and depending on whether Sora was up to it or not he’d rest his head on her shoulder for a little bit before leaving to take a nap somewhere. She didn’t expect the answer he gave her this time around though.

“That would be nice.”

Kairi felt her cheeks heating up. Sora had never been that upfront about it before. He still was full of surprises, wasn’t he? Maybe it was just because he was really tired – the examination on top of not sleeping well must have exhausted him. Kairi just couldn’t tell him no. “O-okay,” she said. “Come here.”

He moved a bit closer to her, until their shoulders were touching. Huh. That was new as well.

Much to her surprise, Sora flinched at the contact.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I just… You don’t have to do this, Kairi. I understand if it’s uncomfortable for you or…”

He was talking about the exoskeleton, she realized. Well, that and the fact that he was technically part-machine now. Not that Kairi minded much about that. Sure, his appearance had changed a lot and in some ways, she couldn’t interact with him just like she would before his disappearance. Simple questions had become potentially dangerous ground to thread on, and physical contact was something both of them still seemed to be insecure about.

But to Kairi, he would always be Sora, even when he was stuck as the central unit of a giant robot.

“It’s fine. You don’t make me uncomfortable, Sora,” she said, carefully wrapping an arm around him and gently nudging him a bit closer to her. “I’m just glad you’re back and alive. We’ll figure out the rest, okay?”

Sora nodded while moving a little bit closer to her. “Okay.” He sighed when he placed his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. “Are you comfortable?”, he asked quietly.

“I’m alright,” Kairi said. Sure, the material of the exoskeleton felt hard and sturdy, but nothing she couldn’t handle. The more important question was… “Are you comfortable, Sora?”

He hummed quietly.

“Or shall I remove my arm from around your shoulders?” There technically wasn’t any necessity for it to be there, and his sensors must be ticking off.

She didn’t get an answer however. Instead, she heard regular breathing from her shoulder.

Kairi smiled. So much for just closing his eyes for a bit. She’d surely be stuck like this for a while, at least until Sora woke up again. Not that she minded much though. If she could help him like this, she was gladly doing it.

She did remove her arm from around his shoulders though, not wanting to do anything without his consent. And he didn’t look like he was slipping off the bench or her shoulder any given second.

Just when she did though, one of Sora’s hands tentatively touched her leg, as if he was looking for her in his sleep. Kairi blushed when he sluggishly wrapped his arm around her hips. Sora had always been a rather clingy sleeper.

Carefully, Kairi wrapped her arm around his shoulders once more. It was nice to see that despite everything he had gone through, despite the fact that his body had been changed possibly forever, some things were still the same. But most of all, it was good to see that he was still Sora.