penned between the margins // Kingdom Hearts fanfic
Characters: Kairi (post KH1~ around CoM)
Warnings: Dairy entry that’s present tense + first person POV, slight dereality typical with memory related issues in Kingdom Hearts, Hospitals
Something happened. I don’t know what it was, but I know something did happen.
It started a few weeks ago. This… feeling inside of me. It’s nothing like anything I’ve felt before, so I don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost… hollow? No, that doesn’t sound right. Empty? Maybe, but not quiet.
Longing. That might be the way to describe it.
I don’t know where it came from. One day I was running down the beach of the main island with Wakka and Tidus, playing games with them, giggling with Selphie and the other girls about about dumb school stuff like we always do, and the next thing I remember I somehow ended up at the play islands, standing at the empty shore like I was looking for something.
Like something was missing.
I don’t remember how I got there, I don’t even remember leaving the house that day or what compelled me to go there without telling anyone. I just… did. Or did I? If I don’t remember doing it, did it really happen?
Everything feels like a dream. That’s probably the best summary of how most things have felt since that day.
Some things are real, I know for sure. Wakka and Tidus are as rambunctious as ever, sparring up and down the shore, laughing and messing with each other like they always do. Selphie and I are practically glued at the hip like we’ve always been. These things are the same and they feel normal but… but they also feel like they’re not.
It’s weird. I don’t know how to describe it. Somehow, things don’t quite feel real.
Nothing from my life is missing or out of place; mom and dad are as great as ever, no one moved in or away (I made sure — daughter-of-the-mayor privileges come in handy every once in a while), summer was ready to end and school was about to start a few weeks away just like it was before this gnawing feeling consumed me, so, what’s wrong? Why do I feel like this? Why does it feel like I’m searching for something I can never find, even though I can almost feel it brushing against my fingertips?
Selphie was the one who found me all those weeks ago and I still feel like I have to apologize for it everyday, even though I stopped doing that about a week ago. She said we were walking down the beach, chatting away like any other day, when I just… stopped. Stopped moving, stopped talking, even stopped breathing, though I don’t know how much of that was an exaggeration on her part or entirely true. She’s always had a flair for the dramatics, after all. it’s not that I doubt her, I just… I feel like I’m always second guessing myself these days.
Anyway, she said I stopped walking and just… turned on my heel and walked towards the shoreline. She said I would’ve walked right in if she hadn’t stopped me, and that might be the scariest part of all of this. The second scariest, actually. Doing things beyond your control and not remembering it is terrifying, but knowing you’re missing something without any proof of many things missing is indescribably startling. At least there’s a reason for people doing things and not remembering doing them, what explanation is there for remembering something that didn’t happen?
That’s what I keep telling myself. It didn’t happen. It feels wrong, so wrong, because I know something did happen, but maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’m just remembering wrong. Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
And it’s even weirder because with how Selphie describes her story… I don’t remember it like that at all.
We might’ve been on the beach together at some point, the details of memories with her are fuzzy in an entirely different way, but I don’t remember her being there. I don’t remember anyone from the islands being there. No one. I was all by myself for so long. I have no visual memory of this, no flash of images that give me at least some solace that I’m not completely losing my mind, but I know I was alone.
Or… no, I wasn’t. Not entirely, at least. There was this… warmth. This light, almost. I was scared and alone, but the light helped keep me warm and safe. I think, at least. With no proof even within my own mind, it makes what I feel seem less reliable, but I know it happened. I know. Or, I thought. I don’t know. It’s all a big jumbled mess.
All I know is that before Selphie found me on the beach that day, everything was dark. And cold. And alone. But not. Because that light was protecting me.
Maybe I am losing my mind. How can I both feel something and not feel something at the same time?
Selphie nearly gave me a heart attack when her concerned hand gently touched my elbow that day, but outwardly, I had no reaction. It was unnatural. She touched me and I barely moved. I only slightly shifted to face her but with no control of my own. Like my body was on autopilot, trying to fly to my rescue. And I was so tired. As nice as she could put it, Selphie said I looked dead in the eyes when I looked at her before collapsing in her arms, and isn’t that embarrassing?
Wakka and Tidus had luckily come to the islands that day and found us soon enough, me lying in Selphie’s arms on her lap, wordless, almost comatose, and Selphie freaking out on the inside but surprisingly calm on the outside, holding my hand and gently stroking hairs behind my ear that just wouldn’t stay.
I don’t remember much from that day, honestly. All I know for sure is besides darkness and light, I vividly recall Selphie’s soft hand in mine, the slight shake of her body as she reassured me that everything was going to be okay, and the image of her crumbling to the floor the second she thought I couldn’t see her anymore behind the hospital door. But, I did, and it’s been haunting me ever since.
She looked so… frail. Small. Like a child, wailing on the floor in the middle of the hallway. For me. Maybe that’s the real reason I still apologize to her everyday, even if it’s only in my head. Purposefully or not, I did that to her, and the guilt is almost too much to bear.
Staying in the hospital was… an experience I hardly remember. It comes back in flashes, in sensations I’d never felt before but can pinpoint exactly now, like an IV in my arm and being fed food and water because I couldn’t do it myself for days on end. Humiliation is commonplace among my confusing and busted wheelhouse of emotions now, it seems.
The weird thing was, when I was conscious and coherent, trying to tell everyone what I think happened, with their words, they told me I was wrong, that I never left the islands, that everyone is safe and here, that I have nothing to worry about. But their actions said something different. Worrying hands that seemed frantic for reasons more than me having a bad… whatever I had. Quick glances constantly thrown over my parents shoulder, like if they looked away for even a second, I’d disappear into thin air.
Sometimes, it feels like the other way around. Like instead of disappearing into thin air, I just appeared out of nowhere one day.
It’s confusing because I don’t feel this way about my entire life. I know the memories of before that day are real, that I came to this island as a little girl, that against all odds I found a family and great friends, but it still feels so, so wrong. Even though those memories shouldn’t be tainted in anyway, they still feel off. Incorrect. Like something missing. Just like Selphie’s telling of the day she found me. I don’t think she’s lying, but I know she isn’t right. And the most confusing part is I’m not lying to myself, but I know my memories aren’t right either.
It’s been a slow adjustment, coming back. I keep phrasing it that way in my head. “Coming back.” I didn’t leave, not physically. At least, I don’t think, but it feels like I came home after a long, long, taxing journey. Like when you come back after a long family trip and the tiredness of your travels finally settles in, leaving you fatigued and sluggish, but I never feel that relief that swells in you when you finally get home. That feeling of when you step through the door of your house and comfort, safety, security, home washes over you. It hasn’t happened yet. I’ve never left, and yet I don’t feel like I’m home.
‘ Try not to think of it,’ my mother tells me. ‘Focus on what it is you’re feeling,’ the therapist says. ‘I’m losing my mind,’ I think.
I don’t know which one of us is right.
At the moment I’m sitting on the balcony of my bedroom, staring out at the setting sun as it’s light sparkles over the horizon. I’ve always loved twilight. It’s the best part of the day, when the sun is nuzzling into it’s comfortable place and gives us one last glow of it’s beauty before saying farewell and making way for the night. The time between day and night has always been one of comfort for me. It’s even prettier on the play islands, but I haven’t been back since Selphie found me.
Okay… not technically true. I did go back once when I could find the chance to get away between the hectic mess of discharging from the hospital and settling back in at home. And there I go talking about it like that again. “Settling back in.” I never left, so there’s nothing to settle into. I tell myself this so I feel like I at least have a little control, but once the lying starts it means that control has been lost for a long time, right?
...Right. The play islands. I went back because I thought I could… I don’t know. Find whatever it was that was missing? As if it was just some trinket I dropped near the paopu tree and if I came running back it’d be right there, waiting for me to return. It sounds as ridiculous as it felt to do. What I lost wasn’t some mere charm off a bracelet or something trivial like that, it was real and important, of course it wasn’t going to just magically appear the last place I remember seeing it.
Huh… that’s a bit of a clue, isn’t it? “The last place I remember seeing it.” The paopu tree. It keeps coming up in my thoughts and in my memories, as if I can trust those, but maybe that will be helpful down the line.
Before all of this stuff happened, I used to keep a diary. Not for any real reason, the content of it hardly mattered, honestly. Scribblings here, a random poem there, what I wrote wasn’t important, it was the fact that I was writing at all that was. It helped me keep things clear and concise in my own head, all my thoughts organized into one, easy to read space. I kept a journal with me constantly, writing down anything that seemed important and sometimes especially things that were mundane, so I wouldn’t forget it later. I eventually fell out of the habit, but the doctor suggested for me to pick it up again to help make sense of what happened to me and I’ve been trying to do it ever since.
These days, though, my thoughts and writings form into one big blob of a mess and I find myself constantly getting lost in the flow between them. Some things I thought I wrote down end up being only thoughts I had at some point and never committed to writing down, and other things I thought were only daydream imaginings end up staring right back at me on the lines of paper. I look down at the notebook in my lap now and realize I’ve been writing this whole time. It’s become second nature at this point, I wasn’t even looking at what I was writing. My penmanship has seen better days but the writing is still legible and… as coherent as I can make my thoughts be recently. It makes sense to me, at least. (And doesn’t.)
I scribble the note about the paopu tree down, even drawing a crude rendition of the tree with three paopu fruits on it in the margins, as best as I can muster. It’s not much, but drawing has also been helping me make sense of the mess of my brain recently, even though I’m not all that good at it. Maybe I need a hobby. Something to distract me. The doctor said something like that, too, I think, but, as always, I can’t remember clearly.
There are few and far moments in between when thinking about whatever it was that happened to me isn’t all-consuming and occupying every one of my thoughts, and my mind flits over to the thought of school.
God, doesn’t that sound awful.
School has never been bad, but dealing with it while also dealing with all of this sounds a bit much. Maybe I can ask if I can be homeschooled, just for a semester. Mom and dad will probably fight it, saying it’ll be good for me to be among my peers, especially after all of this, but I disagree. It might not be a good idea, but I think I just need to be alone with this stuff for a while, so I can make sense of it for myself, and then I can make it make sense to others. If it ever gets to that point. I don’t know if it will, honestly.
Well, it’s okay for now. School isn’t for at least another month so until then, I’ll just keep trying to make everything make sense.
I’m not normally a pessimist, but these thoughts and recent experiences have made me not feel like myself. I try to not let it bother me, but it does so much. I scribble another note down about needing to make a checklist of school supplies and end the note with an explanation point, dotting the bottom with a drawing of a paopu fruit.
I look up from my journal and out to the glittering sea, the play islands gently hugging the darkening horizon. Maybe I should go back there soon. Something feels like it’s calling me. But maybe I’m imagining that, too.
I hear my mother call me for dinner and I sigh, closing my notebook. I stand, looking out wistfully towards the twilight horizon and the play islands one more time, before I leave the balcony and shut the sliding door tight, locking it into place.
Another thought for another day.
